Beyond the personalities, the contests, and the endless regional debates, there’s a fascinating, complex story that isn't being told. Barbecue’s historic and continuing role in American culture is profound. Barbecue has always brought people together, but everywhere we look there are controversies big and small. What is and isn’t barbecue? What are its origins? And there are plenty of conflicts about race, cultural disagreements over meat, food production and where our barbecue comes from. Smoke and Mirror: How Barbecue Reflects America explores the origins of barbecue, our food culture, and the conflicted modern society we’ve become.
We chat with Byron Bradley, chef and instructor at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, on this Independence Day-themed episode. Bradley discusses how this ever-present communal form of cooking has evolved in the south, and what he’s learned from his students at the museum about barbecue’s impact on their lives.
Barbecue is often seen as a kick-off to summer and being closely associated with Father’s Day. In this episode, we chat with Barkley Rafferty, owner of the Royal Merchant Trading company, an international import spice company, to discuss the importance of not only finding the best product to grill this time of year, but finding the best flavors with which to season it.
In this episode, Liz Williams returns to the podcast to discuss how barbecue is not only a quintessential American experience but is a hugely popular activity on Father’s Day. We look at how different regions of the country are celebrating Father’s Day with different meats, sauces, and rubs and how gatherings are managed in the era of social distancing.
North Carolinians take barbecue very seriously - it's a point of pride and a source of endless discussion. Jim Early, Founder and CEO of the North Carolina Barbecue Society, stops by the podcast to explain the state's infatuation with barbecue and how it inspired him to establish North Carolina's Historic Barbecue Trail.
In this episode, we welcome Marlowe Ivey Vaughan to the podcast. Marlowe is a North Carolina hog farmer and Executive Director of Feed the Dialogue NC. In our wide-ranging conversation, we discuss the general lack of understanding of where meat comes from (hint: it's farms, not the grocery store) and steps farmers take to ensure they operate in a safe and sustainable manner.
Liz Williams, founder of the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans, discusses the origins of barbecue and how it’s embedded in the American DNA, and explores how the act of barbecuing has brought people together for centuries.
For the inaugural episode, Ray Brislin joins us to discuss his involvement with the movie, Smoke & Mirror: How Barbecue Reflects America. A former BBC director of photography, Brislin describes his experiences traveling across the southern United States during the film’s production and how barbecue culture is rich and diverse.
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