Barbecue Quotes

“We had this big grill at his house, and I remember, one night he said, 'Sam, tonight you're feeding us,' He showed me how to push on the middle of the steaks to see how done they were, and how to sear them fast on each side to keep the juices in."
"And they were awesome, weren't they?"
"I burned the hell out of them," I said, matter-of-fact. "I'd compare them to charcoal, but charcoal is still sort of edible.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“What's that supposed to mean? A wolf's head on a stick. Big wolf barbecue tonight? Bring your own wolf?”
― Eoin Colfer, The Lost Colony

“Like the blind man said as he wandered into a cannibal village . . .

“Alright! The country fair must be right up ahead. I smell barbecue!”
― John Rachel

“There are no ideas in the South, just barbecue.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“The lesson about food is that the most predictable and the most orderly outcomes are always not the best. They are just easier to describe. Fads are orderly. Food carts and fires aren't. Feeding the world could be a delicious mess, full of diverse flavors and sometimes good old-fashioned smoke.”
― Tyler Cowen, An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies

“The first thing I did was eat barbecue. I have always found that barbecue helps the human body work better. The cholesterol lubricates the mental passages.”
― Sean Dietrich, Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be Okay

“Before a forest fire enters a house, it never asks itself, “Is the front door locked? Should I first knock?” And because it’s so rude, that’s why I never invite it to my duck farm for barbecues.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“Anyone who tells you they only drink wine old enough to have been bottled by their grandfather is an insecure snob who has never had the sublime pleasure of a box of wine at a barbecue.”
― Valentine Glass, The Temptation of Eden

“I was always crazy about any Chinese takeout since everything on those long menus is so tempting, but when the craving really hit, the folks at Panda Delight over on Richmond almost knew without asking to pack me up an order of wings, a couple of egg rolls, shrimp dumplings, pork fried rice, and the best General Tso's chicken this side of Hong Kong. When my friend at the shelter, Eileen Silvers, got married at Temple Beth Yeshurum, I had a field day over the roast turkey and lamb and rice and baked salmon and jelly cakes on the reception buffet, and when me and Lyman would go out to Pancho's Cantina for Mexican, nothing would do but to follow up margaritas and a bowl of chunky guacamole and a platter of beef fajitas with a full order of pork carnitas and a few green chile sausages. And don't even ask about the barbecue and links and jalapeño cheese bread and pecan pie at Tinhorn BBQ. Just the thought still makes me drool.”
― James Villas, Hungry for Happiness

“How was Houston?" I asked as he set me down.
Dad's warm brown eyes crinkled with his smile. "Hot. But the food was great, and I've got a lot to write about."
'What was your favorite bite?" I asked.
"Savory or sweet?" he asked, grinning.
"Savory first, then sweet," I said, grinning back.
"Well, I had an incredible pork shoulder in a brown sugar-tamarind barbecue sauce. It was the perfect combination of sweet and sour." Dad has an amazing palate; he can tell whether the nutmeg in a soup has been freshly grated or not.
"That sounds delicious. And the best dessert?"
"Hands down, a piece of pecan pie. It made me think of you. I took notes- it was flavored with vanilla bean and cinnamon rum. But I bet we could make one even better."
"Ooh," I said. "Maybe with five-spice powder? I think that would go really well with the sweet pecans."
"That's my girl, the master of combining unusual flavors.”
― Rajani LaRocca, Midsummer's Mayhem

“You shouldn't sing blues if you don't have a voice like barbecue. It's got to be smoky.”
― Jarod Kintz, Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast

“A group of tiny warriors no more than 2" high, their dark skins making them almost impossible to see, were silently surrounding an unsuspecting rodent. The kill was quick, the prey lifted in half a dozen miniature arms, & to Claire's surprise, thrown against the 3rd rail. There was a sudden flash, a wisp of smoke, & tiny voices chanting: "Bar. Be. Que! Bar! Be! Que!”
― Tanya Huff, The Second Summoning

“My armpits sweat like BBQ water. It’s fire-roasted to quench even the thirstiest runner.”
― Jarod Kintz, Me and memes and memories

