A Lip-Smacking Look at Barbecue

some jerk rights? And it's like, oh, how sounds like you're still going on Caney all the time, Like, don't go listen to something else? Pal okay, I see what you mean. I mean before we record a podcast. On the podcast, as we record a podcast at the beginning of the oh gotcha, I don't say like, hey, you might not want to listen to this, but um, yeah, you might not want to listen to this. But I imagine if a vegan saw how Barbecue Works probably be like, yeah,

we'll just wait. Yeah, they're probably not going to fall for it, wait for the Tofu episode, which we owe them. Now after doing this one I had fried tofu and uh Chicago, No no, no. In Toronto at our recent show there it was. It was one of those sushi places where they bring you out a little piece of fried tofu. Yeah. Oh man, I can't believe I'm blanking,

but yes, I know what you mean. Is that like a there's your name for it, like the custom of it or no, the dish the piece of fried tofu with a little maybe Ponzi sauce on it and some scaions delicious. This one was okay, but it was that it was one of the worst sushi meals I've ever had in my life. I just chose wrong, like bad sushi or bad rest, bad everything I walked in And it's hard to tell because no, no, no, I won't name it. I don't even remember that. No no, that's

the name of the dish. Oh yeah. Um. Like in l A, some of the best sushi are these strip mall holes in the wall. Sometimes sometimes it's not the case, though sometimes it is though, Like literally, some of the best sushi that you don't have to go to some fancy place and spend four are these you know, small family run run by Japanese people. Um. This one in Toronto. I looked up afterward and they were like, oh, it's

one of those. Apparently Toronto has a lot of Chinese run sushi places which get knocked on Yelp and by reviewers, and um. You could also make the case that um places that serve sushi and Thai food knocked on as well. Yeah. I don't usually order sushi, but at a Thai restaurant, if I go to a tie place, I want a good tie dish. Sure you want like a curry, put some peanuts in there or something there some peanuts on there. But anyway, I chose wrong, and this was a hole

in the wall place. So when I walked in, my instinct was like, oh no, but I thought no, no, no Los Angeles, Hollywood. Really good stuff at the holes in the wall, not the case bad fish, bad taste. What was just it skive to me? And like if you're skiveed eating sushi, yeah that's put down the chopsticks and just ask for the check, maybe spit up into your nap walk away. Anyway, I don't know why I went off on that. What we're talking about barbecue, all right, Yeah,

we're talking barbecue. Barbecue. This one made me hungry, dude, same here. Um. One of the things that I really opened my eyes about though, was the idea that like people think of barbecue as about as American as it gets, even though Australians have their own word for the bobby and that pretty good. And it turns out there's barbecue

like all around the world. But when you think of barbecue, especially like barbecued pork with barbecue sauce on like two slices of plain old Dixie Girl white bread, that's about as American as it gets. So not just American like Southern American barbecue. There's actually a strip of land known as the barbecue Belt in the United States basically goes from Virginia down into the southeast and then over across Kansas and then into Texas. That's the barbecue Belt in

the US. Correct, But barbecue is now every city in the country tries to do their their own hand at barbecue. Like I mean, if you go to New York City, you can go eat at a barbecue joint. Uh, and they're trying to do it. You know that they're trying to Yeah, which is fine, they're but they're trying to not co opt because that sounds like it's like shady

or something. But you know, you go to New York now and you can get like you can go to and get fried chicken and biscuits and barbecue and all these people that are like, come to New York City and eat this good old southern home cooking. Have you eaten a Fatty Queue in New York that's very good barbecue for New York joint? Yeah, And I just I don't do that because when I'm in New York, why would I get what I is literally surrounding me here.

I want to go to New York and I want to go get go to the Mama Fuco or something. I don't have that here. It's steam bun while you can get steam buns here. Yeah. But I mean, you can make the case that you should be going to Korea for steam buns. But it is true. And there's nothing wrong with if somebody opening a good barbecue joint outside of the barbecue belt, it's just for it. In the barbecue belt, they don't even think about it. It's

just part of the fabric of life. But I guarantee you if you go to San Francisco to a barbecue joint. You're not going to be the same. It's going to be different. They'll like a Chinese sushi place. There you go. That's the point of my story. So UM. The point ultimately is that when you think of America having a barbecue belt, you think a barbecue as profoundly American. Sure, but it turns out that since you were talking about cultural appropriation, UM, that the European settlers who came to

the New World um actually appropriated. They got the idea for a barbecue from the indigenous groups they encountered there, and specifically, to start from what I understand, the whole thing started on Hispaniola, where Columbus first landed Um with the Tano Indians. Yeah, I mean cooking. I guess if you want to talk barbecue, there's a couple of ways

