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cbbc — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:46:12 CDT

Recipes

cbbc — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:43:06 CDT

Getting Started

Decide first of all if you are going to take a stab at classic BBQ or just want to get a meal together on the backyard grill.

If it’s real BBQ you’re after, decide on what meat you’re going to cook, rub it down well with a savory meat rub, build a fire, add something to produce plenty of smoke, and find some way to isolate the meat from the most intense heat of the fire. Plan on spending at least a couple hours smoking something small (a chicken, say, or some pork sausages) and a whole lot more time than that smoking a whole brisket, a pork shoulder or loin, a whole turkey, a batch of pork ribs, or a fresh (uncured) ham.

The biggest problems you’ll have making classic BBQ on your backyard grill is keeping enough fuel on the fire to keep the smoke coming, but without so much fire that the meat cooks too quickly. Overly high heat is Public Enemy #1 where classic BBQ is concerned. You’ll need to experiment with different techniques, cooking times, foodstuffs, etc. until you find a process that works well with your gear. While you are experimenting, take comfort in knowing that if the dish turns out to be ghastly, there’s always a rib joint open somewhere.

Here are some ideas and recipes you can play around with. (See also Perfect BBQ Chicken, The Perfect Steak, The Perfect Burger, Rubs, and Sauces.)

See also:

Charcoal or Gas?

wihcar — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:33:23 CDT

Many a fistfight has broken out over the relative merits of propane vs. charcoal as the cooking fuel of choice.

A gas grill with a propane tank gets high marks for convenience and heat control. When you get home after a long day, you might not want to wait 30 or 45 minutes for a charcoal fire to heat up. A gas grill is ready to go as soon as you fire it up. Unlike a charcoal fire, a gas fire is also simple to control. Need more heat? Turn up the dial! And lighting the fire is easy. So for the average outdoor grill cook, the nod goes to gas.

On the other hand, there are few things more frustrating than being ready to grill and discovering that the propane tank is empty or, worse, running out of gas halfway through the cooking process. You can pick up a spare bag of charcoal at any convenience store. Not so a fresh tank of propane.

Can't decide on briquettes versus slab charcoal, or want more info on wood chips? Look here.

What do you think is better: charcoal or gas? Share your opinion here.

Briquettes, Slab Charcoal, & Wood Chips

Barbecues

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BBQ Restaurants

Durocdog — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:43:18 CDT

aHas anyone been to a great barbecue restaurant lately? Add a review, a link, or the contact information here!

Mississippi:
Leatha's, outside Hattiesburg. Like going back in time. Ribs are worth traveling for.

Texas:
Austin has the best barbecue--and atmosphere!--at The Salt Lick. It's actually outside of Austin in Driftwood. There are five pits with bbq, picnic tables to seat 800, and pretty scenery in the Texas hill country. Pork ribs or brisket, you just can't go wrong!

Salt Lick BBQ 18300 FM Rd 1826
Driftwood,TX78619
(512) 858-4959

North Carolina:
If you're looking for bbq that has that true Eastern NC flavor, you can find it at Bubba's Barbecue. Aside from their acclaimed pork (it's pit-cooked whole-hog) and sauces, one of the real treats of eating at this restaurant is Bubba himself, who often talks among the patrons and keeps everyone laughing through their meal:
Bubba's Barbecue
4400 Sunset Road
Charlotte, NC 28216
(704) 393-2000

Memphis:
One of the most-recommended BBQ restaurants in TN is Corky's. If you get a chance to taste their authentic Memphis BBQ, go for the ribs--their specialty:
Corky's Ribs & BBQ
5259 Poplar Ave
Memphis, TN 38119
(901) 685-9744

The only thing like it in the world. The best DRY RIBS you'll ever taste, and an atmosphere that is completely unique. The Rendezvous is located in an alley in downtown Memphis across the street from the Peabody Hotel. If you're staying in downtown Memphis, you simply must visit the Rendezvous. If you're not into ribs, try the Yardbird (BBQ Chicken). It'll do - believe me. One word of warning, if some of your party doesn't really want barbecue ribs, chicken, or pork loin, then go somewhere else. The menu is very specialized and damn good. Watch out for speeding waiters. The ribs are available via FedEx worldwide.
Charles Vergo's Rendezvous

