Baby back ribs: Small meaty ribs cut from the blade and center section of a hog’s loin, called “baby” because they come from smaller (and usually younger) hogs. Larger loin back ribs are often called “baby backs” on restaurant menus.
Backwoods smoker: A manufactured cooking unit that makes use of water pans above the fire pit to add moisture to the cooking chamber.
Barbecue potato: A baked potato loaded with tasty fatty stuff like sour cream and butter and topped with barbecued meat and sauce.
Bark: The darkened exterior of smoked meats, favored by lovers of smoke and big flavors. Because of greater exposure to heat, bark is drier than the interior meat.
Beef brisket: A cut from the foreshank (breast or lower chest) of a beef cow, notoriously tough until tenderized by low and slow cooking. The “flat” cut is leaner than the “point” or “deckle.” The tastiest cut is the full brisket, which has plenty of fat layered in.
Burgoo: An “everything but the kitchen sink” rich stew made with several meats and vegetables, cooked up in large quantities at Owensboro’s International Bar-B-Q Festival and found at barbecue joints in Kentucky, especially those in the “Burgoo Belt” (my term) that includes the counties of Daviess, Hopkins, and Christian, among others.
Chip or chipped: A style of barbecue preparaation popular in Union County and Henderson County, where heavily smoked exterior pieces of pork shoulders, hams, and mutton quarters are chopped and mixed with a thin, tangy dip sauce, a bold flavor creation that’s salty and good as a sandwich.
City ham: Hams partially cured in sweet brine before being lightly smoked and cooked. Many western Kentucky barbecue joints smoke city hams and precooked turkey breasts to imbue them with a deeper smoked flavor.
Fast Eddy’s by Cookshack: A meat-smoking apparaatus that often utilizes wood pellets and a gas flame.
Hardwood: In tree talk, the wood from broad-leafed trees like oak, hickory, maple, and sassafras rather than conifers (like pine and cedar).
Hickory: One of the hardest of the hardwoods, hickory trees are nut-bearing friends of squirrels and Kentucky pit masters, who favor the smoke and heat imparted by hickory over all other woods. Several different species of hickory trees live in North America, including shagbark, shellbark, mockernut, bitternut, and pignut. Some pit masters claim they prefer one species of hickory— like shagbark—to others.
Masonry pits: Barbecue pits built out of cinderblocks (concrete blocks) and mortar, stacked a few blocks high and covered with flame-proof material like roofing metal. Meats cook on wire grates inside the pits. Once the blocks get hot, they hold heat well. Besides the oldest barbecuing methods, like digging a hole in the earth, masonry pits are the most traditional barbecue pits in Kentucky, favored by many pit masters in the western part of the state.
Monroe County dip: Sopping sauce favored in several south-central Kentucky counties, made with vinegar, butter, lard, salt, black and cayenne pepper, and sometimes other ingredients like tomato or mustard, used for basting meats as they cook slowly over hickory coals. Also served as a finishing sauce.
Monroe County style: Thin slices of pork shoulder grilled over hickory coals and sopped with the Monroe County dip. Shoulder is by far the best-selling meat, but joints cooking in the Monroe County style also serve grilled whole and half chickens, pork ribs, pork tenderloins, hamburgers, and hot dogs.
Mutton: Mature sheep, either female or castrated males. Mutton is Kentucky’s claim to barbecue fame, although only 10 percent of the barbecue places in the state serve it.
Mutton dip: A Worcestershire sauce-based sop used to baste mutton during many hours of slow cooking, also used as a dipping sauce for cooked mutton.
Naked: Refers to pure meat served without the application of sauces or cooking tricks. For example, I’d call a whole pork shoulder seasoned with salt and smoked on a pit until tender, then served without sauce “naked.” Or I’d call a beef brisket cooked without wrapping it in foil and served without sauce a “naked” brisket. If you start dressing it up too much, it’s no longer naked, of course!
Ole Hickory Pit: A meat smoker made in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. A popular model utilizes a gas flame that burns sticks of wood to create heat and smoke in a firebox adjacent to the cooking chamber.
Pork shoulder: The cut of a pig or hog that includes the front leg and the area above it. Shoulders are often butchered as “Boston butt”—the meaty upper portion—and as “picnic” or “picnic shoulder,” the upper part of the hog’s foreleg. Whole pork shoulders are still favored by many western Kentucky barbecue places, although more places use Boston butts for their pulled pork.
Rick: A measurement of firewood stacked four feet tall by eight feet long. Kentuckians use the term loosely to name a goodly sized stack of wood; we aren’t too particular about the precision of the measurements unless we’re paying for it.
Sassafras: A North American hardwood tree with aromatic leaves, bark, and branches. Used as a smoking wood, sassafras imparts a bold smoke flavor and dark coloration to meats. Along with hickory, it’s a favored wood—in small amounts—by Owensboro-area barbecue teams and restaurants.
Smoke ring: The pinkish hue imparted to smoked meats (a very good thing).
Southern Pride smoker: A meat smoker that works much like the Ole Hickory gas-fired pits, with a gas-flame-fueled firebox to the side of the cooking chamber. Smoke is generated by stoking the firebox with wood.
Spare ribs: The whole rib, including the bony end piece, cut from the belly side of the rib cage. They are flatter than baby back ribs and have more bone than meat. They also have more fat (and flavor).
St. Louis–style ribs: The whole rib with the bony end piece (the sternum bone, cartilage, and rib tips) removed. Removing the tips can aid in uniformity of cooking, since the tips can dry out and get tough quicker than the rest of the rib. St. Louis-style ribs happen to be the favorite pork rib cut of Wes Berry, author of The Kentucky Barbecue Book.
Texas crutch: A derogatory term to describe the wrapping of beef briskets in foil to steam and tenderize them.
West Kentucky style: Refers to whole pork shoulders or Boston butts cooked over a bed of hickory coals on masonry pits for many hours—usually from twelve to thirty—at temperatures ranging between 200 and 300°F. Lower and longer cooking usually yields a smokier meat with less shrinkage and more moisture and tenderness. Finished shoulders are served pulled, or pulled and chopped, often accompanied by a thin vinegar-pepper sauce, although sauce styles vary greatly by county.