Bring a bib to America's best barbecue joints
Discover the glory of the whole pig, why Texans like it naked, and more
Courtesy of MSNBC
Click Here to visit the Hitching Post-BBQ2U webstore
Is there any food that better conveys summer than barbecue? After all, no cuisine is more easygoing, begging to be eaten with a wipe-your-hands-on-your-shorts brio—and nothing tastes as good when the heat of July sweeps in. And while we're all for cooking in the backyard, a quest for America's best barbecue makes a heck of a good excuse to get out and explore our country's little towns and back-road byways. Compare those succulent spareribs from Leon's in Chicago with the whole-hog barbecue in North Carolina's Skylight Inn, while planning a trip to Memphis for barbecue spaghetti (you read that right). Here are our picks for some of the best, representing smoke-pit passions from coast to coast. It'll make you glad to be American.
2. Casmalia, California
Unlike barbecue in the South and Southwest, where meat is cooked for hours in hardwood coals, barbecue in the Santa Barbara area is always done in the open, on a grate over flaming oak logs. It's a legacy of the Golden State's bygone culture of the Spanish cowboys, known as vaqueros, who used to reign over the bucolic ranchland northwest of Los Angeles. The most popular cut of beef here is the tri tip, which, although not as supple as filet mignon or as succulent as prime rib, delivers resounding flavor and robust character. The meat at Hitching Post seems to almost glow with the flavor of the fire, and there's also a piquant smack of a wine vinegar and oil marinade, which is applied as it cooks. "The trick is in how the steaks are handled," owner Bill Ostini says. "You've got to know how to cook which steak which way. It depends on the marbling, and how much age they have. It takes two to three years to train a cook to do it the right way." Who says cowboys are dead?
Hitching Post
Tel: 805 937 6151
|