52 S. Second Street 523-2746
Memphis, TN 38103

Kansas City:
Everyone's heard of the namesake sauce from this Kansas City restaurant, but not everyone has tried the real thing. KC Masterpiece offers authentic Kansas City barbecue in beautiful Overland Park, KS. To better understand the KC Masterpiece name, you can read the history of the development of this world-known sauce on the walls while waiting for your food:
KC Masterpiece
10985 Metcalf Ave
Overland Park, 66210
(913) 345-1199

Bellevue, Washington:
Yea, it's weird, I know, but a Southern family transplanted to this Northwest town made one of the best (and only) bbq joints in the area, called Dixie's Barbecue. It's in an old auto-repair store, and at lunch time can have really long lines, but it's worth the wait. The owner often wanders around the place offering you a chance to "Meet the Man," which is code for really really really really hot barbecue sauce. Unless you can tolerate sky-high schofield units, stay away. (Those who survived proudly buy the "I met "the Man" bumperstickers.)

Kansas City, Mo
Gates is the best bbq resturaunt in the usa but don't take my word for it take John F. Kennedy's.

SF Bay Area, California Bonehead's Texas BBQ, LLC, is the brainchild of a Silicon Valley salesman who chose to do something he loved rather than continue to put up with the daily commute. As a hobby, Dave Roberson (aka Duroc) has been smoking for friends, family, churches, and large groups for 25 plus years. His first smoker was made from a 55-gallon drum, a stolen grocery cart, (he says someone else stole it, he just didn't know where to return it to—yeah, right, Dave) and a couple of lawn mower tires. Yep, he's a real bubba!

A Bona Fide Bonehead
After the downsizing of the electronics industry, he was disgusted with commuting 3 to 4 hours each day, not knowing from one day to the next if he would still have a job. Unable to find suitable employment—he was encouraged by his friends and family to open a BBQ restaurant or at least start catering. So, armed with a smoker, a fine sense of humor, and a pot full of recipes developed from his Texas roots, he sat out to conquer the world one rib at a time. Get to know Dave, his family, and employees—you're gonna like these folks. They're friendly, courteous, generous, and good lookin'! You'll know Dave 'cause when he wears shorts he looks like he's ridin' a chicken! Gitcha sum!

Learn more about Bonehead's Texas BBQ at www.boneheadsbbq.com or email at info@boneheadsbbq.com, (866)722-1828

Hibachis

wetpaint — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:28:35 CDT

If you live in an apartment with practically no yard and no place for a real BBQ rig, you might consider the small Asian style charcoal grills called Hibachi pots. These little items are strictly for grilling (not classic barbecuing), and grilling for only one or two people at that.

The advantage is that they’re real cheap (prices vary upwards from about $20 depending on size, brand, and quality), highly portable, and damned convenient when all you want to do is cook a steak for you and your girlfriend or maybe sear off some veggies. Interested? Then check out shops like the The Grill Store and more that advertises hibachi pots ranging in price from $19.99 to $118.

See also:

History of BBQ

wetpaint — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:15:42 CDT

Barbecue Throughout History

Cooking meat over an open fire is something we’ve been doing since the Stone Age, so it is a little hard to say for certain when and where modern classic BBQ originated. Most sources allege that something resembling “classic” barbecue originated in North Carolina near the end of the seventeenth century.

Surely, the history of pigs and the history of BBQ are closely intertwined, and pigs (far more than cattle or poultry) were a staple food throughout the South well before the Civil War. Often, hog-slaughtering time was a joyous community-wide occasion, and it was inevitable that, sooner or later, a whole animal would be roasted and shared to celebrate the occasion. BBQ historians are generally of the opinion that the traditional Southern barbecue grew out of these gatherings.

The history of BBQ sauce is less murky. Prior to the invention of effective refrigeration, a common problem was how to preserve meat for long periods. In North Carolina, a common method was to “cure” meat, particularly pork, in a mixture of vinegar, water, salt, and peppers (still the definitive North Carolina-style BBQ sauce). Vinegar was employed as the preservative, as a cheap and plentiful bactericide.

The original idea of adding mustard and mustard-based sauces still predominates in South Carolina (and in some parts of eastern North Carolina) to this day. (Adding tomato ketchup to produce something resembling modern-day BBQ sauce apparently arose in Virginia and Georgia.)