to approach it. There is the noun barbecue, which here in the South in America we think of is like you said, pulled pork, maybe brisket, smoked wings, and then side dishes like cold slaw, baked beans, mac and cheese, brunswick ste man so good. Maybe if you're getting a little wild, maybe like collared greens or fried okra and monkey eyes that sort of starts to there's a bit of an overlap between Southern meat and three cooking and barbecue, especially when it comes to the sides um, and I

think all that actually grow to church picnics originally. Yeah, I did some good eating growing up at my church and meet and three for those of you that don't understand in other countries, that means um, a little small family run restaurant, usually in the South, that you get to meat and then three sides, generally served on like

a cafeteria tray. And we're talking stuff like fried pork chops or fried chicken, or chicken, fried chicken, chicken, fried chicken, chicken, fried steak, chicken, fried steak, steak, fried chicken, fried steak, fried chicken, fried monkey eyes, and then all these various sides will be the three. But there's a little bit over that lap with barbecue. But barbecue, the distinction is you're talking about meats that are cooked over a low heat, generally over a long long period of time. Yeah, hours

and hours, hours and hours. We'll get in it all the subtleties of this, but that's what barbecue really is, right and normally, if you really if you're a purist um. You're it's specifically pig. Anything else outside of pig is not barbecue, whether it's chickens, sausage, whether it's shrimp, whether it's brisket. If it's not pig, it's not barbecue. Say a substantial portion of barbecue enthusiasts. Yeah, I say you can just take that and uh then run away with it.

Take that, take that pig and shove it. Well, the reason it's actually that that whole thing kind of is the crux that is found in a nine Esquire article called My Pig Beats Your Cow, which basically argues that if it's not pig, it's not barbecue. And the reason that that would be the cases because barbecue is it came out of the American South as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the stuff that

they were originally cooking was pig. And the reason why they were cooking pig was because that's what they had available to them. And there was a specific reason for cooking pig, like you said, low and slow, very long time over a lowish heat. It's because the pigs that they were originally cooking were had been turned out to feed fend for themselves out in the woods. Because if you are running low on food, because you know you're a colonist to a new place where you have no

idea what you're doing. You one thing you can do with pigs and say, just go out in the woods and eat some truffles and then will come kill you later and eat you. Well. As they're doing that, they're becoming like kind of like wood ready and like their leaner. Their meat is tougher, there's less fat. So to cook that kind of food and make it tender, you have to cook it over low heat for a very long time. And that's where barbecuing pig in the South originally came from.

That's the origin of barbecue. Yeah. And what's so cool to me is um from the oranges, oranges from the origins, whether or not it's uh. I think. In two thousand seven, Israeli archaeologists found um a two hundred thousand year old evidence of barbecuing, essentially barbecuing wild cattle and gazelle. Whether it's that or Hispaniola like you were talking about, or in the fifteen hundreds uh in Spain, Um or the

earliest native Americans. What's so cool to me is that they learned they first learned cooked meat good, and then they learned, oh, but very slow cooked heat meat over low heat better. Yeah, you know, like early early on they found evidence that and these recipes that they cooked slow and low, they actually learned the subtle difference between this is charred meat, it will sustain me, it's it

will last a little bit longer and preserve it. And they learned the subtleties that no, it's tender and juicy and delicious, but do it this way. Yeah, it's just amazing to me. Yeah, and again we've known it for

hundreds of thousands of years at least. There's actually a theory that says that the intelligence explosion in humans came about from cooking our food, especially meat, because it requires less energy to digest, which meant we could take a lot of that digestive energy and directed upward to our brains, and so our brains got bigger, and hence we got

smarter things to cooking our food. Yeah, and there's something to uh, And they talk about this in the beginning of our article here um being the antithesis of fast food. There's something about investing, something about getting up at three in the morning to put your your meat on your smoker so you can have it ready by midday, and tending to it every hour and checking that thermometer and the whole time that's starting at three am, um or

continuing from two am. Yeah, that's that makes sometimes for a messy barbecue. But there's just something to that. I think it's I think that's one of the big draws for people. Is it is Uh. It's not something you slap on the grill and served fifteen minutes later. It's nuanced and and that's how you build that flavor. Uh. And it's an investment in time and you can have the conversations around that fire. And this one writer put it, really Robert Moss, to trace the history of barbecue is

to trace the very threat of American history. And there's been books written about it, not just recipes, but about it as a cultural staple in this country. Really really neat. Well, I'm I'm hungry. You want to take a break? So hungry? M alright, So we're back, man. I mean that was delicious. That's the sound of me flicking sauce off my fingers. Yeah, we uh took one of Jerry's legs barbecue, Arie do lean, she would make good barbecue. Well, no, that's why you

want a barbecue slowing. So Um, like you said, there's evidence of us barbecuing is back as far back as two hundred thousand years the ancient Greeks um really advanced barbecuing, which sure, it's really just it's a sub type of of roasting meat. And it's not like if you're like, well wait a minute, people have been like creating this forever.

