Holy Smoke: the Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue Lore

____________the lore Copyright © 2008. The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of North Carolina © 2008. The University Copyright Reed, Dale Volberg. Holy Smoke : The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=515673. Created from duke on 2019-11-19 15:34:15. (overleaf ) “Catching curb” at Copyright © 2008. The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of North Carolina © 2008. The University Copyright the Silver Moon Barbecue Reed, Dale Volberg. Holy Smoke : The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=515673. Created from duke on 2019-11-19 15:34:15. WhaT is norTh CarolINa BarBeCue? _____________________ hen we told people we were writing this book, they immediately started asking questions. Had we heard that ——’s was closing after fifty years? Had we figured out the secret ingredient in ——’s sauce? Did we have a good Brunswick stew recipe? Where did we stand on the tomato question? And, w always, did we know the best barbecue place in the state (which just happened to be in their hometown)? Californian Miles Efron has observed that “when North Carolinians discuss barbecue, they are prone to swoon. Even the most urbane among them wax[es] ecstatic when given a forum for extolling smoked meat. People who have lived in New York [drawl] like Daughters of the Confed- eracy about sweet tea ’n slaw.” When the food writer for the Mil- waukee Journal Sentinel attended a conference in Charlotte, she told her readers, “People here are passionate about their barbecue, not unlike Wisconsinites debating the best way to cook a brat.” We wouldn’t put it quite that way, but the point is that Tar Heels care about ’cue. One friend from down east has gone so far as to claim that “barbecue is the great sacrament of our people. No transubstantiation NASCAR driver David Pearson required. It are what it are.” His religious language is apt, and not used to stop by for a plate at Alston unusual. In this matter the Tar Heel State just offers a double- Bridges Barbecue in Shelby. He distilled version of a more general Southern trait. As William parked his helicopter in a lot nearby. Schmidt explained it for readers of the New York Times, in the South barbecue is not just a food, “it is a cultural ritual, practiced with a kind of religious fervor among various barbecue sects, each of “Barbecue is a taste of the South. It’s whom believes their particular concoction of smoke and sauce and a noun, a verb, and an entire religion served on a bun. Roll up your spices is the only true way to culinary salvation.” Food writer John sleeves, grab a pile of paper napkins, Egerton reached for the same analogy: “There are more barbecue and wait for manna from Heaven.” factions and smoked-meat sects around here, each with its own (Michael Lee West) hair-splitting distinctions, than there are denominations in the far- flung Judeo-Christian establishment.” Perhaps especially in North Carolina, barbecue is not a subject Copyright © 2008. The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of North Carolina © 2008. The University Copyright for the conflict-averse.Raleigh News and Observer sage Dennis Rogers Reed, Dale Volberg. Holy Smoke : The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=515673. Created from duke on 2019-11-19 15:34:15. observes that “barbecue is a subject of intense interest and loyalties Barbecue Matters in North Carolina[,] a subject about which everyone thinks they’re right and that everyone else wouldn’t know a decent plate of ’cue According to from a cue ball.” Food writer James Villas says that growing up in mapanything.net, North Carolina leads the Charlotte he “learned never to air a preference on the complex and nation in the percentage heated topic for fear of alienating family and losing friends.” of Yellow Page listings Tar Heels are entitled to strong opinions. Georgian Jim Auch- that include the word mutey, co-author of The Ultimate Barbecue Sauce Cookbook, notes that “barbecue.” “the family tree of barbecue has spread all over the country, [but] Eight of the nine North its deepest tap root is in North Carolina.” The Old North State Carolina restaurants listed in the 1992 edition of is to American barbecue something like what New Orleans is to Jane and Michael Stern’s jazz. True, like jazz, barbecue has spread far and wide; by the mid- Road Food were barbecue twentieth century, it could be found even in places like Kansas City, places. and now it’s popping up from Boston to San Francisco. Also like Geographer Tom Ross jazz, it has changed as it moved, and not always for the better—in wrote the restaurant guide the case of barbecue, not even usually, if you ask us: in the immortal in Fodor’s North Carolina. Six barbecue places are in- words of Dobie Gray, “Other guys imitate us, but the original is still cluded in the Coastal Plain the greatest.” section alone. “Barbecue So what is North Carolina barbecue? It’s not just whatever is is the ethnic food of most served in North Carolina and called barbecue. Let’s start with a native North Carolinians,” he explains. definition, keeping in mind that there is perhaps a little room for argument here and there and that there are exceptions to any rule. On its Charlotte-to- London flights, Piedmont (This is the South, after all.) The definition comes in three parts. We Airlines (1948–1989, riP) are talking about meat used to offer barbecue, 1. that has been barbecued—that is, cooked for a long time hushpuppies, and slaw at a low temperature with heat and smoke from a fire of from Rogers Barbecue in Charlotte—and an in- hardwood and/or hardwood coals; flight magazine with a 2. that meat being pork—whole hog, shoulder, or (occasionally) column by a Methodist ham— bishop. 3. sometimes basted and always served with a thin sauce or “dip” Between September 1932 that is at most only a slight variation on a traditional recipe and September 1977, the including vinegar, red pepper, and maybe (or maybe not) Burlington Daily Times News referred to barbecue (with tomato. various spellings) at least Yes, there’s more to be said about each of these, but let’s not 3,561 times. start arguing just yet. Got it? Pork, wood-cooked in a leisurely way, served with a traditional, vinegar-based sauce. In most places outside North Carolina, either these components Copyright © 2008. The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved. Press. All rights of North Carolina © 2008. The University Copyright never came together, or the combination has fallen apart. Some T he Lore Reed, Dale Volberg. Holy Smoke : The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue, The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/duke/detail.action?docID=515673. Created from duke on 2019-11-19 15:34:15. I Saw the Light: A Texan Goes to Stamey’s Cookbook writer and chef Gwen Ashley Walters testifi es in the North Carolina Literary Review: I ordered the chopped barbecue plate. When it arrived, I gasped, “What happened to my food? Did somebody already chew this for me?” It was the most anemic tint of pale gray I had ever seen. And the coleslaw was . sitting in a pool of red vinegar sugar water. My husband quickly doused my chopped pork with . a dark orange-red sauce, very thin and fuming with vinegar, too. I was be- ginning to wonder if the cherry cobbler would emit vinegar as well. My fi rst bite was almost as shocking as the pork-only menu. The vinegar-based sauce was fi rst tangy, sending chills through my bones, followed Cooking barbecue in Ayden in the 1930s by slightly sweet with a spicy hot fi nish. There was a taste convention going on in my mouth, and the From “Barbecue Service” exhibitors were fi ghting for tongue-space. I didn’t know what to think. All my life, barbecue had one I have sought the elusive aroma connotation. Now I was faced with a revelation. I Around outlying cornfi elds, turned corners ate what someone else called barbecue, and I liked Near the site of a Civil War surrender. it—no, I loved it! How was I ever going to rational- The transformation may take place ize what I thought of as an inalienable truth: only At a pit no wider than a grave, Texas does barbecue? Simple. What I ate that day Behind a single family’s barn. and many, many days that followed wasn’t really These weathered ministers barbecue. It was NorthCarolinaBarbecue, one Preside with the simplest of elements: word. One really good word. Vinegar and pepper, split pig and fi re. Underneath a glistening mountain in air, Something is converted to a savor: the pig Flesh purifi ed by far atmosphere. We barbecue pigs. The tin-roofed sheds with embers Are smoking their blue sacrifi ce Across Carolina. —James Applewhite Jim Applewhite is professor of English at Duke and a native of Wilson County. Stamey’s plate Copyright © 2008.

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