In the half century preceding the Civil War, large outdoor BBQ parties had become entrenched in Southern culture, most often featuring a whole roasted pig. Plantation owners hosted large, festive BBQs to entertain neighbors and friends, or to feed their slaves. By the nineteenth century, barbecue had evolved into a standard feature of church picnics and political rallies: Barbecue, lemonade, and corn whiskey became a common and inexpensive way to buy political (or, presumably, religious) allegiance.

Church and political BBQs remain important traditions in many parts of the South even today. Plantation owners, slaves, and everyone in between proved equally eager to consume barbecued pork with all the fixins, so it is probably no exaggeration to say that the basic Southern barbecue was the first Southern institution that was not strictly segregated along racial lines. Or such, in any case, is the common opinion of BBQ historians.

Read here about the origin of the word "barbecue."

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Accessories

wetpaint — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:11:45 CDT

Basic Gear

Every BBQ chef has his (or her) own ideas about what equipment’s essential and what you can do without. With one exception, regular kitchen gear is more useful than boxed sets of BBQ tools that someone is always giving for Christmas. The exception: The tongs with extra long handles that come in these sets, very useful for moving hot coals around the bottom of your grilling rig before the cooking begins. Otherwise, get your turners, knives, forks, and other grilling utensils out of the kitchen drawer.

Two must-have items for classic BBQ or any outdoor grilling operation are a handy meat thermometer and a pair of oven mitts or gloves so you can move things around without pain. There is no better protection against over- or under-cooked meat than an instant-read meat thermometer, under $10 in any kitchenware outlet. These come in a little plastic sleeve with a clip so you can carry them in your shirt pocket (don’t know why you’d want to, but the fact is, you can!) and when stuck into a piece of meat produce a near-instantaneous reading of the internal temperature--the easiest way to tell for sure when the meat is done.

What’s your favorite gear? Add it here.

See also:

barbecue gas grill from Cadero

wetpaint — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:10:11 CDT

If you're a retailer looking to source barbecue products in China, then you've come to the right place. At Zhongshan Cadero MFG. Co Ltd, we have been designing and manufacturing a wide range of barbecue grills and barbecue accessories. We have a team of more than five R&D specialists available for your ODM and OEM needs.
Welcome to communicate with me by email :emily@cadero-china.com Barbecue gas grill from Cadero

Fish & Seafood

Anonymous — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:35:59 CDT

Grilling fish

With a few exceptions (salmon, tuna, swordfish, whole lobster tails, etc.), seafood is too delicate to cook directly on your grill top. Often the fish filets just fall apart when you try to turn them. Tea-and-sugar smoking, covered earlier, is one solution. A grill basket is another.

This is a wire-mesh device that opens to accept your fish filets, shrimp, scallops, etc., then closes tightly to keep the contents all in one piece. Cook fish on one side for 3 to 4 minutes, then turn the basket and cook the other side for an equal amount of time. A lemon and olive oil basting liquid will help keep the flesh moist.

Well - not completely...

cut a piece of wood about 16x8 inches, 3/8 " thick

alder wood, oak , cedar or fruitwood..

let the wood soak in water for a while and toast it on the BBQ on both sides for the first time before using.

now soak it in water again - every time before using it.

Place a piece of salmon filet or a split trout, skin down, on the middle of the plank and rub some spices in it.

than the plank on the hot BBQ cover closed for 15-20 minutes until light smoke appears.

now turn the BBQ to low and let sit for another 5-10 minutes.

That gives a slight smokey taste to the fish - pretty good !

you can do this with fresh Mackerel also if you catch some....

Serve that fish right there on the plank with some garnishing on the side on the table.

(place plank on Alum baking sheet.. sometimes the wood smoulders a bit.... don't want to start a fire now do we ?)

You can use that plank 4-5 times at least...

Got a great seafood recipe? Share it here.

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Bratwurst

Anonymous — Mon, 07 May 2007 17:23:15 CDT

Bratwurst to Die For

Assume two brats per person. Put your bratwurst in a pot, cover with dark beer (Newcastle Brown Ale gives excellent results), onions sliced and simmer on the stove or on a side burner until the brats are cooked through,about 20 minutes. Remove the brats, set them aside, and continuing boiling the beer until it “reduces” to the approximate viscosity of pancake syrup.