How can you say barbecuing as American. It's kind of like ketchup, Like remember Ketchup, where you think of Ketchup as American, but it actually has its origins and a Chinese fish sauce. This is very similar. But like barbecuing wouldn't have come about had humans not been doing this for two hundred thousand years already. This is just a

kind of a nuanced version of it, right. Um. So around the world people roast meat in various ways, like, for example, um, in medieval England they found evidence they actually have a taxidermy um sample of of this breed of dog called the turnspit, and um no, no, it was really cute. So this small dogs they look kind of dock Sundy were bred to run on treadmills or little hamster wheels too. That was connected by a chain to the spit. So it turned this huge piece of

meat in the fire. Dog though they were small dogs, but they were stout. Oh they were turning the huge dog. Yeah, they're like better him than me. Um, And that was in medieval England. Well, you can make a really good case that turning a hunk of meat on a spit very slowly off an indirect flame that's barbecuing. But it's not barbecue because it didn't come out of the American

South cooking pork specifically. But um, the lot of people from the south and west of England ended up in the American South, and that's kind of one of the ways that it started to grow there. Yeah, so let's let's just quit billy dallying de Soto. Well, first Columbus shows up encounters the Tano Indians on Hispaniola, who are would have been related to um, the Haitians and the Dominicans today. Uh, and I believe people in Puerto Rico

to um. So the Tano Indians had this method of cooking meat where they used green wood like fresh saplings, so that it wouldn't catch fire and therefore wouldn't char the meat either, and they cooked meat like probably goats or something like that over this this low heat for

a very long time. So I think Columbus encountered it, but definitely Hernando de Soto did as well when he arrived in North America, and supposedly the first European attended barbecue took place outside of what's today Tupelo, Mississippi, in fifteen forty with De Soto, who is the guy who brought pigs to the New World. Could have been my family. So it was a roasted pig, Chuck's family, her Nando

de Soto, and the Chickasaw tribe who lived around there. Yeah, that was the first, the first barbecue in North America featuring pig. Yeah. And as you'll see as we go, barbecue is very social experience that has weaved its way through churches and gatherings and civic groups and American politics, and we'll get into all that, but it's it's it's not surprising that there's evidence of a group of people getting together like any shared meal, but with barbecue, it's

just gonna be longer. Well, yeah, and supposedly that arose out of the slaughtering of a pig was a big deal. You had a lot of meat on your hands. They used everything from the snout to the tail of the pig, so you had a lot of stuff and it was way more than your family was going to eat. So it was an occasion for the whole community, or at least all the neighbors, to be invited over to share in this wonderful food. And that's where barbecues being a

social gathering came out of that. During the colonial era, Uh, eating a pig was a very communal affair. Well, and we've we've talked before about um I just kind of remembered about fire, about the theories that language of all because of fire, because for the first time, people gathered round after the sun went down to talk about their day. So this is kind of along the same lines. Like where you have a fire going, you're gonna have people

hanging out. There's some meat on a spit several feet up. You've got some tasty food. Can yourself a turnspit dog? Uh yeah, because he wants to crank that thing. Turnspit dog. That's what they were bred to do so Native Americans here, they kind of improve things over time. They eventually would make these wooden frames that they would put the meat on. And then in a man named Elsworth, his warrior, patented the charcoal briquette, which started being mass produced about twenty

three years later. You didn't know by whom, Well, I would imagine, uh uh, what's the big one now? Kingsford. Kingsford was Henry Johnny match like. Kingsford was Henry Ford's cousin in law. And Henry Ford was looking for a way to use all of these stumps and sawdust that was left over from the boards that were produced for like the running boards and the dashboards for his model T because he wanted he had all this waste and he wanted to put it to good use. So he

started mass producing charcoal briquettes. Yeah, and we're talking about wood briquettes. Yeah. Briquette is basically coal, tar, sawdust, sometimes corn starch. That's like a that's a wood briquette. Yeah, or now the wood briquettes. A lot of times it's just real wood, like chunks of wood, like if you're a real barbecue enthusiast. You're not gonna be buying these submit briquettes. Sure you buy some of those, get some open pit barbecue sauce, and you've done. Let's go back

to bed Um. Nineteen fifties. A man named George Stephen, he's a metalworker. He got half attached some legs to a half of a spherical nautical booie was the other half of the lid. He said, I'm gonna call this the Webber kettle grill. I don't know where he got the name. I don't either. Did you notice there's a webber grill restaurant in Chicago? Really, we saw it walking around. You know, they have a giant webber grill outside. It's amazing.