“Grace rolled up her sleeves and joined the group in the kitchen, where Gladys, Pablo's wife, had worked all day directing many other women who kept food pouring out the front and side door, onto a long series of folding tables, all covered in checkered paper table cloths. While some of the women prepped and cooked, others did nothing but bring food out and set it on the table- Southern food with a Mexican twist, and rivers of it: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, chicken mole, shrimp and grits, turnip greens, field peas, fried apples, fried calabaza, bread pudding, corn pudding, fried hush puppies, fried burritos, fried okra, buttermilk biscuits, black-eyed peas, butter bean succotash, pecan pie, corn bread, and, of course, apple pie, hot and fresh with sloppy big scoops of local hand-churned ice creams.
As the dinner hours approached, Carter grabbed Grace out of the kitchen, and they both joined Sarah, Carter's friend, helping Sarah's father throw up a half-steel-kettle barbecue drum on the side of the house. Mesquite and pecan hardwoods were quickly set ablaze, and Dolly and the quilting ladies descended on the barbecue with a hurricane of food that went right on to the grill, whole chickens and fresh catfish and still-kicking mountain trout alongside locally-style grass-fed burgers all slathered with homemade spicy barbecue sauce. And the Lindseys, the elderly couple who owned the fields adjoining the orchard, pulled up in their pickup and started unloading ears of corn that had been recently cut. The corn was thrown on the kettle drum, too, and in minutes massive plumes of roasting savory-sweet smoke filled the air around the house. It wafted into the orchards, toward the workers who soon began pouring out of the house.”
― Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard

“Home Cooking: The Comforts of Old Family Favorites."
Easy. Baked macaroni and cheese with crunchy bread crumbs on top; simple mashed potatoes with no garlic and lots of cream and butter; meatloaf with sage and a sweet tomato sauce topping. Not that I experienced these things in my house growing up, but these are the foods everyone thinks of as old family favorites, only improved. If nothing else, my job is to create a dreamlike state for readers in which they feel that everything will be all right if only they find just the right recipe to bring their kids back to the table, seduce their husbands into loving them again, making their friends and neighbors envious.
I'm tapping my keyboard, thinking, what else?, when it hits me like a soft thud in the chest. I want to write about my family's favorites, the strange foods that comforted us in tense moments around the dinner table. Mom's Midwestern "hot dish": layers of browned hamburger, canned vegetable soup, canned sliced potatoes, topped with canned cream of mushroom soup. I haven't tasted it in years. Her lime Jell-O salad with cottage cheese, walnuts, and canned pineapple, her potato salad with French dressing instead of mayo.
I have a craving, too, for Dad's grilling marinade. "Shecret Shauce" he called it in those rare moments of levity when he'd perform the one culinary task he was willing to do. I'd lean shyly against the counter and watch as he poured ingredients into a rectangular cake pan. Vegetable oil, soy sauce, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and then he'd finish it off with the secret ingredient: a can of fruit cocktail. Somehow the sweetness of the syrup was perfect against the salty soy and the biting garlic. Everything he cooked on the grill, save hamburgers and hot dogs, first bathed in this marinade overnight in the refrigerator. Rump roasts, pork chops, chicken legs all seemed more exotic this way, and dinner guests raved at Dad's genius on the grill. They were never the wiser to the secret of his sauce because the fruit bits had been safely washed into the garbage disposal.”
― Jennie Shortridge, Eating Heaven

“Of course, I myself had ordered the barbecue and links and ribs from the guys at Pink Pig- ten pounds of just the smoky brisket itself- and, of course, nothing would do but for Mama to serve them on her silver-plated platters somebody had given her when she and Daddy got married. But every single other dish on that huge table was Mama's handiwork. There were the collards she'd mentioned, but also her red cabbage coleslaw, and barbecued pintos, and big bowls of okra and tomatoes, and corn pudding, and potato salad made with potatoes boiled in water spiced with Texas Pete, and baskets of jalapeño cornbread, and not only two pans of her rich banana pudding but also two sticky cherry cobblers. Must have been twenty different items on that buffet- enough to feed double the number of guests.”
― James Villas, Hungry for Happiness

“Mom sprinted down the driveway and hugged Myron as though he'd just been released by Hamas terrorists. She also hugged Brenda. So did everyone else. Dad was in the back at the barbecue. A gas grill now, thank goodness, so Dad could stop loading on the lighter fluid with a hose. He wore a chef's hat somewhat taller than a control tower and an apron that read REFORMED VEGETARIAN.”
― Harlan Coben, One False Move