Slice a bunch of green peppers and onions and sauté in olive oil or butter in a skillet until tender and slightly caramelized, 10 to 15 minutes. Put the cooked brats on the grill and cook until they are nicely browned all over, being sure to turn them frequently with a pair of tongs so as to leave the outer skin intact. (If you puncture the outside of the bratwurst, all the tasty juices will squirt out.) Once brown, serve on hearty buns, topped with the sautéed onions and green peppers, and drizzled with the reduced beer sauce. On second thought, make that three brats per person! Grown men break into tears when they sink their teeth into one of these babies.

Got a great brat recipe? Share it here!

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Sauce Recipes

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2007 16:52:47 CDT

Dr. BBQ’s Thick and Sticky Barbecue Sauce

Makes about 3 ½ cups

This is a Kansas City-style sauce that comes straight from the master. Remember: this is strictly for dabbing on once your ribs or chicken are done cooking, not for slathering over the meat while it cooks.

You'll need:

2 cups ketchup
1 cup dark molasses
½ cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground mace
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon liquid smoke

Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan over low heat. As soon as the molasses dissolves, you’re done. Store in a covered glass jar or plastic container in the refrigerator for up to a month.

To finish off his barbecued meats, Dr. BBQ takes a couple cups of Thick and Sticky BBQ Sauce, adds about a half-cup of honey and a big jolt of hot sauce, and lets the mix simmer in a saucepan for about 10 or 15 minutes. As the meat comes off the grill, use a pair of tongs to dip it in this very sweet, very sticky, very tasty concoction. If you like sweet with your meat, you’ll fall in love with this.

There are, of course, as many recipes for BBQ sauce as there are BBQ cooks.

Here’s a couple more stolen from BBQ Grilling Basics:

Basic BBQ Sauce

1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon mustard
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon black pepper

Mix all the above in a bowl and that’s it. If possible, let the sauce age overnight in the fridge. If you don’t like sweet sauces on your meat, omit the brown sugar.

Smoky BBQ Sauce

1 bottle chili sauce (12 ounces)
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon mustard
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons vinegar
2 teaspoon liquid smoke

Again, mix it all up in a bowl and let stand in the fridge overnight. Omit the sugar if you want. Using either of the above as a base, experiment as you wish with other ingredients. How about a little onion and garlic powder? Sure! Maybe some minced ginger or garlic? Why not! How about a big dollop of grainy mustard or a shot of hot sauce?

Hey, Jack, it’s your BBQ sauce and you can have your way with her! Just remember to keep the sauce away from the meat until just before serving and your guests will think you’ve turned into a BBQ gourmet.

Got a better recipe? Post it here!

See also:

What Is BBQ?

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:49:02 CDT

To purists such as Ray Lampe (aka Dr. BBQ, a frequent champion on the barbecue-competition circuit and author of Dr. BBQ’s Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook), barbecue is “a method of cooking tougher cuts of meat very, very slowly at low temperatures (215ºF to 250ºF), with the heat source far away from the food,” or in other words, meat slow-cooked at very low temperatures in the dry indirect heat of wood coals.

To half the guys in America, on the other hand, “barbecue” is anything cooked outdoors, by whatever method, and certainly includes anything you cook on your outdoor grill.

Classic BBQ

In the most traditional sense, barbecue is the process of cooking meat in indirect heat at very low temperatures. This so-called "classic BBQ" accomplishes three important things:

The long exposure to low heat renders most of the fat out of the meat.

That same long exposure dissolves the collagens and connective tissues that make meat tough, so classic BBQ is fall-off-the-bone tender.

The exterior of the meat caramelizes, which produces an intensely flavorful crust or, as we like to say in BBQ circles, “bark.” (If “caramel” implies sugar to you, you’re exactly right. All meats contain natural sugars that darken, or “caramelize,” when heated, and that’s what makes up your BBQ’s bark.)

Since the meat cooks in low indirect heat, very little of the natural juices in the meat boil off. Classic BBQ is therefore tender and juicy, pink in color, and smoky in flavor, the precise flavor depending on what wood is used for the indirect heat that produces your smoke.

