Stuff You Should Know - A Lip-Smacking Look at Barbecue

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

Barbecue, or for the lazy, BBQ, is a Southern cooking tradition, but also much more than that. It's a cultural touchstone of the South where people of all classes and races can sit and break bread with one another. In today's episode, you'll learn all about BBQ's interesting origins, along with the various regional varieties that make its meat-loving fans so devoted. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry. We're eating barbecue style.

Actually, it's not true. This is, I'm just gonna fess up. We don't have any barbecue in front of us and it sucks. Yeah, you're right. Vegetarians and vegans may not be interested in this one. It's still interesting. I would never encourage someone to tune out, but. I have, I do all the time.

Do you? Sure, some jerk writes in, it's like, oh, sounds like you're talking on candy all the time. I'm like, go listen to something else, pal. Okay, that's what you mean. I mean, before we record a podcast on the podcast, as we record a podcast at the beginning of the podcast. Oh, gotcha.

I don't say like, hey, you might not wanna listen to this, but yeah, you might not wanna listen to this. But I imagine if a vegan saw how barbecue works, I'd probably be like, yeah, I'll just wait. Yeah, they're probably not gonna fall for it. Wait for the tofu episode. Which we owe them now after doing this one. I had fried tofu in Chicago, no, no, no, in Toronto.

Okay. At our recent show there. It was one of those sushi places where they just 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 tofu. The tofu with a little maybe Ponzu sauce on it and some scallions. Ponzu. It's delicious. This one was okay, but it was one of the worst sushi meals I've ever had in my life.

Really? Oh, I'm so bad. Wow. I just chose wrong. Like bad sushi or bad restaurant? Bad everything. I walked in and it's hard to tell because. Agadashi tofu.

No, no, no, I won't name it. I don't even remember the name. No, no, no, that's the name of the dish. Oh, oh, oh, gotcha. Yeah, sorry. Like in LA, 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 $400. Right. Are these, you know, small family run. Yeah. Run by Japanese people.

Sure. 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. Yeah. You could also make the case that places that serve sushi and Thai food were knocked on as well.

Yeah, I don't usually order sushi at a Thai restaurant. If I go to a Thai place, I want a good Thai dish. Sure, you want like a curry. Put some peanuts in there or something. Those 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.

And I thought, no, no, no, Los Angeles, Hollywood. Really good stuff at the holes in the wall. Right. It's not the case. Yeah. Bad fish, bad taste. Wow. It just, it's skewed me.

And like, if you're skewed eating sushi. Yeah, that's not a good feeling. Put down the chopsticks and just ask for the check. Yeah. Maybe spit up into your napkin. Walk away. Right. Anyway, I don't know why I went off on that.

What were we talking about? Fried tofu. Barbecue. All right. We're talking barbecue. Barbecue. This one may be hungry. Dude, same here. One of the things that it 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 it, the barbie, isn't that pretty good? Sure. And it turns out there's barbecue like all around the world. But when you think of barbecue,

especially like barbecued pork. Right. There's like two sauce on like two slices of plain old Dixie Girl white bread. Yeah. That's about as American as it gets. And that's just American, like Southern American. Yeah.

Barbecue. Yeah. There's actually a strip of land known as the barbecue belt in the United States. That's correct. 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. Barbecue is now every city in the country tries to do their own hand at barbecue. Sure. Like, I mean, if you go to New York City, you can go eat at a barbecue joint. Right. And they're trying to do it, you know,

that they're trying to legit. Yeah, which is fine. But they're trying to not co-opt because that sounds like it's like shady or something. Right. But you know, that 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 cue in New York? No. That's very good barbecue for a New York joint. Yeah, I just, I don't do that because when I'm in New York,

why would I get what is literally surrounding me? Sure. Here. Right. I want to go to New York. You get a cloud collage. Yeah, I want to go to the Momofuko or something. Yeah.

