It's true that I like meat. I eat more than I should even though I often go two meals a day without eating any. It's also true that I love fruits and vegetables, but there aren't many plant products that I'm as passionate about as I am with meat.
So obviously, I've been looking forward to going to the Big Pig Jig in Vienna, GA, for weeks now. Only we didn't go to the Big Pig Jig. I started thinking about the length of the drive and my friend Julie said she'd heard you couldn't sample (or sample much) at the festival and I started doubting if it was worth it. The festival website seemed to suggest there was a short period when sampling is an option, but I'd hate to make a three-hour round trip just to have the overwhelming aroma of smoked meats kick my stomach into overdrive on empty and give me an ulcer.
My dream of mountains of barbecue was saved when earlier this week K remembered that the barbecue festival in a neighboring town was held on this weekend last year. I looked it up yesterday and found out that this was the weekend after all, so we went there instead.
It turned out that our trip was entirely worth it. The way sampling works is that competitors get 300 sample cups to hand out for the People's Choice award and they hand out samples between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Sampling is a little on the expensive side. You get a card giving you five samples for $5. If you saved all five samples, they'd probably add up to a hefty sandwich's worth. K and I bought three cards and when we finished sharing the fifteen samples (and had to skip several competitors because we didn't want to buy a fourth card), we were actually fairly sated.
A few of the competitors were handing out really awesome barbecue. There were a couple that were that perfect mix of porkiness, smoke, tenderness, and moistness that tasting it brought a little joy into your life even though there wasn't a whole lot of spice involved. In fact, I think a couple may not have been much more than a salt and pepper rub before the pull. A few others had really awesome seasoning, but then you lost that sublime beauty of good barbecued pork. I really want to learn to do real barbecue, but it can't really be done well on a grill and the smokers tend to be a little expensive. I still want to try the Alton Brown terra cotta pot set up but I can never find pots big enough for it. There's probably no more beautiful expression of Southern culture (outside of music) than a well smoked pork butt.
5 comments:
Damn you, Jacob. As if I'm not perpetually craving barbecue anyway. Ugh. Now I gotta get me some.
Can't you make a smoker out of a 55-gallon drum? That can't be too expensive, right? It would be totally worth whatever the cost.
You can, but you have to add a firebox off to the side to do it right. Plus it requires some cutting and welding, neither of which I'm equipped to do. I wouldn't even know how to weld if I had the arc welder to do it.
Technically, I could use my big grill. Set the fire off to the side and put the meat on the other side. It's just really hard to replenish the fire to manage the temperature without opening the lid that way. That's actually the way I cook my rosemary-smoked leg of lamb, but it's hardly barbecue.
Sounds fun.
I'm not sure I'd describe myself as passionate about any type of food. Sure, there are foods I love, but am I passionate about them? Nah.
You really should tailgate with us sometime before a Tech game. Todd's smoker will house a 12 year old. Saturday before the Tech game, he smoked a pork butt, pork ribs, prime rib and turkey legs. I'm missing one more meat, I think, but I don't like smoky food so I didn't sample it at all. Plus Tech won. Plus the Thrashers won. I'm glad you enjoyed the bbq festival (and I'm sorry I rained on your Pig Jigging) but you missed a great weekend in Atlanta.
I think I've seen you eat barbecue before, Julie.
I have had smoked stuff that was just too much, but the pork butt is to smoke what potatoes are to salt and seasoning. It's not quite a black hole, but it takes a whole hell of a lot to get overwhelming.
But then meats take smoke better than any other food. Bacon, barbecue, steaks on a grill (if you're using charcoal and not gas), are all smoke-tinged and all incredible examples of while human-on-livestock violence is a good thing.
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