If you're like me...which is to say an overweight person who frequently eats pig meat, you may have noticed a trend in our state. Slowly, the unwelcome specters of technology, convenience and change have started creeping into the most time-honored form of cooking.
I love barbecue (which should be readily apparent since I write a blog largely centered on barbecue and football...this blog isn't called "cycling and quinoa"). Barbecue isn't just rubbed, smoked and sauced pig meat, though, it's a lifestyle and the tastiest thread in the fabric that is South Carolina history. Did you have to take a South Carolina history class? Do you remember seeing those drawings that show some Cherokees or Catawbas smoking some animals (including a reptile of some kind) over a fire? It's supposed to depict what the earliest European settlers to the area saw when they hopped off the boat. I've never roasted a salamander on a spit before, but when I put ribs or pork butts or whatever in my smoker, I feel like I'm not only carrying on a proud family tradition, I'm upholding a centuries-old Palmetto State tradition...so bite me Tarleton! Sorry, my state pride got the better of me for a second there. Anyway, there is a disturbing trend where restaurant barbecue is concerned. It's getting a little more difficult to find authentic barbecue smoked over actual, real wood in actual real pits or smokers. A lot of joints have gone towards gas smokers. Now, the food that comes out of those newfangled contraptions is not necessarily bad. In fact, some of it is quite good...as roast pork goes. Which is the proper way to define the food those things produce. What I've often heard is that DHEC or some meddling, infernal branch of the government is tightening regulations and making it nearly impossible to cook over burning wood in big ass pits. It seems both counter-productive and hypocritical for our state to, on one hand promote the BBQ Trail for the purposes of attracting tourist dollars and on the other to hang onerous regulations on the people trying to make that barbecue. The government is attacking authenticity and enabling mediocrity. It is assaulting our heritage and the true craftsmanship that goes into making true barbecue. Umm, actually it isn't. Blame them for other societal ills if you like, but you can't hang the gas-fueled barbecue cooking trend on the government, according to a story I read by Robert Moss in The Free Times. There could be a number of different reasons restaurants have moved away from real wood fired pits to easily controlled gas-powered thingies (a technical cooking term). Maybe some of the proprietors of those restaurants just aren't skilled enough to cook over an actual fire, but can set a temp on a thermostat. It could be more cost-effective or it could just be easier. Trust me, doing it the old-fashioned way IS NOT easy. I had the pleasure of sitting and watching Rodney Scott in action two summers ago. He's the pitmaster of one of the most renowned and beloved barbecue restaurants in the Southeast...so the world as far as I'm concerned, Scott's Barbecue in Hemingway. He had these gigantic barrels out back of his place with large holes drilled in them. Through those holes were shoved, I think, car axles. He feeds wood into the top, sets it on fire, then scoops up the coals the rain down through the axles to the bottom of the barrel. Then he carries them inside a shovel-load at a time and tosses them under the whole hogs he's cooking. Fellow blawger Jed Blackwell and I watched David Hite do the same thing (minus the wacky car axles). That's hot, hard manual labor, but man, it's worth it. It's not a coincidence that two of the finest barbecue meals I've ever eaten were cooked by those two gentlemen. You can taste the work that goes into making barbecue right and no amount of modern convenience can replicate that, in my opinion. Moss's story dispels a lot of myths and reveals that you've been hoodwinked, bamboozled and generally been fibbed to by dookie clod heathens. You can read it here...
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November 2021
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