Because I don't have that here. Yeah. Get a steamed bun. Well, you can get steamed buns here. Yeah, but I mean, you can make the case that you should be going to Korea for steamed buns. Well, that's a good point. 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. I'm all 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. Yeah. It'll be like a Chinese sushi place. There you go. That was the point of my story. So the point ultimately is that when you think of America having a barbecue belt,

you think of barbecue as profoundly American. Sure. But it turns out that since you were talking about cultural appropriation, that the European settlers who came to the new world actually appropriated it, they got the idea for 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 with the Taino 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 as like you said, pulled pork, maybe brisket, smoked wings, and then side dishes like coleslaw, baked beans, mac and cheese, brunswick stew. Man, so good. Maybe if you're getting a little wild, maybe like collard 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. For sure. And I think all of that actually grew out of church picnics originally.

Yeah, I did some good eating growing up at my church. Sure. And meat and three for those of you that don't understand in other countries, that means a little small family-run restaurant usually in the South that you get a 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 of overlap 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, you use hours and hours. Hours and hours. Right. And we'll get at all the subtleties of this.

Oh, okay. But that's what barbecue really is. Right. And normally, if you're a purist, it's specifically pig. Anything else outside of pig is not barbecue. Whether it's chicken, whether it's 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. I'd say you can just take that and run away with it. Take that pig and shove it. Well, the reason it's actually that whole thing kind of is the crux of that is found in a 1975 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 case is because barbecue is, it came out of the American South, as far back as the beginning of the 18th 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, a very long time over a lowish heat. It's because the pigs that they were originally cooking had been turned out to feed fenn for themselves out in the woods. Because if you are running low on food,

because you're a colonist to a new place where you have no idea what you're doing, one thing you can do with pigs is say, just go out in the woods and eat some truffles and then we'll come kill you later and eat you. Well, as they're doing that, they're becoming kind of like wood ready. And like they're 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 from the oranges, from the origins, whether or not it's,

I think in 2007, Israeli archeologists found a 200,000 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 1500s in Spain or the earliest Native Americans. What's so cool to me is that they learned, they first learned cooked meat to good,

and then they learned, oh, but very slow cooked meat over low heat, better. Yeah. You know, like early, early on, they found evidence that in these recipes that they cooked slow and low. They actually learned the subtle difference between, yeah, this is charred meat,

it'll sustain me, it'll last a little bit longer and preserve it. 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 direct it upward to our brains, and so our brains got bigger,

and hence we got smarter thanks to cooking our food. Yeah, and there's something too, and they talk about this in the beginning of our article here, being the antithesis of fast food. There's something about investing, there's something about getting up at three in the morning to put your meat on,

your smoker, so you can have it ready by midday and tending to it every hour and checking that thermometer. Drinking beer the whole time. Yeah, starting at 3 a.m. Or continuing from 2 a.m. Yeah, that makes sometimes for a messy barbecue. But there's just something to that. I think that's one of the big draws for people

is it's not something you slap on the grill and serve 15 minutes later. It's nuance, and that's how you build that flavor, and it's an investment in time, and you can have the conversations around that fire, and this one writer put it really neatly, Robert Moss, to trace the history of barbecue is to trace the very thread of American history.

And there's been books written about it, not just recipes, but about it as a cultural staple in this country. Yeah, that's true. Really, really neat. Well, I'm hungry. You want to take a break? So hungry.

Yeah. All right, so we're back, man. Now that was delicious. That's the sound of me licking sauce off my fingers. Yeah, we took one of Jerry's legs and barbecued it. Here's to lean, she would make a barbecue. Well, no, that's why you want a barbecue, slow and low. Oh, that's true.

So like you said, there's evidence of us barbecuing as far back as 200,000 years. The ancient Greeks really advanced barbecuing, which is really just a subtype of roasting meat. And it's not like if you're like, well, wait a minute, people have been creating this forever. How can you say barbecuing is American? It's kind of like ketchup.

