Tyler Florence, Bobby Flay and more reveal the best barbecue they've ever eaten, from Memphis to San Francisco and from pulled pork cooked in a basement to beef brisket smoked in a giant armadillo!
Tyler Florence, Bobby Flay and more reveal the best barbecue they've ever eaten, from Memphis to San Francisco and from pulled pork cooked in a basement to beef brisket smoked in a giant armadillo!
Hungry for more Food Network? Go to discoveryplus.com/bestthing to start your free trial today. Terms apply.
Find episode transcript here: https://the-best-thing-i-ever-ate.simplecast.com/episodes/bar-b-que-ft-michael-symon-bobby-flay-and-tyler-florence
[UPBEAT MUSIC] SPEAKER: People ask me all the time--
SPEAKER: Where do you like to eat?
SPEAKER: What's your favorite food?
SPEAKER: What's the best thing you've ever eaten?
SPEAKER: That's why we're here now.
SPEAKER: Not only to tell you what we love to eat--
SPEAKER: But where you can go get it.
SPEAKER: I love barbecue.
[UPBEAT COUNTRY MUSIC]
SPEAKER: It's crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside.
SPEAKER: It blows all other barbecue away.
SPEAKER: It's just a messy feast of barbecued happiness.
SPEAKER: It's so good.
SPEAKER: It's all the barbecue.
SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] Mm! Oh! Awesome!
SPEAKER: Barbecue is about meat and smoke. And it's all about the magic that you get from that smoke. I feel like I can smell it now. When I think barbecue, I think brisket. And my favorite place for barbecued brisket is North Main Barbecue in Dallas. North Main is run by a guy named Hubert Greene. And Hubert sounds like the name of a guy who should be running a barbecue joint in Texas.
HUBERT GREEN: When it started out, there was just a sheet of plywood out the back.
SPEAKER: They're only open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. If I could work three days a week, I would.
[LAUGHTER]
North Main barbecue advertises that they have the best ribs in the world. But what I really like at North Main is the brisket.
HUBERT GREEN: We sell 1,400 pounds on the weekend. Brisket is a very popular cut of meat when it's done right.
SPEAKER: One side of the brisket is just this thick layer of fat. The other side is more lean.
HUBERT GREEN: But we cook it with the fat side up. And all the juices just go down through the meat as it's cooking so it don't dry out.
SPEAKER: He'll take the brisket, put his own dry rub on it. He won't tell you what's in it. I know there's paprika in it.
HUBERT GREEN: Put a little of this in, a little of that in. He's seasoning it with a secret spice.
SPEAKER: There might be some chilies. But he's not going to tell. Classic Texas approach to brisket is to put it over hickory.
HUBERT GREEN: Professionals use hickory. Amateurs use mesquite.
SPEAKER: The hickory, in particular, has just that really great sweet smokiness.
HUBERT GREEN: Briskets are done on that pit. They're cooked all night long.
SPEAKER: Hubert's brisket is done over the course of 12 to 14 hours. It gets tender and flavorful. And the edges are nice and crispy. They call them the burnt ends, which gives you that charred flavor and that really nice, crispy texture. I could eat it every day. I love it.
Now, Hubert serves a lot of people. So he has a gigantic smoker. They also have a smoker that looks like a huge armadillo. It's an armadillo the size of your car.
HUBERT GREEN: It weighs 2,260 pounds. And smoke comes out his tail. We gave him a little shot of Jack Daniels this morning for breakfast.
SPEAKER: You want to smell smoke in the air when you go to a barbecue restaurant. You want to see people out back with big axes splitting wood, OK? That is what barbecue means. A place I think about first when I think about barbecue-- Syracuse, New York.
SPEAKER: What?
SPEAKER: Syracuse, New York-- Dinosaur Barbecue. A lot of times, you overlook the chicken at a barbecue place. But the chicken at Dinosaur Barbecue is not to be missed.
SPEAKER: All right, sweetheart, where are you going to have today?
SPEAKER: I'm going to do the Straight-Up, half barbecue chicken with beans and slaw. It comes to the table. And it's all this nice, toasty kind of flavors.
There's nothing else you smell but this beautiful, beautiful hickory smoke. I like to take the first bite just as it comes to me. White-meat chicken isn't supposed to be that good. The juices explode in your mouth. The way they start is the chicken sees a few hours in a brine.
SPEAKER: Really it just gives them a nice, moist texture.
