PHOTOS BY DELCIA LOPEZ
The Golden Age of Barbecue … I love it! Doesn’t matter whether you spell it barbecue, or barbeque, or Bar-B-Q, or Bar-B-Cue, or just BBQ or even barbacoa! It means different things to different people, but at the end of the day, barbacoa is indeed barbecue — that’s where the word originates.
Fact is, when it comes to cooking in general, many of our traditions, recipes and techniques are similar, yet still different. Cooking over direct or indirect fire goes back thousands of years, but each region has its own peculiarities and specialties. The Rio Grande Valley is no different.
In Central Texas and beyond, referring to fajitas and chicken as BBQ? Well, them just might be fightin’ words. At the very least, it’s blasphemy to the “low ’n’ slow” crowd who will swear on a stack of signed cookbooks that real BBQ is only smoked meats like brisket, pork ribs and pork butt, and cooking anything at more than 225 degrees is just grilling.
In the Valley, we invite family and friends to our BBQs, but some more old school folks prefer to call it carne asada. Along the border, a carne asada party usually will include some or all of these proteins: fajitas, sausage, chicken, short beef ribs and some offal favorites like mollejas (sweetbreads) and tripas (intestines). Of course, que no falte la cerveza, too. Salud!
My father and the neighbors would slaughter a cow for special occasions out west in Pecos. Sometimes, that meant sacrificing a whole hog for cooking up chicharrones and carnitas — always over an open fire and in a big pot.
When we came back to the Valley, we found the traditions were almost exactly the same as in Pecos. Here, the beef short ribs was one of my grandfather’s specialties, and his technique was to chop mesquite and burn it into coals inside the BBQ pit. The meat went on when the fire was just right.
While mi abuelo was cooking fajitas and beef ribs, my father was making guisado or tripas in the homemade disco he had welded. The wafting aromas of the wood, meat drippings and those tripas frying in oil remain vivid in my memory.
Interestingly, pork ribs were never a thing and still aren’t at a typical south Texas BBQ, neither was turkey breast, however those are super popular choices today, even in the Valley.
My welder father built a trailer pit for our many parties back when smoking a brisket was not really a thing here. But it was cheap, so Dad used to slather them with mustard and cook them slowly over mesquite coals. Then he would slice and place the meat into roasting warmers along with some BBQ sauce. That’s how it was served, simple and delicious. And that, friends, was BBQ’d brisket in the Valley in the 1960s and ’70s. You’ll still find it served that way today here.
As a full-time BBQ competitor for several years, we traveled and sampled lots of BBQ all across Texas. It was rarely good, and my wife, Terry, would tell me I was a glutton for punishment.
“These places are fusing the best of the BBQ worlds together so you and I can have delicious carne asada or amazing smoked BBQ or both together at the same table with family and friends.”
Enter Aaron Franklin. And while he wasn’t the first to cook amazing BBQ, he certainly was the first to make it so popular. People from around the world fly to Austin and stand in line for hours just to taste the brisket that made him so famous. Maybe it was just good timing or great luck. But this renaissance back to true wood-smoked BBQ forced countless BBQ places to step it up to keep their diners coming back. It also helped aspiring pit masters realize they could open their own BBQ places, and suddenly we have wall-to-wall BBQ restaurants. And, know what? Most of them are excellent! They have to be if they want to succeed in this tough, highly competitive field.
The litmus test for any BBQ spot in Texas is always the brisket. It has to be juicy, so soft it melts in your mouth and not dry. And the bark has to have just the right crunch — not hard, and highly flavorful. That’s the start of the flavor bomb — when that bark hits your palate and it all comes together just right.
We have the best of both worlds here in the Valley, where old school carne asada BBQ coexists with modern, smoked BBQ meats that are traditional and super popular outside the Valley.
The Smoking Oak in Mercedes was the first BBQ place to bring that Cent ral Texas smoked meat style to the Valley. It upped the BBQ game here. Now, we have Teddy’s Barbecue in Weslaco; Smokin’ Moon in Pharr; GW’s in San Juan and a few more coming on strong. The food trailers, too, with their own versions of both carne asada style and smoked meats. Places like 492 BBQ and El Sancho Tex Mex BBQ in Mission, as well as Rio Valley Meat in Harlingen and Vargas BBQ in Edinburg.
These places are fusing the best of the BBQ worlds; we can enjoy delicious carne asada or amazing smoked BBQ — or both together! So, round up the wife and kids and some friends and get on out to one of these BBQ places for a deep South Texas eating experience. It won’t taste the same anywhere but in the 956.
I’ll see ya there. Vamonos!