An important point to establish early in our discussion is that your average backyard BBQ grill is not particularly well-suited for classic BBQ. Unless you have a very large grill where you can isolate your heat at one end and let the meat roast in the comparatively cool temperatures at the other, what you’re doing on your backyard BBQ grill is not classic BBQ. (See What BBQ Is Not)

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Styles of BBQ

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:46:30 CDT

Four Regions, Four Styles

Dotty Griffith, author of Celebrating Barbecue : The Ultimate Guide to America’s Four Regional Styles of ’Cue (Simon and Schuster, 2002), identifies the principal American BBQ traditions as:

See also:

Buying A Grill
Charcoal or Gas?
History of BBQ
Recipes
Rubs
Sauces
Smokin'
What is BBQ?

Smokin'

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:45:47 CDT

If what you want is classic BBQ, then you need plenty of smoke, and the best way to get it is to burn wood chips over a charcoal fire. You also need a way to keep the heat of the fire that’s creating all your smoke from cooking your meat too quickly.

The best gear for classic BBQ is a smoker designed specifically for the purpose. Lane Wright, a serious Texas-style BBQ chef whose smoked brisket will be found at BBQ competitions all over the state, built his own rig on a trailer frame that he tows from event to event.

Lane's features a large firebox on one end where he burns cured hardwood, a rack underneath the rig where he stores his wood (a little hickory, a little mesquite, some apple wood if he can find it), and a large covered smoking area where the actual cooking gets done. He just burns chunks of wood and doesn’t bother with charcoal at all.

The smoke from Lane’s firebox is directed through a flue into an immense covered cooking area. (It would be a simple matter to smoke twenty turkeys at once or two whole hogs on this monster.) Inside the smoking area proper, the temperature never rises much above 230 or maybe 250 degrees.

He’ll smoke anything in that rig when he’s towed it up to our family reunions in Indiana, but when he’s moseying around Texas looking for a BBQ contest, it’s brisket he’s looking to cook.

Give Charcoal or Gas a Try
Of course, you don’t need a Texas-sized smoker rig to produce something respectably close to classic BBQ. You can achieve much the same effect with either a charcoal or gas grill.

Many high-end propane grills today have a little smoker box built right in. This is a metal box off to the side of the main cooking area but connected via ductwork so that smoke created inside the box can drift through the cooking area and smoke the contents.

All you do is soak a batch of wood chips in water, then toss ’em in the box, fire up the burner beneath the box -- but none of the other burners -- put your food down at the other end of the grill, then pop open a beer, sit back, and let the smoke do its work.

How do these smokers compare to standalone smokers? If anyone knows please post it here.

You can create pretty much the same effect on your charcoal-fired Weber. Build a charcoal fire on one side of the grill. Make a little container out of double-thick aluminum foil, fill it with pre-soaked wood chips, and put it right on top of your charcoal fire. Then plop on the cooking grate and place the food you are trying to smoke as far from the fire’s heat as you can.

Put on the grill lid, positioning the vent at the top directly over the food (or as close to the food as you can) so the vent draws smoke from the fire towards the food. As above, indulge in a cold one (or a cold several) while the smoke and heat work their wonders. Voila, classic BBQ in a matter of hours.

The key to true BBQ using any sort of backyard grill is to create plenty of smoke but keep the food you’re barbecuing as far from the heat of the fire as possible. The propane rigs have the advantage that you rarely run out of fuel -- all you need to do is replenish the smoke box with some more wood chips from time to time.

Classic BBQ on a charcoal pot will often require that you add some more charcoal (and wood) to the fire, and this works best if your cooking grate has little fold-up flaps that you can open to add fuel easily. Otherwise, you have to remove the food, remove the cooking grate, pour in some more charcoal, replenish the smoke source, put the grate back on, put the food back on…then wait for an hour or two for the fuel to burn out, at which point you can go through the whole process again.

See also:

Sauce-of-the-Month Club

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:44:05 CDT

The BBQ Sauce of the Month Club will send you two bottles of high-end small-batch ’cue sauce each month. The price: $13/month, available in three, six, and twelve-month memberships. Some recently featured sauces include Maguire’s Irish, Quaker Steak Buckeye, SmackYoMama Bad to the Bone, and Sticky Fingers Carolina Classic.