“Everyone talked with Brenda. They wanted to hear about the new women's league, but they were far more impressed when they heard Brenda was going to be a doctor. Dad even let Brenda take over the grill for a while, a move for Dad tantamount to donating a kidney.”
― Harlan Coben, One False Move

“The smell of oak and barbecue permeate the air around the small house. Delfina uses oak for her barbecue and Mom (and me) always used hickory. People said that you could tell where North Star was solely based on the competing smells that met in the air just above the town. That little weevil of an idea pops back up. Our plot of land. It's still there.”
― Liza Palmer, Nowhere But Home

“Barbecue, vegetable plate, baked beans, sweet tea, fried
cherry pie, and an apple


I'm almost catatonic as I hold the little slip of paper in my hand now. Harlan, Cody, and I didn't need Shawn to go into what "barbecue" meant. Classic Texas barbecue is a beef brisket, sausage, and ribs. A "vegetable plate" is traditionally a potato salad, raw white onions, and pickles. Not quite what most people would call a healthy vegetable plate, but this is how we do it in Texas.”
― Liza Palmer, Nowhere But Home

“So this is sweet. Some sort of fruit, right? Not just sugar."
She nodded. "Mango and peach."
He looked surprised. "No kidding." He tasted it again. "Got it. Now that you tell me, I can taste them. What kind of chilies?"
"Mostly fresno. A cherry pepper here, a poblano there. A little habanero." She hadn't gotten enough fresnos, so the truth was she just used everything she had. Fortunately she'd written it down. "Some honey too. Seasonings."
"But there's something I can't quite put my finger on." He tasted more than looked at his finger and said, "No pun intended."
She smiled. "Curry."
"Curry."
"Yup." She nodded. "I needed something to segue between the sweet and the savory and I thought of curry."
"It's incredible."
"Wow, you're actually selling me on my own sauce." She upended the bottle and put a few drops on her own finger. It was just as good as she'd remembered, exactly as he'd said, with the heat that snuck up and away. Suddenly her mind reeled with the possibilities. She could use it as the base for a barbecue sauce and start serving pulled pork on the menu. That, with the beer cheese, Aja's cheese soup, and the biscuits Margo had made, she had a theme developing suddenly.”
― Beth Harbison, The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship

“Baby Harper and I were having dinner together, as we had done every Saturday night for close to a year by then. We went into Shelby and sat in our usual booth at Bridges Barbecue Lodge. We each ordered a pulled pork sandwich, a side of coleslaw, fries with an extra order of barbecue sauce for dipping, peach cobbler (only available on Saturdays), and a bottle of Cheerwine, a cherry-flavored cola, bottled in nearby Salisbury, which my great-uncle said brought out the "fruit" in Bridges's sauce. Bridges Barbecue Lodge had two things going for it, which was more than I could say for the other dining options in town, Pizza Inn, Waffle House, Arby's, Roy Rogers, and Hardee's. In the mid-eighties the greater Boiling Springs-Shelby area attracted only the B-list fast-food chains. Bridges was in a league of its own. The first thing that made Bridges special was that, even by the standards of North Carolina barbecue, Bridges's sauce was extraordinarily vinegary, which meant it was extraordinarily good.”
― Monique Truong, Bitter in the Mouth

“She'd gotten the butcher to grind a mixture of filet mignon and chuck steak for the burgers, and had blended in mushrooms and blue cheese; she'd ordered hot dogs from Chicago, which came delivered in a cooler of dry ice. She'd made her own barbecue sauce, plus dozens of elaborate canapés, slivers of smoked salmon on cucumbers and a refined version of onion dip, where she spent an hour caramelizing onions.”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer

“I eyed the spread, wondering where I should start. Skewers of pork barbecue, the slightest hint of char releasing a delicious, smoky aroma, beckoned me, as did the platter of grilled adobo chicken wings next to it. As I loaded up my plate with meat, my aunt reached over to put a tofu-and-mushroom skewer on my mountain of rice.
"Can you tell me what you think of this, anak? I'm testing the recipes for our Founder's Day booth and this will be our main vegetarian offering. I used a similar marinade as our barbecue, but it's not quite right."
Looking at the array of food on the table, I noticed it was all pica-pica, or finger food. Things that could easily be prepared at the booth and eaten while wandering the festival. The barbecue skewers were obviously the mains, but she also had fish balls (so much better than it sounded) and my favorite, kwek-kwek. The hard-boiled quail eggs were skewered, dipped in a bright orange batter colored with annatto seeds, and deep-fried. So simple and delicious, especially if you dipped it in my aunt's sweet and spicy vinegar sauces.”
― Mia P. Manansala, Homicide and Halo-Halo

