Linkdown: 1/5/21

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My new year’s resolution: I will finally do pork steak’s in my backyard. Mark my word. Now, just to find a local grocery or butcher shop that has them or will cut them for me. -Monk

Native News

Congrats to Jon G’s Barbecue on their receipt of this award from Hometown Heroes of Union County

Three barbecue joints – Midwood Smokehouse, Sweet Lew’s BBQ, and Noble Smoke – make Charlotte Magazine’s 50 best restaurants in Charlotte list

Highlands Smokehouse has new ownership, and they aim to bring a beer garden vibe to the barbecue restaurant

Bib’s Downtown in Winston-Salem was the latest casualty of the pandemic right before the new year

Sweet Lew’s BBQ is the one barbecue joint on the list, but mmmm…pork and chicken skins

Apple City BBQ in Taylorsville introduces a few new menu items for 2021 that have a local bent to them: their hot links will be sourced from Chapman Cattle Company in Alexander County and their grits will be stone ground the old fashioned way at Linney’s Water Mill

Non-Native News

RIP to Mike Mills of 17th Street Barbecue, simply known as “The Legend”

So this happened

…which led to Texas Monthly’s Daniel Vaughn attempting to recreate

Donnie Harris Sr of Pack Jack Barbecue in Sebastapol has been smoking for 40 years

Ribs n Reds is NC-born Chef Bryce Shuman’s pivot to barbecue

Kevin’s BBQ Joints with a couple of recent posts about the knives and sharpeners that barbecue joints use

5 lb barbecue cake

LOL

Linkdown: 10/28/20

Featured

This week, Adrian Miller, the James Beard Award-winning author and self-proclaimed “Soul Food Scholar” shared the cover art and preorder link for his forthcoming book entitled “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue.” As I noted in my recent Barbecue Bros Book Club entry for “North Carolina’s Roadside Eateries” by D.G. Martin, while the John T. Edges and Bob Garners of the world have given us so much in terms of exposing us to places we might never have known about otherwise, it’s well past time to get a different perspective.

I am very much looking forward to reading both this book as well as Rodney Scott’s upcoming book to get just that. “Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue” will be out April 22, 2021 on University of North Carolina Press.

“Black Smoke celebrates the significant contributions that African Americans have made to the American barbecue story. You’ll learn how African Americans honed and popularized a cuisine rooted in Native American culinary tradition, and became its most effective ambassadors. I profile fascinating barbecuers from the past two centuries, look at different aspects of African American barbecue culture, and opine about barbecue’s future.”

Native News

The BBQ Review (@BbqRate) is a Twitter account I just found out about

John Tanner’s BBQ Blog visits The Pit in Raleigh for a solid meal

John Tanner also recently shared his favorite barbecue sauces

Congrats to Warner Stamey, founder of Stameys Barbecue, on his Barbecue Hall of Fame induction!

Non-Native News

Desiree Robinson of Cozy Corner is also a BBQ Hall of Fame inductee

This UPROXX interview with Rodney Scott covers a lot of the basics you may already know

Horn Barbecue has finally opened in Oakland (finally!)

The Drinking Pig by Chef Raheem Sealey is a weekend pop-up in Northeast Miami Dade

Franklin Barbecue has started shipping briskets through Goldbelly

A second location of Pappy’s Smokehouse has opened in the St. Louis area

LeRoy & Lewis has a Patreon account for exclusive content

This week is Texas Monthly BBQ Week

Linkdown: 5/27/20

As NC moved to phase 2 of its restrictions last Friday at 5pm, BBQ King was among the barbecue restaurants that reopened with reduced capacity

J.C. Reid wonders if online orders are here to stay (in Texas)

Midwood Smokehouse pitmasters Matthew Berry and Michael Wagner list out where they dine out in Charlotte (presumably this was produced with Charlotte Agenda before the pandemic)

Robert Moss does some test kitchen-ing on no brine vs dry brine vs wet brine in the following thread and (spoiler alert) comes out on the side of dry brine

Reader’s Digest explores: barbecue or barbeque?

A great deal to be had at Stamey’s the rest of the month

The Texas Monthly BBQ Special Edition is on sale now

Getting the most out of your barbecue

The Tales from the Pits Podcast celebrates their third birthday; congrats to them!

Hoodoo Brown BBQ up in Connecticut recently celebrated their 5th anniversary by giving away free to health workers, the unemployed and anyone in need

We also celebrated a birthday/anniversary/blog-a-versary recently, our 8th. Thank you for your support and let us know if you have any suggestions for the site!

Linkdown: 3/4/20

In Vivian Howard’s upcoming PBS series “Somewhere South” she will be exploring the foods uniting cultures across the South; barbecue fans should be excited for the description of episode 6:

Episode 106: “How Do You ‘Cue?” (Friday, May 1, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET)

On a tour of eastern North Carolina barbecue joints, Vivian is reminded of traditions that define the area’s version of pork barbecue while being introduced to new techniques. Flipping what she already knows about ‘cue, Vivian sets out to uncover buried histories and learn about the unexpected ways different types of meat are smoked, pit-cooked, wood-fired and eaten. We learn that barbecue – both the food and the verb – cannot be pigeonholed into one definition. Starting from the whole-hog pits in her figurative backyard, Vivian explores the history of Black barbecue entrepreneurship, from the North Carolina families who started turkey barbecue to the women firing up pits in Brownsville and Memphis, Tennessee. Curious about other iterations, Vivian travels to the west coast of Florida, where a storied “Cracker” history at a smoked mullet festival drastically changes her perspective on Southern ‘cue. In Texas, robust barbecue techniques steeped in tradition are being morphed by longtime families doing what they know best. A pair of sisters in tiny San Diego, Texas add a Tejano touch to their barbecue joint menu, and two Japanese Texan brothers with a smokehouse pair brisket and bento boxes.

Dish was purchased by Sweet Lew’s BBQ owner Lewis Donald last fall and reopened this week with sandwiches on the menu that include turkey and pork belly smoked at Sweet Lew’s BBQ

Details on Hogs for the Cause, happening later this month in New Orleans

Prime Barbecue and Cut & Gather are included on Eater Carolinas’ 5 most anticipated restaurants list

Texas Monthly Barbecue Editor went on a mollejas hunt in South Texas

Happy belated Texas Independence Day!

Congrats to Barbecue!