Send orders to:

BBQ Sauce of the Month
ATTN: Orders Dept.
PO Box 243
Tarrytown NY 10591
845-536-7492
BBQ Sauce-of-the-month.com

See also:

Rating Sauces

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:41:45 CDT

Off-The-Shelf BBQ Sauces

Here are the results of a 40-person blind taste-test of ten off-the-shelf barbecue sauces, most of them available in any supermarket. The sauces were set out in numbered bowls.

Each guest tried each sauce with his or her meat of choice (options were grilled sirloin steak, smoked turkey and chicken thighs, pork ribs, or any of a variety of sausages) and rated the sauces on a one-to-ten scale (yucky to yummy).

All but three sauces received one or more top ratings and all but two were yucky to at least one reviewer. That said, here were the overall results (average scores in parentheses. Higher numbers = yummier ratings).

Best in Show
Texas Best Barbecue Sauce (6.76). Excellent rich color, nice consistency, a perfect hint of sweetness, and a pleasantly spicy after-taste. The clear winner. Don’t mess with Texas!

Also Recommended
Lip Lickin’ BBQ Sauce (5.89). Very sweet, reminiscent of the Chinese hoisin sauce. One drawback: This is a comparatively thin sauce with an annoying tendency to drip off the meat and run down your arm.

Sticky Fingers Carolina Classic Barbecue Sauce (5.51). The only South Carolina-style (mustard-based) sauce in the contest. Some guests were put off by the unexpected mustard flavor but most found it a refreshing change of pace, tart and spicy, not the least bit sweet. Better on sausage and steak than on poultry or ribs.

KC Masterpiece Premium Original Barbecue Sauce (5.41). Generic American BBQ sauce, available everywhere. Guests gave it high marks for the “nice sweet flavor” and “smoky pleasant spiciness.” Said one, “traditional but satisfying.” Hardly a masterpiece but not bad.

Liked by Some
Stubb’s Original BBQ Sauce (5.35). Some found this “tangy and flavorful,” others thought it was “too vinegary,” most judged it “ordinary.” This sauce is not at all sweet, an asset to some reviewers and a debit to others. It contains very little sugar.

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Hickory Grilling Sauce (5.16). A few rated this one “smoky-sweet” with a “hot that comes later,” but several said it “lacks flavor” or was “just OK.” You’d expect more from the makers of America’s best Tennessee sour mash sippin’ whiskey.

Kraft Original Slow-Simmered BBQ Sauce (5.05). Another American generic, the Kraft entry lost points for “weak flavor” and “odd after-taste.” Stick with KC Masterpiece instead.

Don’t Bother
San Francisco Original Firehouse 3-Alarm Bar-B-Cue Sauce (4.70). A few guests appreciated the hot, fiery palate jolt but most complained of a lack of flavor behind the heat. It resembled canned tomato sauce laced with copious amounts of Tabasco.

Emeril’s Sweet Original Bam!-B-Q Barbecue Sauce (4.46). Opinion was sharply divided on the Emeril entry. Some like the sweetness and one lauded the “nice after-taste” but several said it was overly tart and one said, “This tastes dirty.” Like many other celebrity-chef products, this one is also grossly overpriced.

Southern Comfort Classic Barbecue Sauce (4.31). “Weird flavor,” “tastes like ketchup,” “sour after-taste.” No one had a good word for this one.

Got a favorite sauce not on this list? Add it here!

Tasting Tips

A trip down the sauce aisle will reveal that there are literally hundreds of BBQ sauces (and related products such as marinades, hot sauces, meat rubs, dipping sauces, etc.) on the market. Taste-tasting the whole batch of them and compiling and reporting the results would be a life’s work. Two helpful generalizations surfaced in our blind taste-testing experiment:

Designer brands did not routinely out-perform the more generic sauces. And likewise, the pricier brands were not generally preferred over the bargain brands. So don’t reach automatically for the high-priced name-chef bottle when you might find you’d prefer the KC Masterpiece option--at half the price.

Read the Label
If you don’t like sweet sauces, don’t buy one that has sugar or fructose or corn syrup listed as a first or second ingredient. If you don’t want a mustardy taste, avoid any sauce with mustard on the label. Seems obvious, but it’s surprising how many people don’t check.

When all else fails, you can always make your own sauce .

See also:

Marinades

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:39:30 CDT

Marinades are flavored liquids in which meats and veggies are soaked before cooking, the purpose being to add flavor and soften tough meat fibers. Experts are divided on whether they play an important role in outdoor cookery or not.

