Smoke plus meat plus time equals magic. I discovered this later in life than many. I didn’t grow up with barbecue. Not “real” barbecue, anyway. I’m from Brooklyn, and while we may have some of the best food in the world, barbecue wasn’t well represented when I was growing up. I was in my 20s when I finally encountered it at the Big Apple Barbecue festival, where competition-level pitmasters paraded through the streets of Manhattan and pulled up smokers along Madison Square Park. It was eye-opening, lip-smacking — and also unexpectedly strict and limiting.
The elaborate pits were feats of engineering, producing smoked meats that followed specific regional definitions. There were judges who understood all the rules of the different styles and pronounced from on high which was “best.” I was happy just to be there experiencing it all, but I walked away with the impression that American barbecue was static, a fixed collection of styles that had a right way and a wrong way of being prepared.
In recent years, a new wave of restaurants around the country has proved that impression deeply — and happily — wrong. From coast to coast, chefs and pitmasters of all backgrounds are blending the flavors of their families’ cuisines with those of the barbecue that grew here in the United States, using the rules of American barbecue as a starting point rather than an end goal…