Friday Find: Rien Fertel and Wyatt Dickson on The State of Things Podcast

“The One True Barbecue” author Rien Fertel and Picnic’s Wyatt Dickson stopped by WUNC’s The State of Things radio show last week to discuss Fertel’s book and all things whole hog barbecue. After listening to this 17 minute podcast, I realized that Wyatt Dickson and I went to elementary school in Fayetteville way back when. Small world.

Link

Monk

Linkdown: 6/1/16

Take a tour of Central Texas Barbecue with Chef Mark Ladner

– Couple more barbecue stops from Grant: Hawg Heaven BBQ in Hogansville, GA and Mac’s BBQ in Warm Springs, GA

How to identify a good BBQ joint, from Garden & Gun

Barbecue, though, is democratic. If you have a hankering for chopped pork and a few hours to kill, you can find a platter. But how do you know before you order if you’re getting real-deal, barbecue or a slow-cooker surprise? The experts say to look for wood and smoke, of course, but there’s more to the best joints than that.

– The NC Aquarium in Kure Beach is having a Father’s Day barbecue catered by A&G Barbecue down the road

– Bon Appetit weighs in on American barbecue, with bits from Buxton Hall, Sam Jones BBQ, and Picnic

Friday Find: NC Weekend visits Durham’s The Pit

From UNC-TV’s NC Now, Deborah Holt Noel takes the viewer on a behind the scenes look at the Durham location of The Pit for a recent After Dark segment for the show.

The Pit in Raleigh is already an established institution, but their Durham location is quickly creating its own stellar reputation. Their whole-hog, pit-cooked barbecue and lively Downtown Durham location have attracted the attention of The Washington Post and The New Yorker!

Linkdown: 5/25/16

– Another writeup on Rien Fertel’s latest book, The One True Barbecue, with the tagline “Get to Ayden before it’s too late”…now too late for what, I’m not quite sure

– Speaking of Ayden, this past weekend it became home to the Kings of Q BBQ Cook-off and Festival

– Three questions with The Improper Pig, who started a food truck just in time for the summer

– A very interesting read on how Daniel Vaughn helped Tuffy Stone’s Cool Smoke competition team lose at this month’s Memphis in May

– Vaughn also weighs in with an appreciation of The Salt Lick, which sometimes gets unfairly maligned as “overrated”

– The Wall Street Journal profiles Melissa Cookston, “the most decorated woman in competitive barbecue” (h/t)

– Grant’s latest Georgia barbecue stops: The Butt Hutt in Athens, Tucker’s Bar-B-Q in Macon, Hudson’s BBQ in Roberta, and Piggie Park in Thomaston

– Catching up with Robert Moss’ latest entries for The Daily South: a writeup on The One True Barbecue and the end of a Savannah BBQ legend; here’s an excerpt from the first linked article on whole hog:

Whether the whole hog tradition is dying out or evolving into a new form is left unsettled. By the end of the story, Chris Siler at Siler’s Old Time has switched to pork shoulders after it got too hard to procure whole hogs, and Ricky Parker is gone, dead from liver disease at only 51. At the same time, a new generation of cooks from other walks of life, like Tyson Ho at Arrogant Swine in Brooklyn, NY, and Elliot Moss at Buxton Hall in Asheville, NC, have made the “journey into the madness of whole-hog fanaticism.”

– Always worth revisiting the basics