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A heaping platter of BBQ from Willie’s Locally Known. Photo by Sarah Jane Sanders
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The popular Lexington BBQ joint Blue Door Smokehouse smokes their meat fresh every day, selling it until it’s gone. Photo by Sarah Jane Sanders
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Georgetown Road is home to the popular roadside barbecue joint Red State BBQ. Photo by Sarah Jane Sanders
In anticipation of this month’s inaugural Big Ass Bluegrass BBQ Fest (June 9-10 at the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza), Wes Berry, author of “The Kentucky Barbecue Book,”takes us on an exploration of Kentucky’s evolving barbecue culture
We have the fast horses, bluegrass tunes, bourbon whiskey, big-time college basketball, worldwide-craved fried chicken, and country hams that rival the best charcuterie in Spain, but when folks think “Kentucky” they don’t necessarily think “barbecue.”
That might be changing.
Kentucky barbecue is not well known nationally, which is one of the reasons I wrote “The Kentucky Barbecue Book.” I had a hunch we had some great barbecue in this state, so I set out to eat at every joint in the Commonwealth that cooks animals with wood and smoke. Now, with nearly 200 Kentucky barbecue places under my expanded belt, I proudly proclaim our state a worthy destination for feasting on a variety of critters tenderized by wood, fire, smoke and time.
Kentuckians have been barbecuing on a grand scale since our land became a state in 1792, or soon thereafter, according to an account by naturalist bird painter John James Audubon, who witnessed an early 1800s Fourth of July barbecue in the state in which oxen, hams, deer, turkeys and other birds, and many barrels of whiskey were donated by the citizenry for the feast. Kentuckians today are just as generous when it comes to the kind of meats we put on the barbie.
As for American barbecue destinations, four regions or “styles” have received the most publicity: Texas, North Carolina, Memphis and Kansas City. Dozens of books, television shows and social media sites celebrate these barbecue regions. The skinny on the fat: Traditionally, Texans favor beef brisket and Czech-inspired sausages, and North Carolinians prefer pulled pork. Memphis is famous for “wet” (sauced) and “dry” (spice-dusted) pork ribs and pork sandwiches with slaw on top. Kansas City is known for thick tomato-based sauces – some sweet, others chili-peppery spicy – served with (or over) a variety of meats, plus their burnt ends, smoky chunks sliced from a brisket point, often smothered in sauce.
In Kentucky, appropriate to our borderline location, we cook up just about any animal that has meat on it, and we generally don’t sauce the dickens out of it like they do in Kansas City. We’re not as big as Texas, but we contain multitudes of barbecue.
A Kentucky Barbecue Primer
In the western part of our 120-countied state – basically west of I-65 – the preferred barbecue is pulled or chopped pork from whole shoulders or Boston butts, traditionally cooked on masonry pits for 12 to 20-something hours over hickory coals. Additionally, many western counties put cured hams (city hams) and precooked turkey breasts on the pits and then slice the smoke-drenched meats thinly for sandwiches. Sauce styles vary county by county. Bordering the Mississippi River, Hickman County restaurants serve meats without sauce and offer a vinegar and cayenne pepper concoction in plastic squirt bottles at the table. Some McCracken County sauces taste strongly of vinegar and chili powder. Union and Henderson Counties favor a savory Worcestershire based dip, while over in Christian County, to the east, the sauces turn again to vinegar and cayenne.
Kentucky was once a major sheep-producing state, and the hunger for sheep meat has passed down through the generations in a few western Kentucky counties. Mutton (meat from a mature sheep) is our most distinctive claim to barbecue uniqueness, although fewer than 10 percent of Kentucky’s barbecue places serve it regularly. Sheep meat is cooked many hours with hickory wood and basted with a savory black dip, typically a mix of water, Worcestershire sauce, spices (black pepper, allspice, onion, garlic), brown sugar, lemon juice and vinegar. The best towns for mutton barbecue are Hopkinsville and Owensboro.
A third “major” Kentucky tradition is the “Monroe Co. style” dominating barbecue menus in a few south-central counties. Locals refer to it as “shoulder.” Boston Butts (the meatiest part of a pork shoulder) are frozen and cut into thin slices, bone in, with a meat saw. Cooks burn down hickory slabs and shovel the coals underneath iron grates that hold dozens of slices of shoulder (and chickens, hamburgers, hot dogs, pork chops and pork tenderloins), flipping and sopping them with a dip of vinegar, butter, lard, cayenne and black pepper. If you like spiciness, then order a shoulder plate “dipped”; milder palates prefer “sprinkled.” Popular side dishes in this region include vinegar slaw and “barbecued eggs”– boiled eggs pickled in the peppery vinegary dip.
Beyond these three major styles – long-smoked pulled pork, mutton and grilled sliced shoulder – you’ll find pockets of micro-regional flavors in the Commonwealth. For instance, barbecue on toast is preferred in four western Kentucky counties. Hickory smoked pork or mutton is pulled or chopped and served between slices of toasted bread (raw onions and dill pickles optional). In some places, like Hopkinsville, you can get smoked chopped mutton and pork served between hoecakes. A popular item in Union and Henderson counties is “chipped” mutton: exterior bark from mutton quarters and pork shoulders is chopped and mixed with a thin tangy sauce, which adds moisture back into the fire-dried meats. Because bark has so much smokiness, “chip” packs a wallop of flavor and is best eaten as a sandwich.
Burgoo, a rich stew made from various meats and vegetables is found primarily in a funky triangle that runs from Owensboro (the burgoo capital) down to Madisonville, south to Hopkinsville, south to Guthrie, and back to Owensboro. You can find burgoo outside this region, but it’s rare. Burgoo is Kentucky’s more robust cousin to the Brunswick stews claimed by Georgia and Virginia.
Outside the barbecue hotbed of western Kentucky, you’ll find a hodgepodge of local preferences. A few Louisville barbecue places slather on tomato-based sauces, and this trend continues in the northern and eastern counties, like in Appalachian Floyd County, where local preference is for heavily sauced barbecue a la Kansas City. Louisville and Lexington are melting pots of barbecue, serving beef brisket, Memphis-style dry-rubbed ribs and western Kentucky pork and mutton.
Lexington has a fast-changing barbecue scene. At the time of publication of “The Kentucky Barbecue Book” in spring 2013, I’d eaten at several Bluegrass region barbecue places that I considered good enough to feature in the book. These were Staxx in Frankfort, Tony’s Bar-B-Que Barn in Lawrenceburg, Dunn’s BBQ in Harrodsburg, Fat Boys in Georgetown, and several Lexington places: Billy’s, Ky. Butt Rubb’in BBQ, J. J. McBrewster’s, Mary Lou’s, Neal’s Smoke Box, Wagon Bones Grill, Red State and Sarah’s Corner Café. Four year later, many of these places have closed. In Lexington, Red State continues to serve up tender brisket and pork ribs, mac and cheese, corn pudding (I even ate an alligator sausage po’ there once) in its charming location near the old motel and across from the horse pastures. Mary Lou’s was sold and rebranded as Blue Door, and the young cooks there do some of the best brisket, pork ribs and collards I’ve eaten in the Commonwealth. A barbecue chain (City Barbecue) and a franchise (Dickey’s) have come to town, plus a few others (Bradford, Double H, J. Renders, Lyles, Willies Locally Known) I’ve yet to try. In a (hickory) nutshell, folks of the bluegrass and eastern regions of the state can explore a number of barbecue eateries serving a cross-section of American barbecue styles not far from home.
O Lord, I regret that I’ve but one gall bladder to give to the decadent quest of the smoky arts.