Okay, you cooked a turkey at Thanksgiving, and you’re ready to try something else for Christmas dinner. Or perhaps you’r trying to decide what to have to ring in the New Year. The answer, as so often is the case, is barbecue. But how do you make perfect barbecue? Well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place. Here is a reprise of an earlier … Continue reading Make Perfect Barbecue for Christmas
After you cook up a bunch of pork butts for a party, you always want to have leftover barbecue. First, you always want to make sure that you had plenty for everyone, and that means cooking too much. Second, barbecue pork butts re-heat very well, and are as good the second time around as the first. You need to draw a line between leftovers that … Continue reading Re-heating Leftover Barbecue
The rest of the day involved frequent checking on the heat and a couple of additional doses of hickory chips. I like to add a good final dose of hickory chips at the end to perfume the neighborhood. I showered, changed into Independence Day wear, and did a final check before closing the vents completely a little after 5:00. That deserves a close-up. It … Continue reading How to Barbecue Pork: A Step by Step Guide: Step 5. The Nearly-Finished Product
It started to rain at 2:00, and it promises to rain all night. This creates some challenges, but Herodotus’ Persian messengers had nothing on me. The first and most serious challenge is the prospect that I will track wet footprints all over the house before our guests arrive. I have addressed that challenge by (a) removing my tennis shoes and socks, (b) going upstairs and … Continue reading How to Barbecue Pork: A Step by Step Guide: Step 4. Adjusting to Inclement Weather
At noon I checked the coals again and took the grill and the meat off to make it easier to move the coals about and spread the hottest around the grill; and also to add hickory chips that had been soaking. Moving the grill and meat can be messy: the meat is dripping fat. I put some newspapers down and put a couple of … Continue reading How to Barbecue Pork: A Step by Step Guide: Step 3. Adding hickory
After the pork butts have been on for an hour, I always check the coals. There’s always a hot spot on a grill, and that makes the meat cook unevenly. I use that long fork on the table to move the coals around, and I also reposition the meat relative to the hottest areas. That’s a serving fork sticking out of the pork. It’s strong … Continue reading How to Barbecue Pork: A Step by Step Guide: Step 2. Watching and Adjusting
I picked up six good sized pork butts Saturday at the Harris Teeter on Potomac Avenue. Harris Teeter always has pork butts on sale right before the 4th, and the one on Potomac Avenue is right by Mangialardo’s, which has great subs, as any police officer or firefighter will tell you. (Order the G-Man on a hard roll without peppers.) I trimmed a lot of … Continue reading How to Barbecue Pork: A Step by Step Guide: Step 1. Getting Started
Sauce for pork Send off for some Ollie’s Barbecue Sauce. http://olliesbbqsauce.com/o_bbq.html or Add to your favorite supermarket barbecue sauce: 4 parts apple cider vinegar. Sauce for Ribs or brisket Send off for Dreamland Sauce. http://www.dreamlandbbq.com/subgrouping.htm?cat=15278 or Send off for Ollie’s Rib Sauce. http://olliesbbqsauce.com/o_bbq.html or Add to your favorite supermarket barbecue sauce: 2 parts apple cider vinegar. With … Continue reading Barbecue Sauce Recipes
I apologize for waiting until today to display the finished product of yesterday’s labors. We had company. To resume the barbecue discussion: About 6:15, after people had started arriving, I shut down the grill — closed all vents to kill the fire. I left the meat on the grill to move gradually from cooking to resting. Here’s Butt #1, served at about 7:00, I think … Continue reading Memorial Day at Stately Tanner Manor, Washington, DC: The Finished Product
There are other ways to cook barbecue, of course. Naturally, I think that my way makes the Best Barbecue in the World, but then I’ve been doing this for, what, 38 years now? I’m at the point where I’m comfortable with my method. It’s the closest I can get to cooking over an open pit, which is indisputably the best way to cook barbecue. That’s … Continue reading Other Approaches to Barbecuing
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