I have a giant webber grill in my deck. So I thought it was weird to point this out because he was far from the first person to invent the portable backyard grill. Oh really, yeah, been around for a long time. Well maybe it was just the kettle Girl. He definitely invented the kettle girl, but he was. It's just weird that they chose him to point out because the backyard portable grill had been around a while. Well,

maybe it was. This article is underwritten by Weber maybe, and I just like Buzz marketed them as owning one Webber, I don't too whoa I know, right. So the smoke is really I mean slow and low is what we're talking about, temperature wise, And we'll get into the specifics of that in a minute. But what you're really doing is you're you're getting the smoke from whatever type of wood or would briquette that you were using in the fire. Um.

And we're gonna talk about those flavors now. But my advice, if you're new to this, you've never done it, go out and get some different samples of these various woods. And you don't even need to cook with them at first. Just light them and smell the smoke and see what you like, and then whatever you're drawn to use. That good advice, But starting out, if you want to talk barbecue, Um, Hickory in the South was widely used, and most of these regionally were used because that obviously was the wood

they had near there. So hickory was abundant in the South. A little sweet, very rich, good for good for everything, especially monkey guys mesquite uh Texas. Uh. This is where you get the more mesquite flavor. And apparently the mesquite would was sort of a nuisance. But in Texas they got on the beef train obviously and said the stuff mesquite wood is really good for beef. Yeah what else? Um, apparently fruit wood is good for things like chicken and seafood.

Does think of bacon when I think apple would apple would smoke bacon? Yeah, that's the thing. Um, But yeah, I think that's good advice. Just whatever you like, it's was what you should use. Yeah. And if you don't have time to invest in a um would burning briquette, like if you have a propane stove, Um, you can

always I know it's not gonna be is authentic. You can always just cheep out and get a one of those pans that you can keep the the wood on and soak it and that'll that'll give you some extra flavor. But it's not gonna be anything like you know, twelve hours over a fire, right like a wood fire. You know. Now, and if you're if you're starting to get the impression that there's a certain level of purity, Yes, so the idea of barbecuing, Yes, you you're absolutely correct, and I'm

not a purist. I'm an amateur. Like I don't have a smoker at this point. So at this point maybe Webber will send you. At some point I should I should probably get one for free. Um. So one of the other things that really distinguishes different types of barbecue, especially regionally, is or even down to like the individual chef or pit masters. We'll see they're called um although I guess I just spoiled. That is how you get

the meat ready to cook. So there's there's really a lot of differences in that you're you're getting the meat ready to cook, and then what you do to the meat afterward. Two is huge as well. But to get it ready, there's one of two things you're gonna do the meat. You're going to either hit it with a dry rub or you're gonna hit it with a wet rub. You're gonna do something ahead of time, and you're gonna talk to it nicely sure while you spank and um

with the dry rub. In particular, supposedly there's four s is there is are you ready for this? Okay? Sweetness, sugar or honey, typically savory like say, garlic, spices and herbs, and spicy sensations like pepper or something or ginger. That's way more ses than four, especially if you count all the pluralization s. Yeah, have you ever made a rub? No? Not really? You into this at all? To barbecue? No,

I I don't barbecue, but um into eating barbecue. You You get into this stuff now with cooking, Like I could see you smoking a brisket one day and being like, Wow, that was rewarding. Give it a shot, okay. Um. Also, you also strike me as a type that would be like, I don't have time to it's into a grill for twelve hours. Well, I mean if there's if if Yeah, maybe let's pick the right day. Yeah, I could study

for the podcast while I'm tending to the fire. So I have made dry rubs, and I don't know what I'm doing. I just will look at recipes and just kind of do my own thing with it. Um. But it really makes all the difference if you rub this meat down real good, get in all the crevices and and nooks and crannies and and let it let it just sit with itself for a while. Um. I don't add any wetness to it. But you can't add vinegar. You can add oil. Um, if you've never done it,