Dr. BBQ epitomizes the anti-marinade camp. “Marinade? No,” says the good doctor. “Marinades neither increase meat’s tenderness nor improve its flavor. Cooking will do the tenderizing if you learn how to keep the temperature down so the meat doesn’t dry out.”

Give It Some Flava
The flavor in a classic BBQ comes mainly from the smoke. But many’s the marinade that has added interesting flavors to meat directly grilled over a hot charcoal fire.

You’ll find dozens of prefab marinade concoctions in the BBQ sauce aisle at the supermarket. In most cases, you soak pork or chicken in these marinades between 1 and 24 hours, then cook as you otherwise would.

Or, of course, you can make your own. Any basic vinaigrette will work as a marinade for poultry. One favorite: the Good Seasonings salad dressing that you make from a flavor packet, some oil, some water, and some vinegar. A bottle of commercially prepared Italian salad dressing works just as well.

Soy-based marinades can also be excellent. Here’s one:

Marinated Grilled Pork Loin:
Try this tasty marinade. Stary by mixing together:

Soy sauce
Olive oil
Crushed garlic
Pepper
Chopped fresh ginger

Add a healthy jolt of hot sauce too, if you wish. Altogether, you’ll need about a cup or cup and a half. Or use a commercially prepared teriyaki marinade instead.

Take the middle 12” to 20” from a whole boneless pork loin. Trim off the exterior fat and any loose bits of meat. With a sharp knife, slice into the loin along the side until you can open the loin up; the two halves should remain joined. (This is called butterflying the loin.)

Beat on the opened loin with the back edge of a meat cleaver until the meat is equally thick throughout. Marinate the butterflied loin for anywhere from an hour to overnight. Cook until done on a hot charcoal grill, basting regularly with the marinade juices. Slice and serve hot off the grill. (This can also be cooked in the oven, of course, and the marinade also works with poultry or even veggies.)

Got a great marinade recipe? Add it here.

See also:

Sauces

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 08:33:43 CDT

The most important rule about BBQ sauce is, Never add your sauce until the meat is fully cooked and ready to serve. If you mop on sauce while the meat is grilling, you run the risk of burnt exteriors because of the high sugar content in most sauces.

There are, in general, three main styles of sauce:

Tomato- (or ketchup-) based sauces
Mustard-based sauces, and
Vinegar-based sauces.

If you look closely at the ingredients of your favorite off-the-shelf sauce, you’ll probably find it contains all three of these ingredients in some proportion.

Two more things you need to know about BBQ sauce right off:

Everybody’s favorite sauce recipe, even the commercial stuff, is a “closely guarded family secret.”
Every sauce recipe known to humankind is some combination:

Tomato products (paste, sauce, ketchup)

Aromatic veggies (garlic, onions, leeks, shallots)

Something sweet (molasses, sugar, maple syrup, fruit glazes)

Something sour (vinegar, lemon or lime juice, wine, Worcestershire sauce)

And various seasonings added to taste (salt, pepper, hot sauce, mustard, herbs, and spices) -- in short, not much of a damned secret after all!

You want to make your own sauce? Mix and match from the above categories in any reasonable quantities and season to taste. Or, if you need a good recipe, look here.

Different regions of the country have different sauce preferences. Southern folk seem to prefer thinner sauces. The farther north you go, the stronger the preference for thick, sweet, tomato-based sauces. In some parts of the Carolinas, a sauce is not considered real BBQ sauce unless it contains mustard. In other parts, the sauce is little more than vinegar and peppers. Texans often forget the sauce altogether and go for a spicy meat rub.

And don’t overlook the fabulous Chinese Barbacue sauce, hoisin, which is made from sweet plums and very savory, and is always served with moo-shoo dishes. Or try the Japanese teriyaki sauce--soy-based and very salty.

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Origin of the Word

emodHst — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:07:51 CDT

Folk etymology has produced all sorts of fanciful hypotheses about the “true” origin of the term barbecue.

Bon Appetit once opined that the term derives from a phrase in the language of an extinct tribe in Guyana that translates roughly as “cheerfully spit-roasting captured enemies.” Anybody want to believe that?

