Barbecue Doesn’t Care About Your Plan

From my barbecue photo archive.

Barbecue might be my favorite culinary challenge. It is also the hardest.

I’ve spent years trying to get it right, and the more I learn, the more I realize I’m nowhere near finished.

Done When It’s Done

Most of the food I cook follows a rhythm. Timing matters. You can plan it out. You can have everything hit the plate at the same time and give each part of the meal its best shot.

Barbecue doesn’t work like that.

Barbecue is done when it’s done.

Where It Started

My dad was the barbecue king in our house. He loved cooking meat, and usually a lot of it. Vegetables and side dishes were someone else’s department. But the meat? As I remember it, he could take almost any cut and make it tender and delicious.

I didn’t learn barbecue from him the way I wish I had. By the time I cared enough to really pay attention, I was on my own.

I also crossed paths with someone who could have taught me a lot more than I realized at the time. His name is John Stage. Great guy, a lot of fun, and obviously talented. When I met him, he had a barbecue trailer at the New York State Fair. We talked, had cocktails, and had a good time. We never really talked about cooking, which I regret now.

Turns out, I probably should have.

The roadside business became Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in Syracuse, New York. What started on the road became a real restaurant, then a regional institution, then a much bigger brand. Lines out the door, bottled sauces, cookbooks, more locations. He built something real, and I had the chance to ask questions I didn’t yet know I needed to ask.

Learning the Hard Way

When I finally decided to make ribs on my own, they were awful. Completely lost. No idea what I was doing.

So I started learning the way most people do when they finally care enough to get serious. Reading, watching, experimenting, messing things up, and trying again.

Over time I followed people who clearly knew what they were doing, including Aaron Franklin and Myron Mixon. Different styles, different personalities, same obsession: figuring out how to do something that never behaves exactly the same way twice.

Aaron Franklin’s approach appealed to me because of its simplicity. Simple seasoning, low and slow heat, clean smoke, patience. Myron Mixon always struck me as another kind of master entirely, with a competition mindset and a different energy. Both taught me something, even from a distance.

Their approaches gave me plenty to try. I don’t have to cook exactly like either of them to learn something useful.

The Science That Isn’t Exact

The science is real. Predicting dinner to the minute is the difficult part. Barbecue usually relies on tougher cuts of meat. To make them tender, you cook them low and slow and give collagen, connective tissue, and fat time to do what they do. Rush the process and you end up with tough meat and disappointment.

That part sounds simple. It isn’t.

The Stall

The biggest challenge for a new barbecue cook is the stall. At some point during the cook, the internal temperature stops rising and just sits there. It feels like nothing is happening, but a lot is happening. Moisture evaporating from the surface cools the meat, offsetting the heat coming in. The thermometer can seem stuck even while the cook continues. The whole process seems to suspend time just to annoy you.

Eventually the meat pushes through. But here’s the problem: you do not know how long that will take.

Every cut is different. Every cook is different. That’s part of what makes barbecue frustrating.

The Workarounds, and the Tradeoff

There are ways to help. One of the most common is the Texas Crutch. Wrapping the meat limits evaporation and can help the temperature climb again. It works, and I use it often.

But it comes with a tradeoff. You can gain time, but you can also soften the bark and lose a little texture. The outside can get less crisp, even a little mushy. Without wrapping, the cook can take longer. Whether that gives you a better result depends on the texture you want.

That’s barbecue in a nutshell. Every decision solves one problem and creates another.

Why It’s Frustrating, and Why I Keep Coming Back

The stall isn’t the only problem. Time, temperature, the cut of meat, the condition of the fire, the weather, and what feels like the stars’ current alignment all seem to play a role in the outcome. End of the day, you just don’t know.

I’m much closer to consistency than when I started, but it is still a work in progress.

I’ve cooked plenty of different meats in my smoker and every cook is a little different. I read, watch, compare, test, and keep trying things. There are hundreds of variations on the same basic idea and no exact answer. Barbecue still feels like part science, part art, and part black magic.

The Point

There is a lot more to barbecue than one person can master. Rubs, brines, sauces, wood choices, temperatures, techniques, timing, wrapping, not wrapping, resting, slicing. Thousands of opinions, all loud, many useful, some ridiculous.

And still, there is no single right way.

At its core, barbecue is personal taste, personal experience, and the willingness to keep learning. More than that, it is food that brings people together. There is more than one good way to get there. Keep learning, pay attention, and make something you’re happy to share.

A little further reading

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que’s history · Greg Blonder’s experiments explaining the stall