Many other dishes can go with barbecue, but don’t have to. Lots of barbecue restaurants these days offer french fries. Places on the meat-and-three side of things might have greens, or macaroni and cheese. Nothing extraordinary about any of those. But here are five recipes that are completely ordinary in some locales but would be odd, if not weird, in others.
Baked beans weren’t really a Southern thing until the canned variety came along in the twentieth century, but now the Bush Brothers company in Dandridge, Tennessee, is the nation’s leading producer. They’re still not usually a barbecue side dish in the conservative Atlantic states, but they’ve found a place on menus from the mountains to the Mississippi and beyond, to Kansas City. Barbecue places and home cooks alike usually start with canned beans and add stuff like onion, mustard, ketchup, and brown sugar or molasses, but aside from that, there are really no rules.
Bob Sammons, a serious competition barbecuer who works a day job as a psychiatrist in Colorado, has shared a typical recipe from his North Carolina grandmother. He adds the optional ingredients at the end to jazz it up.
SERVES 5–7
2 cans (about 32 ounces) pork and beans
3 bacon strips, fried, drippings reserved
1 medium onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup catsup
1 dash hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of dried basil
OPTIONAL
2 tablespoons cumin seed
2–3 tablespoons cold coffee
Pinch of oregano
Preheat the oven to 350°. Brown the onions and garlic in the bacon drippings. Put the beans in a mixing bowl, then add the cooked onions and garlic with their grease. Add the remaining ingredients, mix well, and pour the mix into a greased casserole. Crumble the bacon on top, and bake for 45 minutes.
The politics of Massachusetts and Texas anchor some sort of red state/blue state spectrum, and so do their beans. It’s hard to imagine beans less like the Boston baked variety than the savory dish known on the Border as frijoles charros. In Texas and throughout the Southwest they’re a frequent accompaniment to barbecued brisket (page 19), and they’re also great topped with sliced barbecued sausage (page 25).
The basic list of ingredients makes for a dish that’s just a sort of superior bean-and-bacon soup, so you’ll want to dress it up a bit with some of the optional additions. I like mine with the chili powder, tomatoes, and chipotle, but you add what you want. That’s the Cowboy Way.
SERVES 5–8
1 pound dried pinto beans
1/2 pound thick-sliced smoked bacon, diced fine
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon kosher salt
OPTIONAL ADDITIONS
For heat: 1 jalapeño or canned chipotle pepper (more, to taste), minced
For complexity: 2 tablespoons chili powder (Mexene brand, if you can get it), or 4 1/2 teaspoons chili powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
For color and added umami: 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
For sweetness: 2 teaspoons sugar (or 1 [12-ounce] bottle cola drink)
To take this back to its Mexican roots: 4 teaspoons minced fresh cilantro sprinkled on top before serving
To make it “borracho [drunken] beans”: 1 (12-ounce) bottle of beer
Place the beans in a large stockpot and add water to cover them by 2 inches. Soak them for 6–8 hours. (Alternatively, bring them to a boil, boil them for 2 minutes, remove from heat, cover, and let stand for an hour.) Drain the water, rinse the beans, and refill the pot to cover the beans by 2 inches.
Put the bacon in a frying pan over low heat and render some of the fat. Add the onions and garlic, sprinkle with the salt, and cook with the bacon until they’re transparent (5 minutes or so). Add the bacon, bacon fat, onions, and garlic to the stockpot. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, add any of the optional ingredients, and simmer for 2–3 hours until the beans are tender. The mix should be somewhat soupy.
You might well ask why Greenville, Mississippi, calls itself the Hot Tamale Capital of the World. The answer is that tamales, strangely, have been a popular treat in parts of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas since the early twentieth century. The most common explanation is that they were brought in by Mexican migrant workers hired to work in the cotton fields, but if so, there’s been some evolution. These are not your Mexican tamales. They’re skinnier, they’re usually made with yellow cornmeal instead of masa, and they’re as likely to be wrapped in parchment paper as in the traditional corn husks.
