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Slingin’ Hash

SC BBQ Newsletter from Destination BBQ

10/24/22

Kindling

Hey <<First Name>>

Normally, this would be the final email of the month and would highlight some of the BBQ competitions and festivals for the following month. That email will arrive on Halloween, a week from today.

Not to scare you, but in today’s issue, we take a step back in time.

First, we’ll explore the historical origins of barbecue and an important transition that unearthed a term we still use in barbecue today.

Next, we’ll take a look back at a much more recent event as we dust the ashes off our very first restaurant review.

Finally, we’ll spotlight a Myrtle Beach mainstay which we escaped by the hair of our chinny, chin, chin. (Okay, okay, that’s pushing the allusion a bit too far.)

Enjoy,

Jim

PS <<First Name>>: As you may recall, I wrote all the October emails back at the end of September as a way to give myself time to work on the cookbook. Happy to jump in and add this update to the email and share a bit of progress.

Here’s a screenshot of the opening of the chapter on hash.

Currently, that chapter contains something like 25 hash recipes for a wide variety of the hash types we see across the state from red hash to beef hash to even venison hash. Still a long way to go, but progress is being made.

Shoutout to Archie Felder of Bowman who allowed me to use his photo of hash ingredients being stewed in a cast-iron kettle in his hash house.

Lookin’ Good

Time to feature a “scroll-stopping” image. How about this one from G Brand BBQ in Crawford, GA? Okay, I confess. This is another image from a place that’s not from the Palmetto State.

Forgive me, but I thought the image looks great. Plus, I wanted to spread the word because it belongs to my brother-in-law, Fred Gretsch (or Fritz, as I know him). If you’re ever near Athens, stop on in and give G Brand BBQ a try.

Historically Speaking

—The “Rackmasters” of BBQ

If you’ve ever heard about the origins of barbecue, you are probably familiar with the story. It goes something like this:

Indigenous peoples of what we now know as the Americas and Caribbean had long practiced a technique in which an elevated rack of sticks — natively known as a “barbacoa” — held whole animals high above a fire, theoretically cooking the animals over time.

In and around the period of European exploration of the late 1400s through the 1500s, Spanish explorers, traveling with a beast new to these areas, met and mingled with the inhabitants.

That animal was, of course, the pig. Once the native’s technique and the explorer’s hogs were combined, barbecue was born.

The truth may or may not be that simple, but that’s the gist of it. I’m not here to suggest otherwise. Really, I’d like to bring up a more pertinent point.

If this is how it all happened, why are those adept at cooking barbecue not known as “rackmasters”?

For some reason, we call them “pitmasters,” instead. Pit masters. Masters of the pit.

Why is that?

It’s because the cooking concept transitioned from raised sticks to earthen pits.

I asked noted BBQ expert Robert Moss what he knew about that transition for a piece I wrote on The Darker History of BBQ. Here’s what he had to say:

Not a lot, unfortunately—there’s a sort of “missing link” between the Native American technique and what we would think of a Southern-style pit barbecue. The problem is there is almost nothing written in the 18th century (surviving, at least) that captures how barbecue was cooked nor how it might have evolved from the rack of sticks to the in-ground pit method.

Some have assumed that it must have evolved somehow from one to the other. Others have speculated it was more just colonists borrowing the Native American word and not the technique. I don’t think there’s enough evidence one way or another to say.

If you think about it, though, it would be pretty difficult to build a frame of sticks that would hold, say, a whole hog or steer, versus fish or small mammals, which is what Native Americans cooked on their “barbacoas.” Much simpler and more reliable to bring it down to the ground and lower the coals by digging a pit.

Makes sense to me, and it is because of that inevitable transition that we have pitmasters today.

From the Ashes

In this issue, we dust the ashes off the second article and the very first review we published on Destination BBQ.

The first thing I published on June 7, 2012, was a “Hello World-style” article simply entitled Destination: BBQ, which quickly summed up what our journey would be about. Little did I know…

But the second thing I published was this review of Scott’s BBQ in Hemingway. Obviously, Rodney was still there at the time and Rodney Scott’s BBQ may not have even been a dream yet.

But Scott’s Bar-B-Que was very real and had recently gained notoriety. Well deserved, as I suggest in the opening line of the review:

“There is something simply sublime about perfectly cooked barbecue. Today, Heather, Camden, and I enjoyed just that at Scott’s BBQ in Hemingway, SC.”

Check out Our First Ever Review

The Smoke Ring

In each edition, we’ll metaphorically spin the SCBBQ globe and randomly select an SC BBQ joint to spotlight.

This time, the globe stopped spinning on Little Pigs Bar-B-Q in Myrtle Beach.

“We found Little Pigs was about 12 miles up the coast from our location so we turned right, rode up Ocean Blvd., and soon found ourselves at the small, nondescript gas station/strip mall which Little Pigs calls home.

“We entered and approached a blonde woman who would seemingly have rather been anywhere else. After perusing the menu (and avoiding her vacant stare), we placed our order: two chopped pork plates with mild sauce, one with onion rings and slaw, the other with baked beans and potato salad.”

So began our review of Little Pigs BBQ which we published a little over a decade ago. Today, the restaurant is still going strong and makes it to our Smoke Ring feature. Not sure if the blonde is still there…

Check out Little Pigs Bar-B-Q in Myrtle Beach

We’d love to hear your opinion of this stop on the SC BBQ Trail in our

I Love SC BBQ Facebook Group