Gourmet
REDESIGNING THE PIG
"A barbecue pit master has a vision both crazy and pure."
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 2005
By: JOHN T. EDGE
"He’s a storefront revivalist, working the pews. His eyes are bright, keen, piercing, as if backlit by the fervor of conviction. His brow is beaded; his shirtfront is damp. His voice rises, a crescendo of persuasion, a clarion for the cause. With the crescendo come the nods of the converted, at first hesitant, then quick. With the nods come shouts of affirmation and exultation." [...]
COOKING TIPS (The Pit Master)
"Can authentic barbecue be made at home? "
APRIL 6, 2008 By: ANDREW KNOWLTON
"Mitchell barbecued his first whole hog when he was 14. Incidentally, he swigged moonshine for the first time that same day. It was, in his words, the day he became a man. Today, he's a barbecue legend, revered for his eastern North Carolina-style chopped whole hog, which you can taste at The Pit, his upscale joint in Raleigh. " [...]
bon appétit
SAVEUR
BBQ NATION: THE PRESERVATION OF A CULINARY ART FORM
"All across America, the men and women of barbecue are preserving a culinary art form"
MAY 26, 2011 By: JOHN T. EDGE
"I grew up in central Georgia, near Macon, one-half mile from Old Clinton Barbecue, a tin-roofed, sawdust-floored roadhouse shrouded in hickory smoke. Mittie Coulter, mother of proprietor Wayne Coulter, worked the chopping block. By the time my Schwinn hit the gravel parking lot, I could hear the measured and percussive thwack of her cleaver. It carried through the dining room, past Wayne's collection of antique cash registers, as she hacked fat and skin from hams, chopped the flesh to smoky bits, and doused it all with a thin, ketchup-tinged sauce that tasted of cider vinegar and red pepper. "
[...]
The New Yorker
gothamist
Pitmaster Ed Mitchell Talks Big Apple BBQ, Grilling Whole Hogs
"For many, this weekend marked the start of the summer, and what's summer without some serious barbecues?"
MAY 30, 2011 By: JAMIE FELDMAR
"Since you're heading up here in a few weeks, I'll start by asking about the roots of the Big Apple BBQ event and why you wanted to bring BBQ to New York. Well, I was involved in some sort of a fact search that was put on by the Southern Food Alliance. Back in the early 2000s they sent a group of members of the organization along the BBQ belt line, which includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and Kansas. When the group came to North Carolina and tried out my BBQ, we were voted the best tasting BBQ in the state. Of course, I was still doing it the way I was taught with my grandfather and my father, very traditional in style." [...]
Black Pitmasters left out of US
barbecue boom
"The US is in the midst of a barbecue boom. But as television programmes and restaurants celebrate mostly white pitmasters, are the cuisine's African-American roots being forgotten? "
August 24, 2015 By: Jessica Lussenhop BBC News Magazine
"After a morning of peeling potatoes, Daryle Brantley sits at the only table outside of his counterservice restaurant C&K Barbecue. His daughter Jamila emerges from the midcentury building, a barbecue outpost that has been perched on a corner in north St Louis county since 1963. She has two white Styrofoam containers in her hands - rib tips with a side of baked beans and coleslaw, and the combination sandwich, which is two pieces of white bread piled with rib tips and crispy baked pig snouts. The meat is smothered in a tangy tomato- and vinegar-based sauce, which the restaurant is known for. Everything is made fresh each day, in house. " [...]
BBC News
Grub Street
FOOD FIGHT
"Barbecue Experts Blast Fox News’ ‘Racist’ List of Influential Pitmasters"
August 6, 2015 By: Chris Crowley
"Fox News is getting some serious flack for a recent guide to the country’s “most influential pitmasters and BBQ personalities.” Shortly after the list was published, Texas Monthly barbecue editor and Prophets of Smoked Meat author Daniel Vaughn, who was included in the story, noticed something curious about the list: Everyone featured was white.
Black chefs are often left out of the conversation, as Michael Twitty has written, but it’s particularly problematic in this case, and amplifies a trend that Texas food authority Robb Walsh recently called out on First We Feast: “The national press would have you believe barbecue is dominated by white hipster males,” Walsh writes, “but believe it or not, blacks, Latinos, and women are involved in the barbecue
biz too.” [...]
IN DEFENSE OF THE TRUE ’CUE
"Keeping pork pure in North Carolina."
NOVEMBER 2, 2015 By: Calvin Trillin
"For some years, I’m now prepared to admit, I somehow labored under the impression that Rocky Mount is the line of demarcation that separates the two principal schools of North Carolina barbecue. Wrong. The line of demarcation is, roughly, Raleigh, sixty miles west. The Research Triangle—the area encompassing Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill—is a sort of demilitarized zone, where someone who’s been concentrating on the barbecue scene, as I was on my most recent visit, half expects to see the distinctive blue helmets of United Nations peacekeepers."[...]