Of Fire and Magic 1/29/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

I live with a connoisseur.  He is an artist. Not in the traditional sense of the word. He doesn’t paint or sculpt. His medium of choice is the primal and ancient pairing of smoke and meat.  Yes, that is correct. My husband can do things in preparing the flesh of farm animals that I still do not truly understand. If you know anything about the American South, you know that BBQ is something for which we are known. The varieties and techniques are as varied as the southern landscape, which is saying something considering my state alone has everything from Appalachian Mountains to white sand beaches of the Gulf Coast.  Putting meat to fire is something we excel at tremendously. Not to say that it isn’t skillfully done in other parts of the country, nay even the world (I just recently heard of a little hole in the wall, middle of nowhere place in Ireland that does BBQ with the best of them) but it’s sort of our thing. We may not have invented it, since I am quite certain that pairing meat with smoke and fire has been going on since well before history began recording it, but I will be bold and say we are at least one group that perfected it.  And my husband has over the course of this life experimented and developed his own creations using family recipes, trial and error with friends and his own creativity and produces meat art.

When you think of the smoke for BBQ you likely think of hickory. True, it is probably what is used most commonly. You will find the occasional apple or cherry wood thrown in, but hickory tends to be the standard. However, the craftsman in my home is anything but common and uses something else.  I first witnessed such usage long before he and I were man and wife. It was my first time meeting a friend of his and said friend was doing the cooking.  May I also add this pertinent bit of information in this backstory that this friend now owns a food truck that sells BBQ, so this is a bit more than a flippant hobby.   Not to mention there is at least one dish on the menu of said truck currently that I have very literally dreamed about so he, like my husband, do very serious cooking.  But I digress. I learned when we first met my husband’s friend with whom he has had many a culinary adventure, that there is a magical smoke.  That night we had ribs.  Now, say about me what you will, and I have heard it all, but I am not a huge fan of meat on the bone. I don’t like the mess. I don’t like finding the little miscellaneous bits of the flesh to bone connectivity. If I can get my meat without its skeleton and all related attachments, I would prefer it. But these ribs. Oh my days, these ribs.  I called them then and still maintain the sentiment as I have had them since, they are meat candy and were intoxicating.  The magic smoke was made by pecan shells.  You can use the wood and get a certain level of magic smoke, but to get the smoke into food that is downright enchanted is to use pecan shells. I have to love the southern poetic quality of it.  I mean how much more southern can one get than to be making smoke for BBQ from the shells of pecans?  It feels like it should be the subject matter for some deep south cookbook’s cover artwork.

My husband uses pecan as his ideal wood garnering that magic smoke.  And while all the dishes from his giant custom smoker that looks like what happens if a cast iron skillet and a propane tank had a baby, are fantastic, my favorite has to be his pulled pork.  Before he and I, I wasn’t into BBQ. It was ok, just not my proverbial cup of tea.  Then, after his working at it and countless pounds of pork, testing different dry rubs and concocting custom sauces well, now I am ruined. I still am for the most part underwhelmed by BBQ, unless it’s his.  His pulled pork has ruined me for all other pulled pork. There are others that are tasty. His is glorious.  I happily go into the refrigerator and pull out a bag of the cold meat and shovel it into my face as if I were some sort of ill-mannered ravenous beast. This is certainly not the ideal way to enjoy BBQ, but his is so good that it doesn’t even matter. I am not ashamed of this less than genteel behavior either.  Oh, and do not forget that neither pork nor BBQ are things I love. But I happily go eat it cold and leftover if it’s his. And no this is not remotely the spouse-based bias talking. Many others who have experienced his delights are in wholehearted agreement with me. As I writer I am genuinely at a loss for words that I feel adequately describe it, and I am full of words. And it isn’t just, a matter of oh, he knows how to manage the fire and time the cooking well. No.  He created his own mixture of seasonings for his dry rub. He uses family recipes for his sauces and injections. Even the pulling requires hours of methodology and technique.  His meat does not even require sauce.  It stands alone as that good. Now of course he has three different homemade sauces. One is his grandmother’s recipe. One I take credit for as it was my idea. The third is solely his idea. When it comes to this type of thing, and many other dishes honestly but for the sake of brevity and focus we will stay in this realm, the man is an artist.

So, at any point, unless he is due to load his enormous smoker down with the population of an entire barnyard to restock our stash by which the majesty that is fresh BBQ is created, I can just casually go to my freezer and pull out an unassuming vacuum sealed bag. I can pop this bag in a pot of boiling water and let it steep until the bag is hot and soft. When it is opened and the steaming contents are poured out the smell of smoke and pork swirl around the room as if they were the fluttering wings of porcine angels.  And this is his frozen stuff! I am incapable of writing about his fresh from the fire delicacies. It would be insultingly inefficient to read about it once the taste buds know the true story. I hope I have made you all hungry telling you a little about the spells that my husband can cast. The man is a wizard. He has converted my palette.  Converted is a good word because when it comes to that very first bite, I’ll certainly never be the same.