Like remember ketchup, where you think of ketchup as American, but it actually has its origins in Chinese fish sauce. This is very similar, but like barbecuing wouldn't have come about had humans not been doing this for 200,000 years already. This is just a kind of a nuanced version of it. So around the world, people roast meat in various ways. For example, in medieval England, they found evidence.

They actually have a taxidermied sample of this breed of dog called the turn spit. And no, no, no, it was really cute. So these small dogs, they look kind of docksundee, were bred to run on treadmills or little hamster wheels that was connected by a chain to the spit. So it turned this huge piece of meat in the fireplace. No, they were small dogs, but they were stout.

Oh, they were turning the huge dog. Yeah, they're like, better him than me. And that was in medieval England. Well, you could 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 barbecuing because it didn't come out of the American South cooking pork specifically.

But a 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 just quit dilly-dallying. De Soto, well, first Columbus shows up, encounters the Tano Indians on Hispaniola, who would have been related to the Haitians

and the Dominicans today. Yes. And I believe people in Puerto Rico too. 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 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. Correct. And supposedly the first European-attended barbecue took place outside of what's today Tupelo, Mississippi in 1540 with De Soto, who was the guy

who brought pigs to the new world. Could have been my family. So it was a roasted pig, Chuck's family, Hernando De Soto, and the Chickasaw tribe who lived around there. Yeah. That was the first barbecue in North America featuring pig. Yeah, and as you'll see as we go,

barbecue is a 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 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. Yeah, sure. 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 gonna 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, eating a pig was a very communal affair. Well, and we've talked before about, I just kind of remembered about fire, about the theories that language evolved 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 those same lines, like where you have a fire going, you're gonna have people hanging out, throw some meat on a spit several feet up, you got some tasty food. Yep, get yourself a turn spit dog.

Yeah, because who wants to crank that thing? A turn spit dog, that's what they were bred to do. So Native Americans here, they kind of improved things over time. They eventually would make these wooden frames that they would put the meat on. And then in 1897, a man named Ellsworth Zwoyer, patented the charcoal briquette,

which started being mass-produced about 23 years later. Yeah, do you know by whom? Well, I would imagine, what's the big one now? Kingsford? Yeah. Kingsford was Henry Ford. Or Matchlice, Johnny Matchlice. Kingsford was Henry Ford's cousin-in-law.

Okay. 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. Yeah. 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 cornstarch. That's like a wood briquette. Yeah, or now the wood briquettes, a lot of times it's just real wood,

like chunks of wood. Gotcha. Like if you're a real barbecue enthusiast, you're not gonna be buying these cement briquettes. Sure, you buy some of those, get some open pit barbecue sauce and you're done. Let's go back to bed. 1950s, a man named George Stephen, he's a metal worker.

He got half, attached some legs to a half of a spherical nautical buoy. It was the other half of a lid. Said I'm gonna call this the Weber Kettle Grill. I don't know where he got the name. I don't either. Did you notice there's a Weber Grill restaurant in Chicago? Oh, really?

We saw it walking around. Yeah, they have a giant Weber Grill outside. It's amazing. I have a giant Weber Grill on 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, they've been around for a long time. Well, maybe it was just the kettle grill. He definitely invented the kettle grill, but 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's underwritten by Weber. Maybe. Who knows?

I just outed it. And I just like buzz marketed them as owning one. Weber. I own two. 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 getting the smoke from whatever type of wood or wood briquette that you were using in the fire. 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 wanna talk barbecue, Hickory in the South was widely used, and most of these regionally were used because that obviously was the wood they had near there.

Right. So Hickory was abundant in the South, a little sweet, very rich, good for everything. Especially monkey eyes. Mesquite, Texas, this is where you get the more mesquite flavor, and apparently, the mesquite wood was sort of a nuisance, but in Texas, they got on the beef train, obviously,

and said the stuff, the mesquite wood is really good for beef. Yeah. What else? Apparently fruit wood is good for things like chicken and seafood. I didn't know that. I can buy that.