like I said, get online. There's a million different ways you can tackle this beast. Yeah, if you be careful, because that's what they call a rabbit hole. Yeah, you're going to fall down it when you start just looking into rubs. I'm sure that will lead you to this and that. Well actually I'm kind of into the Memphis style and that kind of thing. So um, after after you also want to make sure that you're aware of

this to start that. Barbecue sauce is the stuff you put on right before serving or while you're eating, depending. Um all, if you're not into it, sure, some people just eat like dry, dryer, wet, rubbed like barbecue. Um, I love it with sauce. It just seems wrong to eat it without sauce. But yes, some people are into it like that. Um, but that's not what a rub is, dry or wet. That's that's the sauce that's different. We'll

talk about that in a little bit. And you kind of gave a little um distinction between you gave a definition of barbecuing, right, and I said that that like roasting meat is basically barbecue any type of roasting meat. But there's there's slight definitions. One of the things that comes up is the difference between barbecuing and grilling. And this one's actually kind of easy. The distinction is it's

based on time and temperature. Yeah. So with with the barbecue, you do that slow and low thing where you're roasting for several hours over a relatively low heat. Uh. This article says to two fifty, I wonder if that's cannon. Uh. Well, I mean it depends definitely. In the low two hundreds is a good idea. I think to fifty seems a little high. But um, I'm no expert, but grilling is hotter and faster. Yeah. And with grilling, I mean there

are a couple of ways you can grill too. You can uh direct grill, which is just really high heat if you want to um, sira steak or something, but that's not barbecue. Um. And then indirect grilling when it's on the grill around three fifty but you've just got the coals kind of on one side and then your meat on the other. And that's it's kind of the

middle ground. But the verb barbecue, it's very highly regionalized as to what terminology you're gonna use and like, I don't say I'm gonna barbecue today, Like I say I'm gonna grill out. Do you want to come over? I'm grilling out. I don't say we're barbecuing. Some people might say smoke instead of barbecue. Yeah, we're gonna smoke out.

We're gonna we're gonna smoke some meat or something like that. Um. But I I think of barbecue as the noun, like we'll go get some barbecue or cook some barbecue by grilling out. Yeah, it's always out because you don't grow inside. That's a bad idea. Um. And then afterwards, so we've done preparation, the cooking, and now the thing's ready, but it's not ready quite yet because you've got the sauce.

If you're into sauces, and depending on where you are in the country, uh, you're going to use different types of sauce. And what I found interesting was that with American barbecue, the the Europeans who came in appropriated the barbecuing process brought their own tastes to the fold, and depending on where they settled, that's that area developed a specific type of barbecue sauce. Starting with the Carolinas. Yeah,

this kind of reminds me of the accents. Thing was like the trail that, uh, the accents as the accents developed as where people settled, Like food was kind of secondary to that or hand in hand with that. Uh yeah, North Carolina in Virginia, these were British colonists mainly, and they liked tart tarti things, So you're gonna find more vinegar based sauces there until you get the South Carolina where you have the french Ins and Germans who liked mustard,

so they have the mustard based sauce. I don't think I've ever had that. Uh yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean I don't not like it, but it's never gonna be my first choice. What was do you remember when we hosted that locust thing on Science Channel and I went to the barbecue place. It was like a legendary barbecue place in South no Greensboro, North Carolina. Yeah, that was really neat. Yeah, so they had like the

good vinegar sauce. Yeah, just seeing the inner machinations of how a big barbecue place works, right, Yeah, they took us back to where the fire was. Yeah, it was pretty good and hot. Uh. If you go a little further west, a little about as far west as you can to the other end of the barbecue belt, you're in Texas, West Texas to be specific. Apparently in East Texas they eat basically like Kansas City barbecue or Memphis maybe, but in West Texas they get their own And like

you said, they're not even using pork, it's beef. They're cooking brisket over mesquite. That's Texas cowboys style barbecue, which some people would argue is not actually barbecue. Yeah, and that's because the German immigrants who raised all in the west, in West Texas. Um, I love brisket, so yeah, I've got no problems with brisket and pulled pork, and me

I like them both. Like when I woulder like a catered if I'm having like a big party or something, I would er a catered barbecue, I get one of each. The one. Yeah. The one thing I'm not crazy about is barbecue chicken. I like it. I mean I make it at home because that's a quicker, easier thing to do, just like for dinner. Um, but I don't ever order that in a barbecue restaurant. I just didn't know what a waste. Yeah, I do that home cooking. Sure. Uh,