SPEAKER: And then it gets rubbed with a dry rub. And then they smoke it. Now, they use just, like, a basic pit cooker. It doesn't look like an armadillo. It's a smoker. Then, the fire both heats the smoker to cook it.
SPEAKER: And these are going to get smoked for about two to three hours.
SPEAKER: And the way the wood smolders, it flavors the meat, as well. And then it gets slathered with a little bit of the slathering sauce.
SPEAKER: What's in our barbecue sauce? I can't tell you that.
SPEAKER: It's not too sweet. It's not too spicy. There's a good amount of garlic, acidity in there. It's just perfect. It is the best barbecue sauce I've ever had.
A knife and fork are being abandoned for this time. This is food that men like to gather around and eat and not talk but grunt.
[GRUNTING]
Yes! I can die a happy man now! I've chopped wood at Dinosaur Barbecue in Syracuse.
SPEAKER: You know, here I've got this idea of what barbecue is. It is this haunch of an animal that I went out and killed it myself in the forest. And I dragged it home over my shoulder in my loincloth. Then I pull up to this restaurant in New Orleans. And all that goes out the window.
It says "barbecue" on the menu. And then it says "shrimp." And you say, huh? You kind of do a double-take, like, barbecue shrimp? Oh, my God. It blows all other barbecue away.
I think there are going to be a couple people in their aprons with their tongs and everything else out there that might be a little upset when they hear me calling this barbecue. But I got to put it out there and share. This dish kind of changed my life because they sort of go outside the box. They're not the traditional thing. And I love that. This shrimp was perfect.
SPEAKER: My grandfather invented the sauce along with a friend of his from Chicago back in the '50s. I'm proud to be part of the family that invented it.
SPEAKER: Think about it. Barbecue sauce didn't exist in the 1950s.
SPEAKER: This is our secret special sauce.
SPEAKER: If you tried to get the recipe for this, good luck with that.
SPEAKER: And then I'm going to take just a little bit of butter here.
SPEAKER: So the spicy-tangy sauce, which is the result of marinating the shrimp in these spices, that combination of sauce, they called it a barbecue. They gave me a bib. And I put it on, and I said, is this what distinguishes the tourists from the locals?
SPEAKER: Everybody who eats these shrimp gets a bib.
SPEAKER: It's serious eating. It's not for the faint of heart. I start by eating the head a little bit. And then I put the head delicately underneath the bowl so that nobody could see the damage I've done.
And the texture of the shrimp was so delicious. It wasn't overcooked. And yet, it was cooked all the way through. And it's got that spice and that, sort of, really strong, vibrant punch of black pepper. Wow. What do you say? That's the best thing I ever ate. That's all you can do.
SPEAKER: Barbecue is something that's as American and unique as, say, jazz or baseball. The aroma of a Rendezvous pulled-pork sandwich is like nothing else in the world. It's smoky. It's rich. And you can almost close your eyes and just kind of, [INHALES] ah. [EXHALES]
Rendezvous is world renowned for charcoal-smoked barbecue chicken, ribs, and pork shoulder. But I would say the most elegant way to enjoy a good barbecue is through pulled pork. And they turn it into a sandwich. So you get a good bun. You get pork shoulder that's cooked low and slow until it's completely falling off the bone. That is a Southern delicacy.
When you go to Rendezvous, you really can't help but fall in love with the place because it is such a great institution. It's the Old South at its finest.
SPEAKER: You know, my father started the restaurant in 1948. And originally, it started as a tavern. We didn't really start cooking the barbecue until 1954. And he found a charcoal chute in the bottom of his shop. And he almost invented a genre of barbecue.
SPEAKER: Trust me, we've burnt many pounds of pulled pork and many ribs over the course of the years to figure out how to do it. It's not as easy as it looks.
SPEAKER: Rendezvous smells like a neighborhood filled with barbecue grills all going off at the same time.
SPEAKER: This has been cooking for about 12 hours. And you really do need to get the gloves on. And you've got to get your hands in there and pull it apart to get rid of all of the fat. A lot of people, when they say "pulled pork," that's really what they're talking about.
SPEAKER: What I love about stacking up a good pulled-pork barbecue sandwich is the temperature difference between the warm of pulled pork, which has a smoky flavor, and the cold, crisp coleslaw on top of that. They really taste great together. It's a really good combination.
