Good thoughts: Home Cooking

[trystinn]

Alicia kindly assisted me in making a BBQ sauce substitute, given my tomato allergies, for a glorious slow cooked pulled pork.

The smell is going to haunt me all night.

Om....many munchings.

Comments

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

East Carolina barbecue is tradtionally whole-hog barbeque, cooked over hardwood coals, chopped, and then sauced with a mix of cider vinegar and spices. No tomatoes at all. I can eat a whole mess of East Carolina 'que.

So a tomatoless barbeque is perfectly tradtional.

[tryst-inn.livejournal.com]

Good to know, Brock, thank you kindly for the heads up. Not something I picked up in Brooklyn, I assure you.

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

If one wants to be particular, "barbeque" is a cooking technique, essentially slow-roasting over hardwood coals. The meat that gets cooked, and the spicing and saucing, is largely a matter of local custom. One of the two classic Memphis styles is pork dry-cooked with a spice rub. No sauce, as such, though a sauce may be served on the side, to dunk the meat in as it's being eaten. In Owensboro and Henderson, Kentucky, if you ask for generic barbeque, you'll get mutton or lamb, slow-roasted over hickory coals while being basted with a molasses-based sauce that caramelizes to a crusty glaze on the meat. In Texas the classic barbeque is beef brisket, occasionally seconded with sausage and chicken, all of these roasted over mesquite while being basted with a sauce that again caramelizes onto the meat.

Over the weekend I tried slow-roasting a piece of boston butt in a 225-degree oven for 16 hours. The experiement wasn't a complete success, (although I had some of the leftovers for supper tonight,) but the spice rub that came as part of the recipe is a keeper:

3 Tbsp toasted fennel seed
1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp kosher salt
4 cloves fresh garlic

Toast dry fennel seed on the stovetop using a small skillet. Peel garlic. Combine all ingredients, and process into a paste using a spice grinder, small blender jar, or a mortar and pestle. Shallowly score the meat in a cross-hatch pattern, and rub the paste across the surface of the meat and into the cuts. Roast as directed.

It's for porchetta, an Italian pork roast that is reminiscent of 'que.

So eat your 'que in good cheer, and refuse to make excuses for it. As long as it's tasty, what else matters?