What Is North Carolina-Style BBQ?
by
H. Kent Craig ©1999
For as long as there's been civilization, for as long as
people have raised domestic pigs as livestock, civilized
human beings have also eaten those same-said
domestically-raised pigs, usually by cooking them slowly
over an open fire-pit of some sort. Then how and why did
extremely-slow-cooked pork carcasses evolve over the past
three hundred years into a carnivore delicacy to be found
virtually nowhere else save within the geographic
boundaries of the State Of North Carolina? That's a
question I've been researching as well as pondering all my
age of awareness life, and still remain basically clueless
as to exactly why.
You would think that virtually any State, any location with
a predominately rural culture, would have evolved by sheer
haute gourmet tastefulness and preferences for the finest
ways of cooking and preparing pork flesh a meat dish that
would be very similar to NC-BBQ, but that's not the case.
I've traveled and eaten pork and beef BBQ in a majority of
these Fifty States, and no where outside of North Carolina
do you find barbeque the way it's cooked and served in N.C.
NC-Style-BBQ General Knowledge
All NC-BBQ is very slow cooked pork carcasses, generally
cooked for a minimum of 16-18 hours at a very low
temperature for pork, often 250 degrees or slightly less,
sometimes up to 300 degrees but never more than that. With
the (very real) safety concerns about parasites in pork,
it's important for the pork to be cooked completely
through, obviously; if you ever see any pink meat in
NC-BBQ, quit eating it right then, and raise hell. After
cooking, the meat is pulled from the bones, and then pulled
apart into bite-size chunks, and then usually chopped
further with a large cleaving knife until a texture is
reached that suits the chef. Almost never is "real" NC-BBQ
ever served sliced, except at certain restaurants
that cater a lot to non-NC-natives and the clientele
demands such.
By slow cooking at low temperature, the meat is allowed to
"age" without drying out. Almost never is any kind of sauce
applied during cooking, save a tad of vinegar-based with a
few spices only "sauce" which isn't meant as a flavoring
agent, only as a hydration aid to prevent excess binding of
the outside part of the meat. I've never cooked a hog in my
life, NC-style or any other way, not for a pig-picking
(more on the cultural grail of NC-style "pig-picking's"
later) or any other reason, so I'm not going to claim to
know let alone understand the culinary alchemy that takes
place by staying up all night and maintaining the vigil of
monitoring the carcass until the next day. All I know is
that cooking NC-style pork BBQ is a great job for insomniac
carnivores with enhanced tastebuds.
Eastern-NC-Style
It's easier to be a Master Chef at the New York Academy Of
Culinary Arts & Sciences, it's easier to be be a Professor
Of Sanskrit at the Sorbone, it's easier to be a Master
Steak Chef at Blackie's in DC, than it is to be a Master
BBQ Chef Of Eastern-NC-BBQ. That's because Eastern-NC-Style
BBQ is plain whole-hog pork meat, with just the
tiniest bit of vinegar-based "sauce" which isn't a sauce at
all, applied as a moistening agent. Eastern-Style BBQ is
usually one of two grades; either excellent, or close to
inedible. When you have a fine-chopped (almost to the point
of being ground at times, without use of a mechanical
grinder) plain meat dish, with just enough vinegar "sauce"
to wake up your tastebuds and nothing else, the meat, the
grade of the meat, how the pig is butchered and prepared,
the pain-staking slow-cooking process, everything
culminates to when it hit's your tongue with either an
"ahhhhh" or a "yecchhh!".
Most times Eastern-Style is served with cole slaw, as a
side dish if served on a plate, or atop the BBQ itself if
served in a sandwich. Craig Claiborne, the former NY
Times food critic and a converted fan of NC BBQ, often
said an Eastern-Style BBQ sandwich, with the astringency
stress of the (usually slightly hot pepper flavor but not
much) vinegar sauce balanced with the cool blanche' of the
cole slaw made such an Eastern-NC-Style sandwich a true
delicacy, an epicurean delight.
