Then there’s Texas barbecue, which will almost always feature smoked brisket, the tough-as-nails muscle that wraps around a cow’s chest. Barbecuing brisket Texas-style involves just the right rub (a mixture of sugar, salt, and spices that is rubbed into the meat before smoking), a good smoker, and a very long (usually overnight) cooking time.

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A smoker is distinguished from a BBQ grill by the fact that the smoky fire source is isolated in the smoker’s firebox and the warm smoke is directed along a flue into the grill area itself.

The meat cooks in the cool smoke for as long as twenty hours, until the meat cooks through and a classic brisket “bark” forms. A good Texas brisket cook will stay up all night tending the fire and drinking beer to make sure the brisket is “just right.” As Dr. BBQ says, cooking brisket right takes commitment.

True Texas pit-barbecued beef brisket is never sauced during the smoking/cooking process. At best, the sliced brisket will be served with sauce on the side, to be applied in whatever manner and quantity the diner desires. In the Texas hill country around Austin, you’ll find lots of BBQ joints that don’t serve sauce at all.

President Lyndon Johnson was fond of throwing big Texas-style BBQ parties on his Johnson City ranch, where whole beef cattle would be spit-roasted over smoky wood fires.

Now, a whole pig, once slaughtered and dressed, will run somewhere around a hundred pounds and will easily feed a couple hundred people, but a whole dressed beef might weigh as much as 600 or even 1,000 pounds, depending on breed--not the sort of thing to take on unless you intend to feed a small army (and have a very large fire pit!)