Memphis style. Um, they were a port town because of the Mississippi River right there, and so they could get molasses more readily. So that's why Memphis has a very sweet tomato base sauce. Yeah, delicious. Which and then have you heard of Alabama barbecue before? I had not, so the way that this article puts it, it's a lesser known style from northern Alabama, involving a white sauce made

with mayonnaise, vinegar, and lemon juice. For some reason, that use of the word involving makes it sound like they're talking about some unpleasant business. It's just hilarious. It doesn't sound very good, but I would try it. I've had that white sauce. I don't think I knew it was Alabama specific. Oh yeah, but I've had it before. So perhaps you can answer this one for me. What is Georgia barbecue? Is it just basically like a rip off

of North Carolina? I don't know, man Like, Well, we'll get slayd for this because we live in Georgian iight at barbecue places all over town. Yeah, I guess it's its own thing, but it doesn't seem it's it's a tart. It's a tart vinegary based sauce, but sweet as well. Well. There can most of the places I see in Atlanta have both. I have the vinegar sauce or the or the sweet sauce, like the really thick And I think

Kansas City is barbecue is sort of known. Um Henry Perry settled there and opened up one of the first barbecue restaurant, and I think they kind of pulled from Memphis a little bit. I think they drew influences from all over because they were last and but I think in the city is generally known for that kind of sweet and tangy sauce. But but once in Atlanta, I've seen kind of have all kinds, but it's typically pork,

although they'll have brisket on the menu. But most people when they think of barbecue in the South or in Georgia, think of pulled pork. I think people think of both. Or maybe I'm just saying that because I do Well, I don't know, there's a lot of transplants in Atlanta, So maybe what what's your favorite place in Atlanta? Uh, it depends on what you're looking for because the ribs obviously Fat Matt's Rib Shack is the real deal. Um wings chicken Fox Brothers obviously. Okay, yeah, their wings are

good and their sauce is good too. And then for pulled pork. There's a place on Peachtree Industrial and it doesn't even have a name. It just says like brick pit Barbecue. But it's not even the name of the place. They're just saying like they have a brick pit barbecue it' and um, you can tell like that same fire has been going since the late sixties and it is just amazing just for like a regular old pulled pork sandwich with like really good Brunswick's too, and then like that

plain white hamburger bun perfect. What about yours? I like Fox Brothers. Okay, Um, it's good. Um My favorite barbecue is Community Barbecue. Um yeah, I've never heard of that. It's really good. I mean, I guess you call that Decatur. It's in that shopping center with it's kind of the best food restaurant shopping center in Atlanta because it's got a tie place, an Italian place, a barbecue joint, a an Indian restaurant, that's not true. I have eaten there.

It is good. So it's got like seven restaurants and all of them are different ethnicity, um, which obviously wasn't an accident. I don't know who owns that, but like, kudos to them, hats all. But Community Barbecue is just the best. Their brisket is unbelievable, and they're mac and cheese is indescribably good. It's that's really saying something because usually mac and cheese is terrible at a restaurant. Stuff

is so good. You see him making it sometimes, and like if you walk to go to the restroom, you'll see in the kitchen they're making these pans of mac and cheese. I don't know how much cheese goes into it or the different kinds. And they have cream and stuff every cream, but it's just ungodly the amount of cheese. Everybody on this side that makes it good. They don't

call it macin some cheese. All right, let's take a break and we're going to talk about sides and uh a little bit about politics and barbecue around the world. Finish up, let's take it home, Chuck. All right, we gotta talk about sides for a minute. We we got literally watery in the mouth talking about mac and cheese at community. Um. But typical sides are, like I said earlier, maybe some cold slaw, which will also vary by region. Um, Brunswick stew, which is set in here. It was originally

squirrel meat, but chicken will do. I've only had pork here Brunswick stew, never had squirrel Brunswick stew. Not into that. It sounds like a Mike Huckaby dish. Um. Baked beans, Sure, I make really good baked beans. That sort of the dish I will volunteer to bring to any cookout or spake beans. That's ironic because I make a good FARTI sound with my armpit. That's what you bring to barbecue. Um.

What else, well, French fries. Uh, it depends on the restaurant, but the usually be some kind of like French fries or something like that. To me, if you can, if you can wolf down anything besides the barbecue, they're not giving you enough barbecue. Like, yes, it's nice to have some sides or whatever, but like it's the barbecue that's the point. Sure, And I think you should be able to get full just off of the barbecue, that's my opinion.

