Smoke, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the brisket. Part One:

Granddaddy made his own barbecue sauce. Or so I believed. More likely, Grandmother Ruby made it and he added a stick of butter and a couple more shots of Tabasco. A family event at our grandparents’ house usually meant one thing, barbecued brisket. By the time we got there, granddad would have already been tending the brisket for a number of hours, so I can’t relay his exact method, but after a number of conversations with my father, my cousins and some of Granddaddy’s friends, as well as years of my own experience, I can now make some assumptions. First, either early in the morning or late the night before, he would build a wood fire in the pit with post oak or mesquite, then let the coals die down, and then set his brisket on the far side of the pit. The pit was made from a 50 gallon oil drum, it had welded-on legs, handles, hinges and a stovepipe and it was split sideways, so it could open up like a giant clam, it may have been painted at some point, but it was black from years of smoke by the time I saw it. It was fitted with a rack across the bottom half, like any other barbecue and it included little sliding doors on the bottom and across the top of the stovepipe to control the airflow through the main chamber when the lid was closed. No Texan needed that description as these contraptions were (and in some places still are) as plentiful as heat and sun in our yards in the summertime, which is to say, well, plentiful. Robb Walsh (a Texas food writer) called them Texas Hibachis, a description I like now but wouldn’t have remotely understood if you’d used it at the time. A Hibachi is a tiny grill for charcoal grilling used in Japanese cooking. When I was a kid, I probably just assumed Japanese people ate Chinese food, as I didn’t encounter Japanese food more exotic than ‘teriyaki chicken’ (with the ubiquitous canned pineapple ring) until my early twenties. Since everything is bigger in Texas (just ask any Texan) a fifty gallon drum is a Hibachi the same way a guitar is a Texas mandolin. When my granddad cooked a brisket, it took total attention. He was the pit boss, and it was his show. By profession, he was a dentist, but in the summers I remember him two ways, in his coveralls in the garden or perched on an aluminum lawn chair next to that barbecue pit, chewing on a fat cigar and tending the brisket. His method was unique; it involved a regular basting with his barbecue sauce until the sugar formed a kind of crust on the meat. In retrospect, it wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect for us.



Barbecue can be source of great pleasure and great debate with Texans, some would claim that there are as many different barbecue styles as there are Texans, but there are some universal truths. Barbecue, in Texas, refers specifically to the slow and low cooking of a cut of meat. Cooking meat, or anything else for that matter, on a grill over direct heat is called grilling. You may grill foods in a barbecue pit, but that’s kind of a coincidence, like figuring out you can use a hammer to not only hammer a nail but also, say, to crack an egg or perhaps to open a window. Texas barbecue almost always refers to beef. And it almost always refers specifically to a cut from the front quarter of the animal found near the leg called the brisket. The brisket is whole and untrimmed and when cooked, is sliced against the grain. Brisket is also the cut of meat used to make Pastrami and Montreal style smoked meat. Barbecued brisket is served sliced warm in Texas with a sweet, spicy and vinegary tomato based sauce, known far and wide as barbecue sauce. This distinction is important because apparently some folks make a non tomato based sauce, and still try to call it barbecue sauce although most Texans aren't sure why. My granddad's barbecue sauce had a list of over twenty ingredients of which I'll share two, tomato paste and orange peel. Tomato paste to make the point about a tomato based sauce, and orange peel, because I thought it was weird and kind of cool. After I got the recipe, I liked to imagine him peeling an orange and throwing it in the big bubbling pot like a mad alchemist, but later, after he died, I found a McCormick’s spice jar in his cabinet, dry and ancient, that read 'orange peel' which dashed that fantasy to bits. If it had ever actually smelled like orange peel, I'm afraid it was many years before I opened it.



Along with barbecue the food, there is also barbecue, the culture. When you leave the Texas Hibachi in the yard and go out to get barbecue, you venture into the very pinnacle of Texas culture, the barbecue joint. A barbecue joint has a about a 90 per chance of being a guy's name. Luther's barbecue house had the best sauce, Tom’s had the best meat. Some other place had the best sides, it was probably called Jim's or Rufus's or something. And these were all joints. They were kept clean, sort of, but no money was wasted on decor. Cast off street signs, old beer cans, hunting trophies, all mixed up with red-checked plastic tablecloths and Sears picnic furniture. The smell of smoke and meat. No money was wasted on cutlery or dishes, either. Barbecue is best served on butcher paper on a tray with onions, sliced cheese, thick slices of fluffy white bread and pickles. Tables were carefully set with a stainless steel napkin dispenser and a plastic bottle of barbecue sauce. You pay by weight. Barbecue joints offer choices like sausage or chicken or a combination. Family meals, that kind of thing, maybe a grilled cheese sandwich for a kid. Sides were usually simple things like slaw or potato salad, but if you were lucky, maybe something hot like fried okra or a big buttery ear of corn. But the most important thing was the brisket.



Maybe that's why my biggest act of rebellion was becoming a vegetarian.



Stay tuned for part two....