Going Whole Hog for Barbecue
"Paying proper homage to barbecue and the people who cook it is not an easy task," says John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. Although many writers have tried to map barbecue styles—go to North Carolina for vinegary pulled pork; Memphis for dry-rubbed pork ribs, Texas for beef brisket with red sauce; Kansas City for burnt brisket ends—Edge says that that broad-brush picture doesn't capture reality. The truth, says Edge, is that there aren't four styles but more likely 400.
"Drive 50 miles and it changes," says the food writer. "Pork gives way to mutton. A sauce of vinegar and red pepper in one county gives way to a sauce of mustard and molasses in another. Barbecue as smoked and served in the South is a food of diversity, proudly local and unapologetically provincial."
Consider Lexington, Tennessee, the hotbed of whole-hog barbecue, a religion with a geographic reach of about 50 to 75 miles. Ricky Parker, proprietor of B. E. Scott Bar-B-Que in Lexington, is one of the faith's high priests and a veteran of 30 years in the pits. Others rely on charcoal; Parker makes his own hickory coals. Others cook only ribs or shoulders; Parker smokes the whole hog.
Around Lexington, customers don't ask for a pound of barbecue. They ask for the specific pig parts they want. "And if you're just cooking shoulders, you don't have it," says Dennis Hays of Hays Smokehouse in Lexington. The locals also expect their barbecue to be smoked over wood, and they know when it isn't. "If you ain't got a lot of smoke going, they don't stop," says the pitmaster.
Barbecue has many secrets, especially around Lexington. Your sauce is a secret. Your methods are secret. But you can say one thing about all the good places: They take their time. A whole hog has to cook 18 to 20 hours to reach perfection, and maybe longer. When you're cooking outside on an open pit, as Parker does, Mother Nature has a say.
Tradition is battling modernity in rural Tennessee, as everywhere else. Some pitmasters have given up the old ways and gone with new gas or electric cookers, or the farmers who supplied the hogs have shuttered their farms. "There are so few people who do this anymore," says Joe York, an independent filmmaker in Oxford, Mississippi, who has documented Southern barbecue culture. "And there are a number of people trying to make it a lot easier than it ought to be."
Fortunately, there are still some Ricky Parkers. "If they made me quit cooking with wood, and I couldn't buy whole hogs, I would totally quit," says Parker. "You might be able to satisfy 25 percent of your customers cooking shoulders, but what about the other 75 percent?"