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Recipe: texas barbecue beef brisket

Having grown up in Virginia, the butt of our local jokes was usually West Virginia. When I headed to California for college, I began to hear a lot of jokes about Texas – especially after I met Jeremy, the native son of New Mexico. The one I heard most was:

Why is it so windy in New Mexico?
Because Texas sucks and Arizona blows.

I’m sure you can replace the states in that with any set of neighboring states, but it’s quite amusing to see how tickled folks from New Mexico are when they deliver the punch line… every time. The point is, it is not cool to love anything about Texas in the company I keep.

Well, I have to make an exception – two, in fact. I love Kathryn, who is a Texan transplanted to Norway, and I LOVE Texas-style barbecue beef brisket à la Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas Bar-B-Que (in Van Nuys, CA no less!). My former house president and good friend, Jack (oops! another Texan… make that three things I love about Texas), introduced me to The Doctor. It’s a hole-in-the-wall joint nestled between skanky billboards advertising gentlemen’s clubs and adult bookstores on Sepulveda Boulevard [8136 Sepulveda Blvd., Van Nuys, CA (818) 902-9046]. The waitresses are strapping ladies, not a single one under size 14 or shorter than 5 feet 10 inches, who can haul pounds of barbecue chicken, pork ribs, beef brisket, hot links, and the most delicious and decidedly non-vegetarian baked beans. Come to think of it, I don’t think a single thing on their menu is vegetarian… except possibly the lemonade and iced tea.

The Doctor is one of our favorite go-to eats when we visit So Cal, and their beef brisket is one of our favorite items on the menu. It sells out on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, you name it. F’ing Good Stuff. A couple of weeks ago, a magazine editor contacted me asking if I had a nice photo of barbecue beef brisket. Um, I didn’t have any good ones and I usually barbecue pork because I am from Virginia where Pork is King. Ever since that email exchange, I have had barbecue beef brisket on the brain.

Recipe: slow-oven ribs

Some of you may wonder if I cook as often as I post (well, lately I haven’t posted as frequently and there is a good reason for that). Um… yes and no. My cooking and baking tend to cluster in that I will make 3-5 recipes in one sitting and shoot them all to blog about eventually. It’s an OCD dream come true really – keeping all of that straight in your head. I suppose it’s very good practice for those times I entertain guests for dinner. In any case, I have days where I whip something up and the little voice (me) in the back of my head says, “Oh, you oughta shoot this” and the other voice (me) in the front of my head says, “Yeah – you can go shoot it…” and those are the days I don’t record what I make.

I have recipes in queue for times when I feel unmotivated or times like tomorrow, when I’ll be out of commission for a day or more and unable to cook or bake anything. I just find it funny that I decided to post about barbecue pork ribs on a day when we finally, we finally got a decent dump of snow here. I’ve been waiting for it all season and of course, leave it to the storm track to arrive right before I can’t take advantage. Ah well…

Recipe: carolina-style pulled pork

I wrote about pulled pork earlier this year during my Summer of Barbecue, but I never gave a recipe for it. Barbecue is regional in the US. Heck, my MIL just told me last weekend that barbecue in Memphis differs from barbecue in the rest of Tennessee! The varieties could make your head spin and your colon tremble: sweet, spicy, vinegar-base, tomato-base, thick, thin, beef, pork, ribs, pulled, sliced, smoked, and don’t forget the hot-links. I like them all, really. But in southern Virginia, we get a heavy influence from North Carolina and so tonight I paid homage to Carolina pulled pork for dinner.

One of my favorite acts in cooking is the Magic Act, where you take a cheap cut of meat and cook it forever, whether by dry or moist heat, and render it a tender heap of Culinary Nirvana. Since we’re talking Carolina barbecue, you automatically know it is 1) pork and 2) vinegar-based sauce. And if you didn’t know, it’s about time you learned. An excellent part of the beloved piggy (besides the belly and the leg) is the shoulder, aka butt, Boston butt, Boston roast, shoulder blade roast. It is a favorite for barbecue (and also of Chinese cooking!) for its wonderful flavor, marbling, tenderness, moistness, and low cost. The trick is low and slow heat.

I tend to believe that authentic barbecue is smoked over coals for hours on end. I could do that where I live, but then I might burn down the entire National Forest, so I slow cook in the oven. It’s a more practical approach.

**Jump for more butter**