I always think of bacon when I think of apple wood. Yeah, apple wood, smoked bacon. Yeah. That's the thing. But yeah, I think that's good advice, just whatever you like is what you should use. Yeah, and if you don't have time to invest in a wood burning briquette,

like if you have a propane stove, you can always, I know it's not gonna be as authentic, but you can always just cheap out and get one of those pans that you can keep the wood on and soak it, and that'll give you some extra flavor, but it's not gonna be anything like 12 hours over a fire, like a wood fire.

Right. No, and if you're starting to get the impression that there's a certain level of purity. Oh, yes. So the idea of barbecuing, yes, you're absolutely correct. And I'm not a purist. I'm an amateur. I don't have a smoker at this point,

so don't. At this point, maybe Weber will send you one. At some point, I should probably get one for free. 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 master as we'll see they're called, although I guess I just spoiled that,

is how you get the meat ready to cook, right? So there's really a lot of differences in that you're getting the meat ready to cook, and then what you do to the meat afterward too is huge as well. But to get it ready, there's one of two things you're gonna do to 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 it. And with the dry rub in particular, supposedly there's four Ss. There is, are you ready for this? Yeah.

Okay, sweetness, sugar or honey, typically, savory, like say garlic. Yeah. Spices and herbs, and spicy sensations, like pepper or something or ginger. That's way more Ss than four, especially if you count all the pluralization Ss. Yeah, you ever made a rub?

No, not really. You into this at all? Do you do barbecue? No, I don't barbecue, but I'm into eating barbecue. You should, 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. Yeah.

Give it a shot. Okay. Also, you also strike me as a type that would be like, I don't have time to tend to a grill for 12 hours. Well, I mean, if there's, if, yeah, maybe. Just pick the right day. Yeah, I can 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. But it really makes all the difference. If you rub this meat down real good, get it in all the crevices and nooks and crannies and let it just sit with itself for a while.

Sure. I don't add any wetness to it, but you can add vinegar, you can add oil. 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'll lead you to this and that. No, yeah. Well, actually, I'm kind of into the Memphis style and that kind of thing. Yeah.

So after, after you also want to make 100% 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. Or not at all if you're not into it. Sure. Some people just eat like dry or wet rubbed, like barbecue. Yeah.

I love it with sauce. Yeah. It just seems wrong to eat it without sauce. But yeah, some people are into it like that. But that's not what a rub is, dry or wet. Correct. That's the sauce, that's different. Yeah.

We'll talk about that in a little bit. And you kind of gave a little distinction between, or you gave a definition of barbecuing, right? Yeah. Like roasting meat is basically barbecuing, any type of roasting meat, but 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 based on time and temperature. Yeah. So with the barbecue, you do that slow and low thing where you're roasting for several hours over a relatively low heat. This article says 225 to 250. I wonder if that's canon.

Well, I mean, it depends. Definitely in the low 200s is a good idea, I think. Right. 250 seems a little high, but 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 direct grill, which is just really high heat

if you wanna sear a steak or something, but that's not barbecue. And then indirect grilling, when it's on the grill at around 350, but you've just got the coals kind of on one side and then your meat on the other. And that's kind of the middle ground. But the verb barbecue, it's very highly regionalized

as to what terminology you're gonna use. And I don't say I'm gonna barbecue today. Like I say, I'm gonna grill out. If you wanna 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 smoke. We're gonna smoke some meat or something like that. Right, yeah. But 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 grill inside.

No, that's a bad idea. 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 got the sauce if you're into sauces. And depending on where you are in the country, you're going to use different types of sauce. And what I found interesting was that with American barbecue,

the Europeans who came and appropriated the barbecuing process brought their own tastes to the fold. And depending on where they settled, 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 the accents, as the accents developed,

as where people settled, like food was kind of secondary to that. Right. Or hand in hand with that. Yeah. Yeah, North Carolina and Virginia, these were British colonists mainly, and they liked tarty things.

