25 BBQ Secrets Black Pitmasters Took to the Grave | 1960s South

Before there were recipes, there were pitmasters. This is the story of 25 barbecue secrets Black pitmasters worked out over generations in the 1960s South, and why almost none of them were ever written down. We get into how they read the smoke instead of a thermometer, why the mop sauce went on every 45 minutes, and where the vinegar bbq sauce of eastern North Carolina, the mustard based Carolina gold bbq sauce, the Alabama white sauce and the thick Kansas City bbq sauce actually came from. Not one of them started in a cookbook. You will hear how a whole hog ran 18 hours on hickory and oak, why the sauce never touched the meat until the last 20 minutes, how burnt ends were invented, and how Henry Perry sold barbecue off a street cart in Kansas City in 1908 and built the style the whole country eats today. Every barbecue sauce recipe you have ever used came from somewhere. This is where. Sources: period newspapers, oral histories, university food studies archives, and the Southern Foodways Alliance. What's inside: The pit build, wood as an ingredient, reading smoke color, the hand test, mop sauce, the mustard binder, rubs by ratio, overnight cooks, the 3 AM temperature drop, bbq chicken hot and fast, sauce timing, recycled drippings, burnt ends, smoked fish and sausage, cast iron on the pit, clean fire, resting the meat, and the credit that never came. Which of these did your family already know? Tell me in the comments. #bbq #barbecue #bbqsauce #blackhistory #pitmaster #southernfood