table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Byrd on Barbecue

It’s not just the sauce, it’s the smoke

(Sept. 20, 2007) The beef brisket sandwich was as good as everyone promised. The glowing sauce — a bizarre, grainy concoction of paprika and vinegar — took some getting used to, but the whole combination of meat and sauce and pickle slices and icy beer pretty much couldn’t be beat. (Arthur Bryant’s, Kansas City, Miss.)

At Cooper’s, you step right up to the outdoor pit and point at the meat you want. The pitmaster grabs it; slices off as much as you ask for; slaps it on a tray; pours a tiny bit of thin, vinegary sauce on it; and hands it to you. Then you take it inside and hand it to a cashier, who weighs it and dumps it on butcher paper — your plate. (Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Q, Llano, Texas.)

Smokey Jim’s, Smokin’ Moses, Mama Janisse’s Soul-Q-Sauce, Mad River Farms Red Eye Chipotle Blackberry. Photo by Bob Doran.

GALLERY >

— from David Plotz’s four-part Slate Magazine series, “An American Barbecue Pilgrimage”

I guess the first thing we have to tackle is the definition of “barbecue.” Most Americans have never tasted real barbecue, especially most Californians. We are a culture that does not like to defer our gratification, and great barbecue is the essence of deferred, requiring five hours or more in an enclosed chamber or pit.

The pit dates back at least to the Mayans. A young pig would be marinated in Seville orange juice and annatto, wrapped in banana leaves and lowered into a pit in which the fire had burnt down to coals. The pit was covered, so that the smoke permeated the meat. The resulting flavor combined smoke, the bitter charred leaves, the annatto, the sour marinade and the caramelized meat.

From time to time, a true Southern barbecue place starts up. For a couple years there was one in Rohnert Park (actually just a few blocks away from the mothership of Porter Street Barbecue, also in Rohnert Park). It was a low-ceilinged, rather funky place — real barbecue establishments seldom have “ambience” — but it did cook its meat long and slow, in a closed chamber. This is known as “cool” smoking, meaning direct heat from the coals never reaches the meat; instead, the smoke arrives indirectly, but then collects — it has no place to escape — infusing the meat with flavor, and slowly, very slowly, cooking it to a tender flavorfulness impossible with any other form of cooking.

By contrast, California barbecue is either meat smoked over wood coals (“Santa Maria” ranch-style is the most flavorful), or simply plunked onto a grill, where the juices drain into the hot fire, sending up flavorful plumes. This, of course, wastes perhaps 90 percent of the flavor, but it is at least smoked. The alternative is simply a backyard grill, with stuff cooked over fire, not smoke, and often served petrified.

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