“She passed out plates loaded with her signature melt-away brisket crusted with the smoky candy of the fire, links she’d crafted in partnership with a sustainable ranch up near Point Reyes, butter-dipped smoked portobellos, and impossibly tender ribs smothered in her artisanal sauces. Her best sides were on display---cornbread, moist as pudding, from her mother’s private recipe collection, beans and greens, peppery jicama slaw, and her signature hummingbird cake for dessert.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Cubby’s one of the best pitmasters in the world. His brisket is so falling-apart tender you’d swear it was cooked in butter. Folks would travel miles to sample Queen’s house-made sausage, her vegan portobello sandwiches with creamy remoulade, and her Texas sheet cake.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“When you were making pecan-smoked honey brisket at Cubby’s, you had to cook the meats slowly and then, at just the right moment, finish them in the radiant salamander broiler to achieve that delicate caramelized crust.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“But one person had stayed quiet ever since Alisha’s wedding, the person whose blessing she wanted most, and he was sitting across from her, leaning back in his chair like he wanted to put some distance between himself and the platter of tempeh barbecue sliders.
“Vegetarian barbecue?” Pops made it sound like blasphemy.
She grinned. Silence was damning, but pushback she could handle. “Yep. I want to make sure there’s something for everyone here. And expanding our options makes sense from a business standpoint. If we’re getting more out-of-town customers, we need to offer dishes to suit a variety of dietary needs and preferences.” She nudged the plate toward him. “C’mon, I bet you’ll love it.”
He picked up a slider and took a bite, then went back for another with a murmur of appreciation. “That’s actually tasty,” he admitted. “But why’d you go and make new buns? We’ve already got rolls on the menu.”
“Yeah, but these are gluten-free.”
“Quit lying.” He twisted the roll around, scrutinizing it like he was trying to ascertain its chemical makeup, then took another bite and chewed, brow creased in thought. “Vegetarian options I guess I can get used to, even though we used to have a pig on the sign,” he said, and chuckled.”
― Chandra Blumberg, Stirring Up Love

“The smoky smell of the first burgers hitting the grill lured the early arrivers to the backyard, and the barbecue kicked off. Mae left the front door unlocked and opened the back gate to let people come as they pleased. Slowly, the table filled with more food beyond Mae's contributions: Harriet's cornbread, Patty's tea cakes, a burger and hot dog station Jeremiah had set up, Phyllis's coleslaw, collard greens with pink flecks of ham from another of Althea's church friends, a watermelon and cucumber salad from Marlene and Joan, and more. In the ice-filled coolers Mae and Connor had set out, people were helping themselves to sodas, beers, water, and---once Richard arrived---homemade cider.”
― Shauna Robinson, The Townsend Family Recipe for Disaster

“A while ago, I went to a food festival in South London, where-- in a smoky, concrete atrium between two runs of railway arches-- about a dozen barbecue stalls were set up. You can find barbecue and grill cooking easily enough in Peckham. There is suya, South African braii, skewers of chicken kofte, all of which use direct heat in a way that Britain hasn't done properly since the suckling-pig era. The barbecue festival was different. Instead of barbecuing-- a verb, a way of cooking-- it felt like people were doing barbecue, in the same way that your uncle will do Sean Connery when he's taking impression requests.
Of the dozen or so vendors, most were doing nonspecific, seemingly American-inspired barbecue: slow-cooked brisket piled into burgers, burnt ends, actually burnt ends, cheeseburger wings, beef sliders, ribs and ribs and ribs, Texas-inspired massaman curry. Even when the flavors were global, the foundations cleaved to certain barbecue methods, and the basic units of North American culinary vocab. 'Cherry smoked char siu glazed kurobuta pork belly taco.' 'House brined & cherry smoked short rib pastrami slider.' 'Hickory smoked brisket.' 'Crack pork'-- in a pork-crackling 'taco.”
― Ruby Tandoh, All Consuming: Why We Eat the Way We Eat Now