Pig Ultimate

A reminder and a lesson.

I’m going to be traveling a good bit in April, May, and June, and getting a few health tune-ups as well. So I thought this would be a good time to mix in some of my own – not my readers’ necessarily – but my own personal favorites from my duffel bag of columns in addition to new posts.

These favorites will all be about what makes Memphis, well, Memphis

When I first staring writing columns all I knew about writing columns was reading them. When I sat down to write the first one, I thought I better stick to what I knew the most about.

This wonderfully complicated and creative stew of a city.

Funny, I’ve been told I should stick to that. Here’s the thing. Memphis made me. The who and the what of me is here and always has been.

Ergo, what I write was made here as well, and everything I write I believe has something to do with us. Something that supports or attacks us. Something that reminds us of who we are. Something that challenges us, informs us, teaches us. Something that challenges us.

This week we’re having barbecue. And we’ll start with this:

If you don’t get your barbecue in Memphis, it doesn’t matter where you get it.

Any pig cooked for a considerable amount of time with any care is going to taste pretty good, but, in this town, that doesn’t make it barbecue. We have elevated that term to legendary status. We are to barbecue what Kleenex is to facial tissue, what Coke is to all soft drinks in the South.

We are barbecue.

The above is a small Payne’s barbecue sandwich. Small people. I know the pic is fuzzy. My eyes were watering at the time.

A pizza chain once defiled it by producing something called Memphis Barbecue Pizza, covered in chicken. Clucking chicken. The McRib, a fast-food, fake-rib, pickle-covered, sweet-sauce-slathered sandwich might be fine elsewhere. Serving it here should be a felony.

As you wander the world and see a sign somewhere that says Memphis Barbecue, run. It won’t make you homesick, just sick. It will be to barbecue what karaoke is to The Rolling Stones, and you won’t get no satisfaction. Nashville for a while had places featuring “Memphis BBQ,” including one I saw in Titans stadium in one of the end-zones. On my next visit, I saw it had been changed to “West Tennessee BBQ.” Either righteous indignation on the part of Memphis ticket holders changed it, or Nashville realizing they’d given Memphis credit for something.

Barbecue in Memphis is quite simply the highest a pig can go. A pig, people. Not any other creature, not even processed pork, but a whole or a recognizable part of a pig.

Our reputation is at stake, so let’s review.

If it doesn’t involve a dead pig, its not barbecue. A beef rib, while a challenging thing and not without flavor or merit as a fungo bat or a handy club, is not barbecue. Brisket and barbecue both begin with a b. There ends the similarity. Chicken can be prepared a thousand satisfying ways. None of them is barbecue. Goat, cooked oh-so-slow and basted in an oh-so perfect and time-honored blend of seasonings, is, well, a goat. It’s not barbecue.

If it involves liquid smoke, it’s not barbecue. I’ve driven through liquid smoke, gotten some in my eye in a bar, even felt it immediately following that shrimp dish with the four red peppers next to it on the menu. I don’t want any of that on my pork shoulder.

If the sauce is from foreign shores ... say Kansas City, Texas or North Carolina ... it’s not barbecue. France sent us hollandaise sauce. Tasty. Not barbecue. And even using the right sauce or seasoning doesn’t make something barbecue any more than dressing up like Elvis makes you able to sing a lick. Cherry cough drops aren’t cherries. Potato chips aren’t barbecue.

Any contiguous real estate to Memphis … anywhere touching Memphis or anywhere Memphis can smell what you’re cooking can be home to Memphis barbecue … our brethren in Shelby County, west Tennessee, north Mississippi, eastern Arkansas, a barge on the river. Going upstream against the current, you probably have time to do some ribs between the bridges.

Don’t get greedy. Brownsville has damn good Memphis barbecue, but Jackson is a reach, and the Tennessee River is right out. I think Arkansas is a work in progress. Y’all keep trying. Memphis BBQ Company in Horn Lake is home to royalty. Owner Melissa Cookston is a seven-time Champion in the World Barbecue Cooking Championship in Memphis. However, anywhere south of Como is iffy.

Barbecue is not a verb. You don’t barbecue anything. If you’re fortunate enough to be given the skill, and you have a whole pig or some portion thereof, you can cook, or smoke, or make, or fix a whole mess of barbecue. You don’t eat a process.

Barbecue is not a place or a device. I’m not going to a barbecue, just like I’m not going to the corner of steak and onion rings. If there’s anything red hot on my patio, I’m not calling it a barbecue, and I’m not putting anything on a barbecue except slaw and sauce. You don’t eat an event. Or a grill. Or a cooker. Or a pit.

These are the essentials. Spelling doesn’t matter. Barbecue. Bar-b-que. Bar-B-Q. Q. BBQ. For ribs, wet or dry can be legitimately debated. For shoulder, pulled or chopped are both acceptable. Long enough is the right cooking time. You can take a weekend to cook a whole hog and The Rendezvous cooks their ribs in about an hour. It’s the intrinsic nature, the soul if you will, of Memphis barbecue that has eliminated the need to modify it with Memphis. Real hollandaise is French, and the stuff on chain restaurant benedicts is not. Real barbecue is Memphis, and anything else is not.

If you’re a Memphian, you’re an automatic ambassador for all of the above. Careful. You can be recalled.

I’m a Memphian, and so is barbecue.