However they got there, by mid-twentieth century tamales were being sold on the street, by vendors at railroad stations, and in little hole-in-the-wall shops in the Delta and vicinity. They also began to appear as appetizers and side dishes on the menus of restaurants, and they’re in this book because sometimes they show up in barbecue places: Germantown Commissary in Memphis, for example, or McClard’s Bar-B-Q in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s boyhood local. McClard’s started in 1928, barbecuing goat, and although it doesn’t serve goat anymore, it does serve tamales. You can get them as a regular side order like slaw or french fries, but real men go for a train wreck called the Tamale Spread, a combination of tamales, beans, barbecued beef, onions, cheese, sauce, and Fritos.
This recipe is close to McClard’s, and it’s good. The cayenne pepper may not be needed if your chili powder is hot enough. Taste before you add it.
MAKES 20–24 TAMALES
FOR THE FILLING
1 1/2 pounds ground chuck
2 tablespoons bacon fat
1 cup beef broth
1/2 cup chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1–2 pinches of cayenne pepper, or to taste (optional)
FOR THE DOUGH
3 cups yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup lard
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
Up to 3 cups beef broth
20–24 (8 × 5-inch) rectangles of parchment paper (or corn husks, soaked in hot water until soft, if you’re a traditionalist)
Brown the beef in the bacon fat. Add the other filling ingredients and simmer uncovered until thickened (about 20 minutes), stirring often to avoid burning. Set the mixture aside. (This can be made in advance.)
Stir the cornmeal, lard, salt, and baking powder until well mixed. Gradually add the beef broth, mixing with your hands until the dough has the consistency of mashed potatoes, moist enough to spread evenly.
Spread the dough in the middle of a wrapper, lengthwise, and trim it with a knife blade to leave 3/4–1 inch on all sides for folding. Spoon 2–3 tablespoons of filling down the middle, and roll the wrapper into an 8-inch-long cylinder. Fold the ends over to seal. Repeat until the dough or the filling runs out.
Stand the assembled tamales on end in a steamer and steam until the dough is firm (60–90 minutes). Serve warm. (Unwrap them before eating.)
The German heritage of central Texas is reflected not just in its brisket and sausage barbecue but in its potato salad. Mustard, pickles, and vinegar or pickle brine are almost universal. Bacon’s not uncommon, either, although maybe not when the potato salad is served as a side dish with barbecue, as it often is in Texas. Sweet or dill pickle has long been a matter of taste, if not debate: this recipe offers a choice, but you can mix them up—or, for a racy nouvelle-fusion alternative, replace some of them with pickled jalapeños.
MAKES ABOUT 12 NORMAL- OR 8 TEXAS-SIZE SERVINGS
3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 3/4-inch chunks
1/4 cup dill or sweet pickle juice
1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste
4 eggs
1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
3 tablespoons finely chopped dill or sweet pickles
1/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons prepared yellow mustard
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika (optional)
Cover the potatoes with salted cold water and bring them to a boil. Simmer until tender but still firm (10–20 minutes). Drain and rinse in cold water. Toss with the pickle juice and salt. Chill them in a refrigerator for at least a half hour.
Cover the eggs with cold water and bring them to a boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 10–12 minutes. Drain, cool, peel, and chop them.
In a mixing bowl, combine the potatoes, eggs, onions, celery, and pickles. In a separate bowl mix the mayonnaise, mustard, pepper, and the remaining salt; add this to the salad and stir gently to mix, adding additional salt to taste. Sprinkle with paprika, if desired. Refrigerate until served.
Boiled potatoes are seldom served with barbecue except in eastern North Carolina, but there they are, more often than not. Your basic, boring, boiled spud can be a pleasing contrast to the heat-and-sour of the region’s barbecue sauce (page 59), but some easterners serve potatoes that are, like the Piedmont’s slaw (page 86), vehicles for delivering even more vinegar, salt, and red pepper. Potatoes that are a bit mushy absorb more of the pungent cooking liquid, so this recipe calls for boiling what are usually baking potatoes. For authenticity, the hot sauce should be Texas Pete, but any grocery-store brand will do.
SERVES 6–9
3 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 1/2–2-inch chunks
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons hot sauce
2 tablespoons bacon drippings
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Put all of the ingredients in a pot with just enough water to cover the potatoes. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer until the potatoes are beginning to fall apart (45 minutes or more). Remove from heat and let stand for at least half an hour, until ready to serve. Reheat if necessary.