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Change up your barbecue with this wonderful Barbecue Style Guide straight from Texas or you can head to Texas and just try it for yourself. We guarantee you won't be disappointed!

Here Is How Barbecue Is Done All Over The State Of Texas:

Hill Country

The area west of Austin is known for its direct-heat cooking. While the joints here don’t have a history that goes as far back as their Central or East Texas brethren, their cooking style is closest to the old way of cooking over a trench in the ground. Rather than smoking meat, the barbecue here is cooked directly over hot coals. Wood, usually mesquite, is burned down into coals in a feeder fire, and those coals are shoveled into large, metal boxes, sometimes called Dutch pits or German pits.

Robb Walsh is a Texas barbecue authority who authored Legends of Texas Barbecue, an explanation of Texas’ various barbecue styles. He recognizes that this style, which he refers to as Cowboy Style, “harkens back to the Southern roots” of barbecue. This style also has the most unique flavor. Instead of getting the flavor of the wood smoke, the meat captures the smoke from the fat as it hits the fire below.

South Texas

If the Hill Country style of barbecue is endangered, South Texas barbacoa is nearly extinct. There’s only one place left in the state — and probably the country — where you can get it, or at least the authentic version of it. Mando Vera at Vera’s Backyard Bar-B-Que in Brownsville, TX still cooks whole cow heads in the ground with mesquite coals. He offers it up Saturday and Sunday mornings only, which is when you’ll usually find barbacoa for sale.

Barbacoa cooked in this manner can be made with pretty much any meat, but in South Texas, it’s all about the cow heads. They remain one of the cheapest cuts of meat on the market, yet after spending about 12 hours in a warm, earthen pit, they’re transformed into the best taco stuffing you can ask for. It’s still pretty good out of the oven or the steamer, which is usually how it’s made these days.

Cheek meat, or cachete, is the most popular portion of the head. Everything is used including the tongue and the eyes. The shredded meat is generally served up by the pound along with salsas, cilantro, onions, and tortillas. Be sure to salt the meat in the tacos, because it was probably cooked without seasoning.

Central Texas

If you’ve heard about the German and Czech butchers who started Texas barbecue, that’s the story of Central Texas barbecue. Meat markets in towns like Lockhart, Luling, Taylor, Elgin, and Bastrop sold meat from whole beef carcasses. In the days before refrigeration, they needed something to do with the meat that didn’t sell. They could either smoke the whole muscles to prolong their sellable life, or they could grind the meat and stuff it into casings for smoked sausage. The heavy seasonings in the sausages helped with any off-flavors.

In the mid-'60s, brisket became the popular cut of beef to smoke, and eventually began to dominate all discussions about Texas barbecue. Some folks outside the state think it’s the only thing we cook, but Central Texas barbecue joints don’t stop there. Other meats from the forequarter are also popular, like the shoulder clod, and chuck short ribs, larger short ribs from the beef plate that have seen a meteoric rise in popularity over the last decade.

Barbecue here is done in offset smokers fueled with oak, usually post oak. It’s a wood prevalent in the region. Meat seasoned simply with salt, black pepper, and sometimes other spices is laid within a smoker chamber, and the fire is built in a firebox to the side.

East Texas

The beef here is more tender, so it can be chopped for sandwiches. As Bob Allen of Bob’s Bar-B-Que in the East Texas town of Henderson puts it, “We don’t do the butcher paper thing here.” What they do is serve tender pork ribs, and even boudin. The pork-and-rice sausage has crept in from across the Louisiana border, and has been broadly accepted in East Texas. Smoked boudin might be popular, but only in the past decade, showing that even the oldest barbecue style in Texas can evolve.

With a border running from Texarkana and its sweet ribs, all the way down to the garlicky beef links of Beaumont/Port Arthur, it’s harder to peg a consistent theme in East Texas.

 

Are You Tempted To Fire Up The Grill? 

This might just make you want to plan a trip to Texas so you can try amazing barbecue this Summer. Have you had Texas barbecue before?

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Article Source: Thrillist

Photo Source: KIMBERLY PARK