NYC BBQ

I feared the worst, and put off reading it until today, but last week's  DI/DO piece on NYC BBQ was largely sane,  one could even say remarkably inoffensive, aside from a few moments of Orientalizing Texans and Memphians:

An awful lot of stuff around town still has no right calling itself barbecue, though the ratio has improved considerably. Some places dabble in too many styles. Out there where barbecue comes from, that doesn’t happen: the top places in Texas don’t dress up their pork shoulder in Carolina drag, and no one in Memphis is trying to outgun Texans at their own game.

Whatever. I hope there is a Memphian somewhere right now, smoking a brisket and shaking her fist at the Grey Lady.  More generally, the pitfall of BBQ writing is the assumption that good=echt (the BBQ corollary to the Roadfood Fallacy), and this article mostly managed to take places as they come, rather than posit some bogus notion of authenticity as the yardstick.
    However, NYC has not fully emerged from its self-imposed BBQ nonage. Viz Chris Lilly's BBQ demonstration in Madison Park. (Starting nowish, as it happens.) The photo Grub St. ran was credited "courtesy of Kingsford." and sure enough, Kingsford is sponsoring this event. BBQ fueled with Kingsford would be about like Canard a la Sunny D, and about as tasty. A word of non-pedantic-as-possible clarification: The Kingsford folks seem to be exploiting the Northeast conflation of "cookout" and "BBQ." A cookout involves cooking food outdoors, usually by grilling directly, using either gas, Kingsford or other briquettes, natural lump charcoal, or wood.  BBQ, in the sense that describes what cooks like Chris Lilly might cook at BBQ contests, means using smoke to cook indirectly, using wood, or wood chips. Conceivably, one might use charcoal to generate the heat to generate smoke from chips, but a serious BBQer would not want smoke from the binders and other adjuncts briquettes contain. Kingsford briquettes are useful as a source of heat in applications like on top of a Caja China, but not for actual BBQ. If anybody gets a chance to swing by, I'd be interested to know what actually happens at this event.
 

Comments

[max]

You're a stronger man than I. Seriously, life's so much more pleasant when you ignore the Times.

Now, if only we could do something about NPR.

[Rose's Lime]

Whole Foods carries the Nieman Ranch shrink-wrapped pre-par-boiled ribs in sauce yet they don't carry Kingsford. I kind of look at them the same way. I'm sure there's an Achewood that expresses the sentiment, "BBQ takes time, fool."

On another note, if Jonathan Papplebon can recommend duck with Coca Cola, I'm sure there's a starting pitcher with a recipe for Duck a la D. Paired with Lone Star, I bet it cures the hangover as you create it.

[dubarry]

o i gave up npr more than a decade ago. it's like i always say: i ardently support the left, but i never want to hang out with them.

[BK]

I don't often use them -- and you'll think it sacrilege -- but I'll say this: In practice, Kingsford briquettes have their place. Those prefab lumps maintain a constant and lower temp far easier and far longer than do any of the natural wood lumps I've tried (and I've done a fair amount of sperimentin). Most readily-available natural lumps tend to burn hot and fast, which is great for high-heat grilling, a la Chris Schlesinger, et al., but proves very temperamental over the long haul when BBQing.