So you're going to find more vinegar-based sauces there. Right. Until you get to South Carolina, where you have the French and the Germans who liked mustard, so they have the mustard-based sauce. I don't think I've ever had that. Yeah, I'm not a fan. I mean, I don't not like it,

but it's never going to be my first choice. What was, do you remember when we hosted that Locust thing on Science Channel, and we went to that barbecue place? Yes. 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. Yeah, it was pretty good. And hot.

If you go a little further west, well about as far west as you can to the other end of the barbecue belt, you're in Texas. Yep. West Texas to be specific. Apparently in East Texas, they eat basically like Kansas City barbecue

or Memphis maybe. But in West Texas, they got their own. And like you said, they're not even using pork, it's beef. They're cooking brisket over mesquite. That's Texas cowboy style barbecue, which some people would argue is not actually barbecue. Yeah, and that's because of the German immigrants

who raised cattle in the West in West Texas. Yeah. I love brisket, so. Yeah, I've got no problems with brisket. And pulled pork, I mean, I like them both. Right. Or like a catered, if I'm having like a big party or something, I order a catered barbecue.

I get one of each. The one, yeah, the one thing I'm not crazy about is a 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. But I don't ever order that in a barbecue restaurant.

Right. I just do that. No, what a waste. Yeah, do that home cooking. Sure. Memphis style, 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-based 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, the use of the word involving makes it sound like they're talking about some unpleasant business. Which is 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, really? Yeah, but I've had it before. Okay. So perhaps you can answer this one for me. Okay. What is Georgia barbecue?

Is it just basically like a rip off of North Carolina? I don't know, man. Like, we'll get slayed for this because we live in Georgia and I eat at barbecue places all over town. Yeah. I guess it's its own thing, but it doesn't seem, 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, they'll have the vinegar sauce or the sweet sauce, like they're really thick. And I think Kansas City is, barbecue is sort of known. Henry Perry settled there and opened up one of the first barbecue restaurants.

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 Kansas City is generally known for that kind of sweet and tangy sauce. But ones 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. Oh, really? 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 that's it, you know?

What's your favorite place in Atlanta? It depends on what you're looking for. It's ribs, obviously fat mats, rib shack. It's the real deal. Wings, chicken, Fox Brothers, obviously. Oh, 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's like that old timey. And you can tell like that same fire has been going since the late 60s.

And it is just amazing. Just for like a regular old pulled pork sandwich with like really good brunswick stew and then like that plain white hamburger bun. Perfect. What about yours? I like Fox Brothers, okay. It's good.

My favorite barbecue is community barbecue. Yeah, I've never had that. It's really good. I mean, I guess you call it 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 Thai place, an Italian place,

a barbecue joint, an Indian restaurant. Uh-huh. That's not true. I have eaten there. It is good. So it's got like seven restaurants and all of them are a different ethnicity. Right.

Um, which obviously it wasn't an accident. I don't know who owns that, but like kudos to them. That's all. But community barbecue is just the best. Their brisket is unbelievable. And their mac and cheese is indescribably good. Wow. It's the best thing.

That's really saying something because usually mac and cheese is terrible at a restaurant. Oh man. Stuff is so good. Yeah. Hard to, I'll just try it. You see them 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. And I don't know how much cheese goes into it or the different kinds and they have cream and stuff, heavy cream, but it's just ungodly the amount of cheese they're putting on this. All right.

That makes it good. They don't call it mac and some cheese. Ah. All right. Let's take a break. And we're going to talk about sides and a little bit about politics and barbecue around the world.

Finish up. Let's take it home, Chuck. All right. On the sides for a minute, we got literally watery in the mouth talking about mac and cheese at community. But typical sides are, like I said earlier, maybe some coleslaw, which will also vary by region.

Brunswick stew, which is set in here, was originally squirrel meat, but chicken will do. I've only had pork. Yeah, same here. Brunswick stew. Never had squirrel brunswick stew. Not into that.

