BBQ

I recieved this in an email from Aaron Stoller in an email. He heard it on NPR the other day. I thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy. For This, I Believe...

I believe in barbecue. As soul food and comfort food
and health food, as a cuisine of both solace and
celebration. When I'm feeling good, I want barbecue.
And when I'm feeling bad, I just want barbecue more. I
believe in barbecue in all its regional derivations,
in its ethnic translations, in forms that range from
white-tablecloth presentations of cunningly sauced
costillas, to Chinese take-out spareribs that stain
your fingers red, to the most authentic product of the
tarpaper rib shacks of the Deep South. I believe that
no day is bad that has barbecue in it.

I believe in the art of generations of pit men working
in relative obscurity to keep alive the craft of slow
smoking as it's been practiced for as long as there's
been fire. A barbecue cook must have an intimate
understanding of his work: the physics of fire and
convection, the hard science of meat and heat and
smoke -- and then forget it all to achieve a sort of
gut-level, Zen instinct for the process.

I believe that barbecue drives culture, not the other
way around. Some of the first blows struck for
equality and civil rights in the Deep South were made
not in the courtrooms or schools or on buses, but in
the barbecue shacks. There were dining rooms,
backyards and roadhouse juke joints in the South that
were integrated long before any other public places.

I believe that good barbecue requires no decor, and
that the best barbecue exists despite its trappings.
Paper plates are okay in a barbecue joint. And paper
napkins. And plastic silverware. And I believe that
any place with a menu longer than can fit on a single
page -- or better yet, just a chalkboard -- is coming
dangerously close to putting on airs.

I believe that good barbecue needs sides the way good
blues need rhythm, and that there is only one rule:
Serve whatever you like, but whatever you serve, make
it fresh. Have someone's mama in the back doing the
"taters" and hush puppies and sweet tea, because Mama
will know what she's doing -- or at least know better
than some assembly-line worker bagging up powdered
mashed potatoes by the ton.

I believe that proper barbecue ought to come in
significant portions. Skinny people can eat barbecue,
and do, but the kitchen should cook for a fat man who
hasn't eaten since breakfast. My leftovers should last
for days.

I believe that if you don't get sauce under your nails
when you're eating, you're doing it wrong. I believe
that if you don't ruin your shirt, you're not trying
hard enough.

I believe -- I know -- there is no such thing as too
much barbecue. Good, bad or in-between, old-fashioned
pit-smoked or high-tech and modern; it doesn't matter.
Existing without gimmickry, without the infernal
swindles and capering of so much of contemporary
cuisine, barbecue is truth; it is history and home,
and the only thing I don't believe...

...is that I'll ever get enough.