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Nine books on barbecue not enough for these cooks

By Kim Davaz

Some days it’s too hot to eat. Some days it’s too hot to think about eating. When it’s that hot, for some, restaurants with air conditioning come to mind. It makes me think about barbecue. Barbecue and sweet tea and fried okra. And slaw. You have to have slaw.

Barbecue is more than a meal: It’s a passion. Just ask Ardie Davis and Paul Kirk. These two have nine cookbooks between them on the subject and they’re nowhere near finished. They’ve collaborated on “America’s Best BBQ: 100 Recipes From America’s Best Smokehouses, Pits, Shacks, Rib Joints, Roadhouses and Restaurants.”

Every barbecue place’s food is different. They can’t even agree on how to spell barbecue, so how can they agree on a sauce or a rub or what kind of fuel to use?

Has there ever been a food with more secrets in the recipes? I would not be surprised if the recipes the restaurants have given aren’t missing a little something, that secret ingredient or method that makes people line up at the door. That’s OK. Take the recipes and make them your own. Add your own secret ingredient. We’ll never tell.

In the vein of using every part of the hog except the squeal, The Pit in Raleigh, N.C., does indeed cook the whole pig, and the recipe is included in the book. In quite a casual way, the recipe says to preheat the pit to 250 degrees. That’s assuming you have a pit that will hold 40 pounds of charcoal plus a 150-pound pig.

Smoki O’s in St. Louis gives its recipe for barbecued pig snoots. Let me know if you find 12 pig snoots and barbecue them.

Eugene’s own Hole in the Wall Barbecue on West 11th Avenue made it into the book and shares its recipe for apple crisp. We’ll save the hot bubbling apples for the fall.

The oddest recipe in the dessert section is for Pop’s Salt Lick Sundae from The Salt Lick Bar-B-Q in Driftwood, Texas. Vanilla ice cream topped with barbecue sauce is an acquired taste. While my first thought was not remotely positive, I tried it with a good premium vanilla ice cream and a Kansas City-style barbecue sauce. It was remarkably not bad, bringing to mind the spiciness of mincemeat pie with a scoop of ice cream. A 6-year-old who’ll eat barbecue sauce on just about anything gamely tried three bites before deciding it wasn’t for him.

The pages of “America’s Best BBQ” look like they’ve been spattered with barbecue sauce. The book is stuffed with photos of BBQ advertising art (every smiling pig you can imagine), stories and barbecue terms (“Pigot: an individual who is hogmatic, i.e., believes that the only true barbecue is pig barbecue.”)

Restaurants are listed by state in the index. At the end of the dessert chapter is a list of each author’s top 10 barbecue restaurants. They agreed on five, though they didn’t agree on the ranking.

The cookbook finishes with a barbecue how-to - from the definition of barbecue to how to clean your grill grates. Charts show how to determine when your meat and poultry are done. As a finale before the index, there are 22 places that didn’t make their top 100, but are worth visiting.

On the very last page is a call for barbecue places Davis and Kirk have missed. They really aren’t finished yet.

You’ll find sauces in the index under “seasonings.” (The index doesn’t make it easy to find recipes or places.) This barbecue sauce, or spicy gravy, is from Lem’s Bar-B-Q House in Chicago. You could put it on vanilla ice cream, but they like it on their rib tips.

Lem’s Bar-B-Q Sauce

• 1/3 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground celery seeds

Combine the ketchup, sugars, vinegar, chili powder, dry mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic powder and celery seeds in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve all the sugars. Heat, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Kim Davaz writes a biweekly cookbook review column for The Register-Guard.