Sounds like a Mike Huckabee dish. Baked beans, I make really good baked beans. That's sort of the dish I will volunteer to bring to any cookout, or Chuck's baked beans. That's ironic, because I make a good farty sound with my armpit. And that's what you bring to barbecue. What else?

Well, french fries, it depends on the restaurant, but they usually be something like french fries or something like that. They're usually like french fries, like french fries or something like that. They're usually like french fries. But they usually be something kind of like french fries or something like that.

To me, 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 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 just... Whole pork, yeah. The brisket, they'll slice it, but I like it chopped for a sandwich. Right. And I do like to mix the chopped brisket up with the sauce.

Yeah. So good. Oh, man, I'm really... And I ate lunch and I'm still just like super hungry. No, it's good stuff. 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 them about stuff, was to promise them food. Well, no, remember, it grew out of this tradition of we just kill the pig, so everybody come gather around, we're gonna cook it and eat it together. And then politicians started showing up at these things or holding them themselves.

Yeah. But yeah, there's a long tradition of politics and barbecues. And apparently, 4th of July, which you think of as barbecue holiday here in the States, that's long been a barbecue holiday. That's nothing new. Oh, for sure.

And apparently they used to get drunk in barbecue and read the declaration of independence. Yeah. That was the big fourth thing. In the 1830s, they were such a big hit in the South, they started kind of spreading out politically in 1836. That was Daniel Webster, U.S. Senator, he was a wig. We should do something on the wigs.

Sure. I like those dudes. He gave a two hour speech at a barbecue in St. Louis. So did candidate William Henry Harrison. It just became a tool at these rallies to get folks together and feed them, almost bribe them with food and booze. Was it called like plying the planters

with bumbo or something? Yeah, that was from the bars episode. But yeah, it's like here, eat these ribs and drink all of this bourbon. And don't forget to vote for me, yeah. Exactly. And throughout the years of many, many presidents

have thrown big, big barbecues from Lyndon Johnson to the bushes. Not sure what's going on today. Trump doesn't strike me as a hit master. No. No. But Johnson apparently had something called barbecue diplomacy out on his ranch

in Texas. He'd throw huge barbecues and invite VIPs and say, hey, I want you to sign this bill, okay? Yeah. Look at me. I'm LBJ. That's nothing like LBJ. I think it does.

It was obviously slavery in the United States played a big part because part of the sort of facade of treating slaves to a big barbecue as a reward for being slaves was something that happened on plantations. But on the flip side, slaves would also have barbecues and go over plans for a rebellion. Yeah.

I think the Nat Turner rebellion was planned over a barbecue or escape via the Underground Railroad. And in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s 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. So you'd have like black-owned barbecue joints, white-owned barbecue joints. Yeah. But the thing about barbecue is that it kind of transcends race and class. For sure. In that like everybody in the South loves barbecue, right?

Yeah. And apparently during the Jim Crow era, white people would sneak over to black-owned barbecue joints that had superior barbecue and get their takeout and go. 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 takeout.

And the reason they were takeout was because they were the evolution of a barbecue pit. And the pitmaster role, especially in the antebellum of the South, usually went to a slave. So if you were a slave who was the pitmaster 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 enslaved and not, right?

But you probably didn't care about running a restaurant. No, but after reconstruction, or during reconstruction, after the Civil War, all of a sudden you found yourself with an extremely unique talent. And so maybe during the week, you would go to work, maybe as a sharecropper. And then on the weekend, maybe you would be the pitmaster for your church.

And people would say, this is so good. 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 takeout 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 joint's developed. Yeah, I think that's one of the coolest things about it to me in the South, is that despite our very checkered and dark past, and even though a lot of that racism obviously is still around, if you go into a barbecue joint in Atlanta, you're going to find all stripes of people,

all classes of people, sitting side by side, enjoying food together, and being really friendly to one another, and talking about the food. Like, you'll see some Wall Street dude with his tie flipped over, so he didn't get it dirty. Next to a guy that's just come back fishing with a bunch of catfishing is cooler, feeding each other, drinking sweet tea.