Do you like it chopped or oh, I guess you're doing the pork, so it's see brisket, they'll slice it. But I like it chopped for a sandwich. Um, and I do like to mix the brist choppers, get up with the sauce. Yeah, so good. Oh man, I'm really and I ate lunch and I'm still just like super hungry. That's good stuff. Um. Politics has often has long been linked to barbecue. Way back in the old days of the colonies and the early days of American politics, they found a good way to get a lot of people

together talk to him about stuff was to promise them food. Well, no, I remember. It grew out of this tradition of we just killed a pig, so everybody came gather around, we're gonna cook it. Needed together, And then politicians started showing up at these things or holding them themselves. But yeah, there's a long tradition of of politics and barbecues. And apparently, um, Fourth of July, which you think of as barbecue like holiday here in the States. Um, that's long been a

barbecue holiday. That's nothing new. And apparently they used to get drunk and barbecue and read the fourth the Declaration of Independence. That was the big, the big, the big fourth thing. Uhties they m they were such a big hit in the South. They started kind of spreading out politically in eight thirty six. That was Daniel Webster, U S Senator. He was a wig. We should do something on the wigs. I like those dudes. Um. He gave a two hour speech at a barbecue in St. Louis.

So did uh candidate William Henry Harrison. It just became a tool, you know, at these rallies to get folks together and feed him almost bribe them both food and booze. What was it called applying the planters with bumbo or something? Yeah, that was from the Bars episode. Yeah, but yeah, it's it's it's like, here, you eat these ribs and drink all of this uh bourbon. Yeah, and uh don't yeah exactly. And throughout the years of many many presidents have thrown big,

big barbecues, from Linda Johnson to the bushes. Um, I'm not sure what's going on today. Trump didn't struck me as a hitmaster, No, but Johnson apparently had something called barbecue diplomacy out on his ranch in Texas. He throw huge barbecues, invite uh V I P s and say hey, I want you to sign this bill. Okay, I'm melb J.

That's that's nothing like I think it does. It was obviously, uh Slavery in the United States played a big part because UM part of the sort of facade of treating slaves to a big barbecue as a reward for being slaves. UM was something that happened on plantations. But on the flip side, UM slaves would also have barbecues and go over plans for a rebellion. I think the Nat Turner rebellion was planned over barbecue or escape via the underground railroad.

And in the Civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties and sixties was barbecue was a lot of times these barbecue restaurants in the South were sort of the meeting places and headquarters. Yeah. What's weird, especially in the Jim Crow era, was that barbecue places were segregated. UM, so you'd have like, um, black owned barbecue joint, white owned barbecue joints. UM. But the thing about barbecue is that it kind of transcends race and class in that like

everybody in the South loves barbecue right um. And apparently during the Jim Crow era, white people would sneak over to black owned barbecue joints that had superior barbecue and get their take out and go um. And the reason they were able to do this is because at the time and still in some places today, but at the time, barbecue joints were almost exclusively take out. And the reason they were take out was because they were the evolution

of a barbecue pit. And the pit master role, especially in the Annabellum uh South, usually went to a slave. So you if you were a slave who was the pit master on a whole plantation, you know how to cook some meat and you know how to cook it really well for a lot of people, both um enslaved and not. You probably didn't care about running a restaurant. No, but after after reconstruction, for during reconstruction after the Civil War, all of a sudden you found yourself with extremely unique talent.

And so maybe like during the week you would go to work, maybe as a sharecropper, and then on the weekend maybe you would be the pit master for your church. And then people would say this is so good, you should you know, you should sell this, So all of a sudden you build a shack around your pit, and all of a sudden you have a bit of a joint.

So you put up a couple of stools, and people come and you have a window, and they get their take out and go, and then the car comes along, and all of a sudden, your barbecue joint is like a destination that people are going to on their road trips. And then that's how the barbecue joints developed. Yeah, I think, I mean, that's one of the coolest things about it to me in the South is that despite our very checkered in dark past um and uh, even though a

lot of that racism obviously is still around. Um, if you go into a barbecue joint in Atlanta, you're gonna find all stripes of people, all classes of people, um, sitting side by side, enjoying food together and being really friendly to one another and talking about the food. Um. Like you know, you'll see some like Wall Street dude with his tie flipped over so he didn't get it dirty, next to a guy that's um just come back. You know. Fishing with a bunch of catfishing is cooler, uh, feeding

each other, drinking sweet tea. Um, it's just like, I don't know, it's cool, man, go to like a a tailgate at the Falcons game sometime if you think, like the South is so divided still and you'll see people getting along for the most part. In that case, the only losers the pig who are way smarter than we tend to think. That is probably a T shirt at some barbecue restaurant. The only loser here is the pig, which and this has struck me for a very long time.

