Top Pitmasters Best Bbq Joints Tastiest Sauces Winning Sides Ingredients

ingredients top pitmasters 64 best bbq joints 68 tastiest sauces 71 winning sides 72 Welcome to ’Cue Country. Down here, barbecue is a ritual, a celebration, a testament to all that’s right. In our first-ever ’Cue Awards, we salute the STORYPRODUCED JENNIFER BY COLE; V. RALPH ANDERSON; PROP STYLING; HEATHER CHADDUCK; FOOD STYLING: VANESSA MCNEIL ROCCHIO; PAPER: JENNIFER DAVICK people, places, and recipes that keep our home fires burning Aaron Franklin Austin, TX Rodney Scott Hemingway, SC Francisca Andrin Chamblee, GA Sam Jones Ayden, NC that Rodney’s never been tempted to proclaim her ribs to be Dekalb County’s Aaron Franklin more affordable avocation. There tweak. His adherence to tradition has most tender. oldbrickpitbbq.com FRANKLIN BARBECUE aren’t any tables or chairs in the vinyl- won him the respect of fellow Southern Austin, Texas sided hut known as Marion Pit Bar-B-Q, chefs, such as Husk’s Sean Brock, who Sam Jones but out back there’s a hickory-fired pit THE SKYLIGHT INN Hundreds of people line up every day rates Scott’s as his “most favorite place to sample brisket from Aaron Franklin, in which Jack smokes pork for 17 Ayden, North Carolina to eat in the entire world.” Rodney says a young Austinite who’s nursed pit- unhurried hours. When the shoulders trading secrets with Sean and cooking Sam Jones, 31, says he doesn’t intend to master dreams since age 12. But Aaron’s are quivering on the cusp of fracture, with other pitmasters have solidified change anything at the restaurant his popularity hasn’t left him assuming he pulls them apart and soaks the meat his passion for a hard, greasy job. “We grandfather Pete Jones opened in 1947. there’s nothing left to learn. “Anybody with an exceptional tomato-based have different styles, but we all have “My granddaddy would turn over in his who thinks they’ve perfected barbecue sauce, orange as a robin’s breast. “The love for pork,” he says. thescottsbbq.com casket two times,” he says. In fact, should probably reassess,” he says. His main thing for me is the sauce,” says Sam, heir to a 180-year-old family distinctive meat—heralded for its Jack, who refuses to disclose ingredi- Francisca Andrin tradition of selling whole-hog barbecue, slinky marbling, flavorful bark, and ents. “It’s a little bit ketchup, a little bit Rodney Scott OLD BRICK PIT BARBEQUE The people behind the is working on a Skylight Inn T-shirt whiff of white-oak smoke—keeps everything else. So far everybody pretty SCOTT’S BAR-B-QUE pits are often as compelling Chamblee, Georgia whose design features a meat cleaver Aaron tied to the pit. He firmly believes well likes it.” 270/965-3318 Hemingway, South Carolina Francisca Andrin—who’s in charge of and the phrase “Our idea of cutting the pitmaster adds to the flavor. “An old as the meat that emerges “Charcoal is good if you’re lazy,” says the pit at this barn-shaped joint in edge.” He became an apprentice after dude hands off the reins and it’s never Will Fleischman LOCKHART SMOKEHOUSE from them. We give you whole-hog maestro Rodney Scott, who north Atlanta—isn’t the obvious trying to shortcut his way through a the same,” he says. “It’s safe to say I’m started working his family’s pits when choice to safeguard the city’s dwin- college research paper by writing about stuck.” franklinbarbecue.com Dallas, Texas 10 OF THE SOUTH’S he was 11. Rodney isn’t lazy. He and his dling vinegar tradition. She grew up in barbecue. “That’s when I put on a Will Fleischman has studied literature father cut trees weekly, salvaging Indonesia, where the cuisine-defining different set of spectacles as to how I Jack Easley and worked as a chef in China, but BEST PITMASTERS, MARION PIT BAR-B-Q the cords of hickory, oak, and pecan meat dish is slathered with molasses look at it.” He recalls long hours spent nothing daunts him like a brisket near- a diverse group united by needed to power and perfume their and brown sugar. But she’s shelved her learning how to cook split hogs and Marion, Kentucky ing the end of its run in a smoker. “The a smoky passion concrete bunker pits. Those pits yield sweet meat instincts and produces ’cue hand chop meat and skin. “At 75, he Nearly 40 years ago, Jack Easley was question of ‘How do you know when gorgeously crisp-skinned meat, true to a local vinegar style that’s lately would work me in the ground,” Sam paying too much rent on his sit-down it’s done?’ is where insecurity lives,” he mopped with a vinegar-pepper sauce been roughed up by ketchup. Acolytes PORTRAITS:ROBBIE CAPONETTO; PAPER AND SAUCE: JENNIFER DAVICK, FOOD STYLING: MARIAN COOPER CAIRNS says of Skylight’s patriarch. 