It's just like, I don't know, it's cool, man. Go to a tailgate at a Falcons game sometime, if you think the South is so divided still, and you'll see people getting along for the most part. In that case, the only loser's the pig, who is 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 place is so sad. Right. It's so sad. Yeah. 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. Or the ones that have wings, because they're dead. Oh, right. Because you're eating them. It's talking about civil rights movement, though. In Atlanta, we had a very famous restaurant here that was 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 this legendary Atlanta place that... Is this still around? Well, no. You wanna know what it is now? No, I don't.

Eminent Domain came in, took it over, and it's now a Walmart. I know. Wow, really? 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.

Well, that's true. And here's the thing, though. They had a, for many years after Dr. King died, there was a sort of a shrine to him in this restaurant still. Sure. Like this is kind of where they met and this is where it happened. And for many years, that was maintained and maintained.

And I think in Walmart originally, they had that... Now it's in the middle of Boy's Apparel? I don't know where it was, but I think they actually referenced that or had photos commemorating that or something for a little while, but then took it out because they, oh man, what was the quote? They didn't think it represented the brand

in the right way or something. I need to look it up. I wish I could have brought that in there. But yeah, it's Walmart. It's right over sort of in the Atlanta University Center near, kind of right near downtown. Okay. Yeah, like right next to Morris Brown in Clark Atlanta.

Man, come on. I know. Do you got anything else? No, I mean, we hit a little bit on barbecue around the world. We're not going to get too much into it, but obviously if you've had jerk chicken or... Barbecoa. Or yeah, or Korean style barbecue.

Which supposedly we should say barbecoa is the word that DeSoto reported back to Europe about barbecuing. Yeah. And they think it's a corrupted Tano word, but they don't have any Tano Indians to ask because the Europeans killed them all off. So no one thought to ask them first before they all died. That's a sad ending.

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 at howstuffworks.com. Since I said search bar, it'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 firsthand accounts of the streets of Charlottesville. He's, this is in real time where the events in Charlottesville, Virginia have just happened. He said, have you seen this documentary yet? No, I haven't.

By this time it will have aired on HBO and the vice show, but it's out online now. And I encourage everybody that's Chuck speaking. You've seen it? Yeah. It's only 20 minutes long, sit through it all. It's extremely hard to watch. I'll bet.

Very, very upsetting. And I watched it just before we came in here to record, which is a big mistake. Is it sensationalized or true life? No, I mean, they've 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 fighting back against white nationalists.

It's just in their own words, basically, like here's a microphone. What do you have to say? Yeah, I gotta check that out. Yeah, it's not fun. Racism and ignorance, back to the mail. Racism and ignorance on this scope are important. And things that just need to be widely denounced

in American discourse. As a UVA alum, I just want to say this rally does not represent the feelings and attitudes of the university or surrounding city, which has actually garnered a reputation as a refugee city in recent years. And I think most people know that these people came from all over the country and other countries, these white nationalists.

Well, the whole reason they came is because Charlottesville's taking down their confederate memorial, right, to Robert E. Lee? That was the guys under which they met. But it was clearly much more than that. That's where they met up, at least, with their Walmart Tiki torches, which was hysterical and sad. I have been ably listening to your podcast for about a year

now, and serendipitously enough. I haven't upon your episode on free speech this Friday of the protest on campus. I'm not one to strike down American 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 and 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, there's a 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 to all my Facebook friends. I seek to be a more public advocate for equality

from here on out. Keep on doing great things, your empathy, humor, and curiosity. You're greatly appreciated. This is from John in Washington, DC. Nice, John. Thank you very much. And I encourage everyone, just Google Vice News Charlottesville.

Watch that 20 minutes. And I would really be interested if anyone can write in and defend anything that was going on there. And if, like John, you want to let us know about something you think we should see, we are always down for that. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast or Josh Ome Clark. You can hang out with us at facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. As always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

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