When and wherever Eastern-Style NC BBQ served, in addition
to cole slaw, two things are also invariably served with
it, those being sweetened ice tea so strong as to where a
cup or pitcher full of melting ice won't dilute it much,
and "hushpuppies". "Hushpuppies", again, seem to be a
peculiarly North Carolinia' culinary invention, though,
equally again, even though I've never found them for sale
at any restaurant outside of North Carolina, one would have
to think that fried cornbread balls, which are all that
hushpuppies are, would be almost universal in taste appeal
and popularity. Hushpuppies are merely
cornbread-dough-batter elongated "nuggets" about the size
of a small cheese stick, deep-fried very quickly in a
super-hot greasebath, which gives them a flavorful
golden-brown crust with a yellow and equally flavorful soft
middle, and are as or more addicting than great BBQ by
themselves. Even if a restaurant has acceptable-to-OK BBQ,
if they have great hushpuppies and superbly-brewed iced
tea, they'll do a decent business. An open speculation and
question: as easy to fix, cheap to make, and as tasty as
fresh-made hushpuppies are, I don't understand why a
national restaurant chain, say Burger King or similar,
hasn't picked up in them and made them an alternative side
dish?...the Country would go crazy over them, over
hushpuppies, if they did.
Western-NC Style, AKA "Lexington"~Style
Western-NC-Style (also know as "Lexington"-style, after the
city whose core group of highly-rated Western-NC-Style BBQ
restaurants perfected and popularized the genre) BBQ
differs from Eastern-Style in two distinct ways: 1) it's
always made from pork shoulders only, ala' Memphis-style,
and not from whole-hog carcass, and 2) unlike Eastern-Style
which uses vinegar and the barest traces of hot pepper and
miniscule amounts of flavorings if any in a "wetting agent"
a sous chef would have a hissy about if you called it a
"sauce", Western-NC/Lexington-Style definitely uses a
real sauce, of which heavy doses of ketchup are
added to the vinegar base universally, and often a small
amount of sugar is added as well.
You'll often think you taste God-knows-what in
Lexington/Western-Style sauces, because Western-Style chefs
have been known to put pretty much anything you can think
of edible in their own special sauces, from white lightin'
(the alcohol of which is burned off during the cooking of)
to turtle-meat-stock-soup (turtle meat is generally too
rare and expensive for this use though), to any number of
combinations of going to the spice rack and dumping stuff
in the vinegar-and-tomato-catsup base to see what comes up
tasty.
Other than using pork shoulders, which gives the "base
meat" less fat and more texture in the eating of than
whole-hog BBQ, the way I generally explain the difference
between the two styles to non-natives is this:
Eastern-Style has no "help", it's just perfectly cooked
meat sitting there by itself. It's got to be perfect meat
prepared exactly, or it'll gag you. Western-NC-Style, on
the other hand, is like Texas-style beef BBQ; you can take
very average or even slightly under-average meat cooked
just so-so, and with a great sauce a la'
Lexington/Western-NC-Style, disguise the poor meat
under/inside the taste-bud-tingling sauce.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy both styles equally, hell, I
enjoy all great BBQ equally, whether it's pork,
beef, or Cape Buffalo. And Western-Style, when the meat is
great and it's cooked great and it's served blended with a
great sauce, is every bit the equal of the best
Eastern-Style. It's simply harder to cook Eastern-Style to
a superb degree of palate pleasing because it's either
great, or at least very good, or it ain't.
When you eat at most Lexington/Western-Style restaurants,
you usually (but not always) can get hushpuppies, though at
Western-Style ones they tend to add fresh onions and other
similar ingredients (which I personally don't like in the
batter), while Eastern-Style ones are usually plain. You
are also usually served some sort of home-made, hand-cut
from fresh potatoes french fries at Western-Style joints,
whereas most Eastern-Style ones usually give "storebought"
french fries. Both kinds often fried in the same
deep-fat-fryers as the hushpuppies are, which gives them a
unique (but pleasant) aftertaste. Eastern-Style restaurants
a lot of times will have a signature, traditional Southern
dessert, such as banana pudding, while many Western ones
won't, depending. The strong, sweet ice tea should be the
same west of the 1-85 & NC Highway 220 junction (as good a
dividing line as anything else) as at any place east of it,
weak tea equally disappointing customers no matter where
within the border of The Tar Heel State they're eating at.
{Back To BBQ Page}
Home
Contact