Recipe for Houston-Style Bar-B-Q
Semi-Fiction by Daniel Rigney
Twenty-first century Houston is a culinary crossroad. Cuisines native to Texas, such as barbecue* and TexMex, mingle casually and amiably with foods from other lands. But though our regional cuisines grow ever more varied, barbecue and Mexican food remain at the top of the Texas menu. On Sunday we observed Memorial Day with a traditional backyard barbecue at the Houston home of some good friends. As the temperature fell toward 90 degrees by late afternoon, we decided it was cool enough to cook and sit out back. The backyard pool had been inflated to the recommended air pressure and filled with agua pura for the younger kids, and the mosquitoes had not yet descended on us. We fired up the grill.
Here’s an authentic Houston recipe for Texas barbecue, faithfully remembered from Sunday night, that will make your mouth sing “Texas Our Texas” if you know the melody and lyrics.
Preparing the Charcoal
Preliminaries: One experienced Weber grill
One mess of charcoal briquets. (“Mess” is a common . though imprecise unit of measure in Texas.)
One container of two-stroke engine gasoline (not . recommended in real life)
Prepare gasoline mixture with 20 parts gasoline to one part motor oil. This will produce a blackish smoke, imparting a distinctive and regionally-authentic carbon flavor to the meat and vegetables. Houston is, after all, arguably the carbon capital of the world. How appropriate, then, that we should celebrate this feast day by grilling carne al carbon.
Drizzle briquets generously with two or three splashes of this Texas-style homemade lighter fluid. Throw matches, fade quickly, and enjoy the show.
Tonight our barbecue chef will be grilling a variety of meats, including two packages of Kosher hot dogs and several small succulent hamburger patties artisanally hand-crafted in the shape of Texas.
Preparing the Barbeque Sauce
If you haven’t procured a reputable barbecue sauce at the grocery store, just make your own. We enjoyed a traditional Texas homestyle sauce blending ketchup, vinegar, sugar and seasoning (to include salt, pepper, garlic, and whatever else you have on hand.) Or substitute these seasonings with Tony’s Cajun Seasoning, which is essentially the same thing. If your grocers don’t stock it, ask them to fly it in from Louisiana.
Grilling the Food
Tonight’s patio meal features not just the hamburgers and hot dogs mentioned earlier, but also fresh roasted corn in the shuck, potatoes, onions and zucchini.
The key to grilling Texas-style is to respect the Law of Irreversibility, which states that you can always cook something more if you need to, but you can’t uncook something that’s already been cooked too much. It’s really just applied physics.
Condiments and Beverages
Standard American accoutrements include mustard (choice of French mustard, French's mustard, or New York-style stoneground), onions, pickles, relish, and blue corn tortilla chips with salsa. For a walk on the wild side, why not try the four-jalepeno salsa on your burger or dog in place of ketchup, or in concert with it? Let cuisines join hands in friendship across borders.
Choice of cool refreshing beverages: Shiner or Shiner Bock (with sediment), Tsing Tao, Pepsi Max.
And a Surprise for Dessert
Slices of watermelon cut in the shape of Texas (That’s not the surprise, but it was mighty tasty.)
The surprise: Potato-chip cookies with chocolate chips, prepared with sidewalk chalk by the barbecue chef’s four-year-old daughter. Superb.
This is how we do barbecue in the authentic Houston style. Did I mention that the Texas barbecue chef and his family moved here recently from Connecticut?
