July is National Bison Month, and bison meat is roaming in from barbe-culture’s fringes to its mainstream. However, barbecue purveyors tend to offer just bison ribs and forsake the rest of the animal. (You may have had a bison burger—they’re pretty tasty for such a lean meat—but that is, of course, not barbecue.) There’s a lesson to […]
A Profile in Barbecue: Columbus B. Hill
I’ve written about our nation’s wildest barbecue, and in the middle of it all was Columbus B. Hill, the event’s chef de cuisine. Chef Hill’s reputation was sullied by the event, but before that, he was a well-known “barbecue man.” The Greeley (CO) Tribune reported in 1894 that “Hill is a colored man and has a great reputation as a […]
Pork Barrel Politics? Make that Whole Hog
There’s been some big food and drink news on the campaign trail of late, from Paul Ryan’s catfish-noodling hobby to President Obama’s home-brewed “White House Honey Ale.” They got me wondering if barbecue had ever taken center stage in a presidential campaign. (Well, since this one.) Barbecues as a social event/fundraiser have a deep tradition in U.S. […]
The Lowdown on Barbecue Down Under
I first heard of Australian barbecue in the 1980s, when actor Paul Hogan (of Crocodile Dundee fame) promised me through the TV that he’d “Put an extra shrimp on the barbie” for me, if only I visited the Land Down Under. I figured out that Hogan was talking about a grill and not the iconic doll, but […]