A friend of mine once said bad barbecue beat a good salad any day of the week. I have basically subscribed to that theory my whole life. I never believed I'd see the day that a bowl of dirty green junk topped smoked, sauced pig meat, but it finally happened.
First of all, we have to draw a contrast between good and bad barbecue. I truly believe that good barbecue is the finest food available to mortal man. The people who make it the right way are true artisans, spending hours and hours trimming, injecting and rubbing the meat, then dutifully tending the fire and smoke that will embue it with a million wonderfully subtle flavors. When you take a bite of good barbecue, you should taste meat, smoke, rub and some sauce (if you are using any). That's it. It's simplicity that takes a full day of hard work to prepare. Bad barbecue, simply stated, is barbecue that doesn't taste good. Luckily, there are some ways to spot it before you soil your palate with its acrid badness. Barbecue can be sliced, chopped or pulled (I like mine pulled). If you are handed a plate of barbecue that has been obliterated into tiny little bits, the server is probably trying to mask the fact that their Q came out dry or tough. I call this stuff "pork confetti." It may have a place in some bizarre meat parade, but not on my plate. If barbecue is served to you drowned in sauce, that's another indicator. I believe it was Barney Fife that said "I don't like my main dish concealed in a heavy sauce." Barney was right, man. Barney was right. Oversaucing probably means the meat was burned, or smoked too long and got bitter or tastes poopish. I love barbecue sauce, I have more variaties than I can count and make my own, but it should compliment the meat, not hide it. I may not be 100 percent on-point with this, but I would generally say if you buy it from the refridgerated section of the grocery store or from a fast food restaurant, it's probably bad. There may be exceptions (please let me know if they are) but getting barbecue from those two sources means getting a mass produced product. Cooking barbecue requires individual attention, care and authenticity that you can't replicate in a food factory. All this is important because no one's first barbecue experience should be bad. As fellow blawger Jed Blackwell and I have discussed before, I don't want any person to be offered good barbecue...juicy, immaculately pulled meat with tiny bits of delicious bark, a perfect smoke scent and a splash of homemade sauce and think back to the first time they ate barbecue. It was from McWendy King's in the Box...it was semi-gelatinous red goop between two pieces of bread. To them, that is what barbecue is. "No thank you," they say to the person offering them the good stuff. "I don't care for barbecue." I want people to enjoy their lives...you can't know true happiness without knowing good barbecue. Now, everything I've just said should not be taken to mean that any restaurant that bills itself as a barbecue joint is good. Some of them suck too. The South Carolina Barbecue Association has lists on its website of "100 mile Q" and "worth the drive Q." Generally, the places on those lists are good, so it's normally safe to assume you'll get quality food at those places. Sometimes you aren't near one, though, and have to roll the dice. That happened to me during the baseball playoffs...
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TravisI am Travis, the king 0f SC 1A Football Archives
November 2021
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