*also sometimes spelled barbeque or Bar-B-Q. Some sources trace the word to Spanish via Haiti (barbacoa, from "framework of sticks") while others prefer the French etymology "de barbe à queue," meaning "from beard to tail" to denote spit roasting. Most English dictionaries, including OED, favor "barbecue," though as always, purists will insist on whatever version they learned first. I prefer "barbeque" myself, because the French etymology is more vivid. OED disdains the French derivation as an "absurd conjecture," but it creates a more memorable word-picture.
open.salon.com/blog/danagram
Semi-Fiction by Daniel Rigney
Twenty-first century Houston is a culinary crossroad. Cuisines native to Texas, such as barbecue* and TexMex, mingle casually and amiably with foods from other lands. But though our regional cuisines grow ever more varied, barbecue and Mexican food remain at the top of the Texas menu. On Sunday we observed Memorial Day with a traditional backyard barbecue at the Houston home of some good friends. As the temperature fell toward 90 degrees by late afternoon, we decided it was cool enough to cook and sit out back. The backyard pool had been inflated to the recommended air pressure and filled with agua pura for the younger kids, and the mosquitoes had not yet descended on us. We fired up the grill.
Here’s an authentic Houston recipe for Texas barbecue, faithfully remembered from Sunday night, that will make your mouth sing “Texas Our Texas” if you know the melody and lyrics.
Preparing the Charcoal
Preliminaries: One experienced Weber grill
One mess of charcoal briquets. (“Mess” is a common . though imprecise unit of measure in Texas.)
One container of two-stroke engine gasoline (not . recommended in real life)
Prepare gasoline mixture with 20 parts gasoline to one part motor oil. This will produce a blackish smoke, imparting a distinctive and regionally-authentic carbon flavor to the meat and vegetables. Houston is, after all, arguably the carbon capital of the world. How appropriate, then, that we should celebrate this feast day by grilling carne al carbon.
Drizzle briquets generously with two or three splashes of this Texas-style homemade lighter fluid. Throw matches, fade quickly, and enjoy the show.
Tonight our barbecue chef will be grilling a variety of meats, including two packages of Kosher hot dogs and several small succulent hamburger patties artisanally hand-crafted in the shape of Texas.
Preparing the Barbeque Sauce
If you haven’t procured a reputable barbecue sauce at the grocery store, just make your own. We enjoyed a traditional Texas homestyle sauce blending ketchup, vinegar, sugar and seasoning (to include salt, pepper, garlic, and whatever else you have on hand.) Or substitute these seasonings with Tony’s Cajun Seasoning, which is essentially the same thing. If your grocers don’t stock it, ask them to fly it in from Louisiana.
Grilling the Food
Tonight’s patio meal features not just the hamburgers and hot dogs mentioned earlier, but also fresh roasted corn in the shuck, potatoes, onions and zucchini.
The key to grilling Texas-style is to respect the Law of Irreversibility, which states that you can always cook something more if you need to, but you can’t uncook something that’s already been cooked too much. It’s really just applied physics.
Condiments and Beverages
Standard American accoutrements include mustard (choice of French mustard, French's mustard, or New York-style stoneground), onions, pickles, relish, and blue corn tortilla chips with salsa. For a walk on the wild side, why not try the four-jalepeno salsa on your burger or dog in place of ketchup, or in concert with it? Let cuisines join hands in friendship across borders.
Choice of cool refreshing beverages: Shiner or Shiner Bock (with sediment), Tsing Tao, Pepsi Max.
And a Surprise for Dessert
Slices of watermelon cut in the shape of Texas (That’s not the surprise, but it was mighty tasty.)
The surprise: Potato-chip cookies with chocolate chips, prepared with sidewalk chalk by the barbecue chef’s four-year-old daughter. Superb.
This is how we do barbecue in the authentic Houston style. Did I mention that the Texas barbecue chef and his family moved here recently from Connecticut?
*also sometimes spelled barbeque or Bar-B-Q. Some sources trace the word to Spanish via Haiti (barbacoa, from "framework of sticks") while others prefer the French etymology "de barbe à queue," meaning "from beard to tail" to denote spit roasting. Most English dictionaries, including OED, favor "barbecue," though as always, purists will insist on whatever version they learned first. I prefer "barbeque" myself, because the French etymology is more vivid. OED disdains the French derivation as an "absurd conjecture," but it creates a more memorable word-picture.
open.salon.com/blog/danagram
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