Using a pig as a mascot for a barbecue places so sad. It's so sad. That's like if McDonald's instead of the Golden Arches had just a big cow. Yeah, a cow serving a platter of hamburgers. That's what they do. Were the ones that have wings because they're dead because you're eating them? Uh, it's talking about civil rights movement though. Um. In Atlanta, we had a very famous restaurant here that was uh kind of one of the headquarters for Reverend

Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, have you heard of that place? Yeah, alex A. L. E. C. K. Barbecue Heaven was legendary Atlanta place that. Um is this still around well? No, I want to know what it is now. No, I don't. Imminent domain came in and took it over and it's now a Walmart. I know. It's like you literally couldn't have written a worse outcome. I don't know. They could

have put up a Texas barbecue place instead. Wow, that's true. Uh. And here's the thing, though, they had a for many years after uh, doctor King died that was a I'm sort of a shrine to him in this restaurant still, like this is kind of where they met and that is where it happened. And um, for many years that was maintained and maintained and I think uh and Walmart. Originally they had that was in the middle of Boys Apparel.

I don't know where it was, but I think they actually reference at or had photos commemorating that or something for a little while, but then took it out because they, man, what was the quote. They didn't think it represented the brand in in the right way or something. I need to look it up. I wish i'd been there. But yeah, it's a Walmart. It's right over sort of in the

Atlantic University Center near kind of right near downtown. Okay. Yeah, like right next to uh, Morris Brown and Clark at Land and come on, I know, Uh, do you got anything else? No, I mean we hit a little bit on barbecue around the world. Um, we're not gonna get too much into it, but obviously if you've had jerk chicken or um barbeca or yeah, or Korean style barbecue,

which supposedly we should say. Barbeca is the word that De Soto reported back to Europe about barbecuing, and they think it's a corrupted Tano word, but they don't have any tano Anyans to ask because the Europeans killed them all off, so no one thought to ask them first before they all died. That's said, yeah, yeah, I got nothing else. Okay, Well, if you want to know more about Martin Luther King Jr. The Tano, Indians, pigs, barbecue, Texas, all that stuff, you can type those words in the

search bar how stuff works dot Com. Since I said search bar's time for listener mail. Hey guys, just wanted to share with both of you a Vice News short documentary that came out tonight. It includes lots of great footage and first hand accounts of the streets of Charlottesville. He's this is in real time where the events in Charlotte'sville, Virginia have just happened. Um, he sent, Have you seen this documentary yet? No, I haven't. By this time it will have aired on HBO on The Vice Show. But

it's out online now. And I encourage everybody who's Chuck speaking it. Yeah, it's only twenty minutes long, sit through it all. It's extremely hard to watch, very very upsetting. Uh. And I'll watch it just before we came in here to record, which is a big mistake. Is it sensationalized or true true life? No, I mean it's it's They got a camera and a young woman to report kind of right in the middle of it all. So she interviews white nationalists, She interviews people um fighting back against

white nationalists. It's um just in their own words, basically, like, here's a microphone. What do you have to say? Yeah, it's not uh not fun. Racism and ignorance back to the mail, Racism and ignorance on this scope are abhorrent and things that just h need to be widely denounced

in American discourse. As the uv A alum, I just want to say this rally does not represent the feelings and attitudes of the university or surrounding city, which is actually garnered a reputation as a refugee city in recent years. And I think most people know that this. These people

came from all over the country and other countries. These white nationalists, well, the whole reason they came is because Charlotte feels taking down their Confederate memorial right to Robert E. Lee that that was the uh the guys under which they met, but it was clearly much more than that.

That's where they met up, at least with their yeah, Walmart tiki torches, which as hysterical and said, I have been avidly listening to your podcast for about a year now, and sarendipitously enough, I happened to find your episode on free speeches Friday of the protest on campus. I'm not one to strike down American liberty by liberties by any means, but it does make me wonder how things might be

different in our society. We did have some kind of restrictions on things like hate speech in broadcasting certifiably false information just as a thought experiment. While I have been an open advocate for environmental protection at many times in my life. It's the first time in my life that I've openly posted for a cause involving racism and bigotry.

I shared both the Vice News video and your Free Speech podcast all my Facebook prints, and I seek to be more more public advocate for equality from here on out. Keep on doing great things. You're empty humor and curiosity or greatly appreciated. This is from John Uh in Washington, d C. Nice John, Thank you very much, and I encourage everyone just google Vice News Charlottesville watch that twenty minutes, and I would really be interested if anyone can write

in and defend anything that was going on there. Uh And if, like John, you want to let us know about something you think we should see, We're always down for that. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast or Josham Clark can hang out with us at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast to how stuff Works dot com is always join us at our home on the web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on

this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot Com