Another wild suggestion, evidently common in North Carolina, is that the word comes from a “nineteenth century advertisement for a combination whiskey bar, beer hall, pool establishment (with plenty of pool cues) and purveyor of roasted pig, known as the BAR-BEER-CUE-PIG.” Students of folk etymology will recognize at once that this is far too cute to be the true origin of the term.

Still another common idea is that the word “barbecue” derives from the French phrase "de barbe au queue," loosely translated as “from beard to tail” (i.e., a whole roasted animal.) According to BBQ expert Smoky Hale, this is "flagrantly fatuous Franco-poop."

The most compelling account is that the word comes into English via the Spanish “barbacoa,” which in turn derives from a Tainu (West Indian) phrase meaning “sacred fire pit.” Soon enough, “barbacoa” in Spanish and the English “barbecue” came to denote a method of slow-cooking meat over the ashy-grey coals of a wood fire.

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What is BBQ?

Styles of BBQ

Briquettes, Slab Charcoal, & Wood Chips

emodHst — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 07:04:10 CDT

To most people, “charcoal” implies pressed charcoal briquettes, of which Kingsford is the best-known brand. These briquettes, while cheap, convenient, and widely available, are often manufactured from saw dust, glue, and various igniters.

If you are going to use briquettes, you might want to avoid the self-starting brands. In fact, purists will tell you to avoid charcoal lighter altogether (they say it imparts a chemical flavor to the smoke, thence to your food). These folks want you to build a little wood fire underneath the pile of charcoal or use some other more “natural” starter device (paraffin starter blocks, electric starters, propane starters, gas torches, or chimney starters that use newspaper--pretty much anything that lights the charcoal without the use of lighter fluid).

If you let them, these same people will also try to talk you out of briquettes altogether in favor of “real” slab charcoal, or what is also called “natural lump charcoal.” This product is made by heating wood in the absence of oxygen. The wood only chars, rather than burns, and while heating, various volatiles present in the wood (water, tars, methane, hydrogen, etc.) boil off or vaporize, leaving behind pure carbon charcoal with hardly any chemical impurities or contaminants.

Natural lump charcoal is said to be more efficient, healthier and easier to control than briquettes. And unlike briquettes, you will usually know what kind of wood your natural lump charcoal started out as, which is said to make a difference.

Once you’re down to arguing over the merits of briquettes vs. natural lump charcoal as fuel to cook your pork chops, you’ve run out of important things to worry about. Yeah, sure, natural lump charcoal is great but the price will take your breath away and, frankly, in average day-to-day grill work, you can’t tell the difference in the final product. Let the fire burn down for about 20 to 30 minutes before you start cooking anything, by which time all trace of the lighter fluid will burn away.

(If you want to get into natural lump charcoal and are wondering what brand or brands to look for, go to the NakedWhiz website, where literally dozens of brands are reviewed and rated.)

Picking the Wood

The wood chips you can add to your fire to create your BBQ smoke are likewise varied and sundry. Those smoldering bits of wood are what give classic barbecue its flavor and color. Strive for something subtle, not overpowering. You want a nice smoky flavor in the background of the meat, not something that tastes like you’re chewing on a log.

Virtually any hardwood can be used. The most common are hickory, oak, cherry, apple, pecan and mesquite, all used by themselves or in combination. The wood from any fruit or nut tree would work too. If you have any direct experience with the wood from orange, lemon, or walnut trees, pass it on.

Whatever wood you use, remember that you want the wood to smolder (and create smoke), not burn (which creates ashes), and you accomplish this by thoroughly soaking the wood chips in water before you put them on the fire.

Beyond Wood

And just to round off this discussion, you can create smoke with substances other than wood and get excellent results. For delicate meats such as salmon, turkey tenders, duck, or even boneless chicken parts, you can use a combination of kosher salt, sugar, and loose black tea for your smoke source.

Make that little aluminum foil container as described earlier, but rather than fill it with wet wood chips, fill it with a mixture of salt, sugar, and tea in roughly equal parts, plop it on the charcoal fire, and put on the cooking grate.

Season your meat to taste (a little salt and pepper, maybe a spritz of fresh lemon on fish), lay the meat out on some aluminum foil and place it over on the far side of the grill, as far from the charcoal fire as you can. Put on the lid and let the meat smoke until it’s cooked through. The sugar-salt-and-tea combo makes smoked salmon and poultry dishes that are out of this world.

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