252/746-4113 restaurant, so he went looking for a says. “You want the wood to speak to JUNE 2012 SOUTHERN LIVING 65 you, but the meat sits there in mute lured him out of Decatur: “My passion Ed Mitchell defiance.” Will rejects the “cowboy is in the pits,” he says. “You’ll still find Raleigh, NC wisdom” equating pounds and cook me there, taking a turn.” time: “That’s like making a sweeping bigbobgibson.com generalization about all redheads.” Instead, he relies on instincts he’s honed Ed Mitchell “THE PITMASTER” under the tutelage of a cattle rancher who sold beef to Leavenworth prison Raleigh, North Carolina and a 350-pound man known as Pappy. The gray beard of whole-hog cooking, “People need to humble themselves Ed Mitchell was a relatively late arrival to the experience,” he says. “Success to the barbecue business. After a depends on how many mistakes you’re lifetime of pig pickings at family HOW THEY DO IT Avery Payne willing to make.” lockhartsmokehouse.com Lexington, NC gatherings, Ed inadvertently became a WAY DOWN SOUTH professional at 44 when his mother, a Helen Turner If you think Southerners are Wilson County grocer, asked him to obsessed with cooking meat over HELEN’S BBQ smoke a pig for supper. She sold the fire, you should spend some time Brownsville, Tennessee leftovers at her corner store, which was down south—South America that Helen Turner’s gotten used to customers soon after reinvented as Mitchell’s is. That’s just what 10 members of poking around her modest barbecue Barbecue. These days, in a field that’s the Fatback Collective, a group of Southern “hambassadors” led Will Fleischman shack looking for the man who runs made a mantra of low and slow, Ed by Nick Pihakis of Jim ‘N Nick’s Dallas, TX the place. But she’s been stacking cooks hot and fast, a technique he Bar-B-Q (page 68), did this past hickory and hoisting pork shoulders believes loosens the pig’s juices. He’s December, traveling to Uruguay, since 1995. Customers who aren’t now plotting to open a chain of a country where every house has diverted by the idea of a female-run restaurants showcasing his signature an asado pit and even potato chips barbecue joint are often equally struck whole-hog style. “I’ve tried ribs and come in such flavors as beef ten- by the thick smoke that clouds the butts, but you’re missing about derloin. At a ranch called Estancia interior of Helen’s BBQ. She tried three-quarters of the flavors the Belcampo, asadors (imagine gaucho installing fans to clear the air, but the animal can provide,” he says. pitmasters) shared techniques with pit’s heat melted them. “Some people thepitmasteredmitchell.com folks such as Rodney Scott (page 64) and chef Donald Link of New say sauce makes it special, but the Orleans. On the surface, with both smoke is what makes the flavor,” Helen Avery Payne COOK’S BARBECUE sides cooking for one another, it Jack Easley says. 731/779-3255 was as simple as I’ll-try-yours, Marion, KY Lexington, North Carolina you-try-mine: Rodney’s fiery, Chris Lilly In 1984, when Avery Payne’s parents vinegar-based sauce versus the BIG BOB GIBSON BAR-B-Q purchased Cook’s Barbecue from a garlicky Uruguayan chimichurri. Decatur, Alabama childhood friend, millions of American Appetizer bites of Donald’s Cajun When Amy McLemore, great-grand- boys were busy slipping quarters into boudin versus fire-searedmatambre (fatty flank steak) with beef-tallow daughter of Alabama barbecue legend Pac-Man machines. Avery, at 12, was crackers. But something deeper set Big Bob Gibson, looked at fellow working at Cook’s. He recalls starting in. You see, in Uruguay, organic, Helen Turner University of North Alabama student a few inadvertent fires that first week pastured meats aren’t a trend— Brownsville, TN Chris Lilly, she saw a husband. Her he learned to cook on the pit. Now they’re practically a birthright. As father saw a solution to a long-standing more cautious, he is one of two Nick points out, farms such as business problem. “My father-in-law Lexington-style pitmasters who mess Belcampo are “taking good-quality hired me because he wanted to open a with brisket. Cook’s “went down to food and bringing it to all the people, second location,” says Chris, who’d Texas and fell in love with it,” he says. not just the elite.” And it’s that never before minded a pit. He has since And the beef affair was no mere fling.

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