It's fresh and crisp. It's cold and warm. It's smoky and sweet. And the pulled pork is just juicy and dripping with sauce. You almost got to squeeze it to get it into your mouth, it's so big. It's like, [GROWLS]. It's like, you never forget it.
It's one of those places that's just an American gem. And if you're going to Memphis, you've got to go see Elvis Presley. And you've got to go to Rendezvous.
SPEAKER: These were the best ribs I have ever had in my life. I take one bite, I'm like, done. It's just, start to eat them. It's just love. It's just, like, the love that you feel. Pork ribs at Ronnie's in Richmond, Virginia blow you away. Ronnie's Ribs is in a closed-down gas station parking lot. Thank you!
I always eat my ribs in the car. The ambience is the smoke coming off of that smoker and the ribs you're getting ready to have. Simple. You see the dry rub kind of sitting on top of them.
SPEAKER: Got a basic rub. Brown sugar and other spices and garlic and paprika. And then all of it is covered with love. Love people. They love to cook this meat. And definitely, we can't tell you what's in here. [LAUGHS]
SPEAKER: The ribs have no burntness on them because flame never hit them.
SPEAKER: There's just the smoke and the heat.
SPEAKER: They were tender. This is just done right to the bone. So when you bite into them, they're just moist. Mm! I'd, like, die for the flavor. This is get down, get down. [LAUGHS]
SPEAKER: My favorite thing about barbecue is actually eating it. It makes you feel like a viking. Big pile of meat, hands, mouth. That's all you need. No utensils required. I'm an absolute barbecue junkie. And the best barbecue is Daisy May's in New York City, the big, long smoked brontosaurus beef ribs. Unbelievable.
When you go to Daisy May's for barbecue, sometimes they have some really unique selections. To me, the barbecued beef ribs are that selection. I've never found anything like them anywhere else in the country.
Can I get a beef rib, some of the beans with the burnt ends, and collards? And a sweet tea. The beef ribs, they're loaded with beef. And you can just smell the smoky succulence when they come out.
SPEAKER: There you go.
SPEAKER: Oh, thank you.
SPEAKER: And your sweet tea.
SPEAKER: Oh, beautiful.
SPEAKER: Thank you.
SPEAKER: Great. It reminds me of Fred Flintstone. It's huge, absolutely "gigundus." It just makes me happy to tear into just a mound of barbecued flesh. When you taste it, you taste beef. You taste smoke. And you taste the love that they put into it.
ADAM PERRY LANG: And what you're going to see is they're pretty thin. Then, when they come out, they kind of all plump up and they recede on the bone.
SPEAKER: Adam Perry Lang is a master of beef.
ADAM PERRY LANG: Some people, before they apply a spice or a rub, they'll put just water to make it stick. But I say, well, try to look for every opportunity where you can add flavor. Moisten it with a seasoned water. Add some hot sauce to it, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, a bit of mustard.
SPEAKER: Here's a guy that came from three-star restaurants in France, who worked with Guy Savoy. So you have someone who is such a refined chef doing barbecue. It has that nice, kind of, crunchy exterior. So you get a little bit of resistance. And then you could just literally feel the fat and goodness running down the sides of your face. It's just a messy feast of barbecued happiness.
SPEAKER: There's barbecue everywhere. There's Mongolian barbecue, Korean barbecue, Chinese barbecue. San Francisco barbecue? Has anybody ever heard of that? No, not really. Yank Sing, San Francisco, the barbecued pork buns baked-- not steamed, baked. Sticky, golden brown. Just enough bun, lots of yum. Can't beat them.
Yank Sing is a dim sum restaurant. They actually wheel around little carts through the dining room. You can point out plates. Can I have those and baked, as well, please?
SPEAKER: Yeah, [INAUDIBLE].
SPEAKER: It's basically anything that touches one's heart because "dim sum" means literally to touch the heart.
SPEAKER: There we go. Now we're talking. [LAUGHS]
The barbecued pork bun is really great. You have this beautiful, pillowy dough. They have a nice, sticky exterior.
SPEAKER: Is that honey?
SPEAKER: It's honey. It's got this nice center. Bursting at the seams with goodness of this really gelatinous, unctuous pork. The meat itself has to be cooked prior. I'm assuming it's pork shoulder. And the sauce?
SPEAKER: It consists of soy sauce, oyster sauce, some sesame oil, and-- it's a secret recipe, you know. I can't tell too much. [LAUGHS]
SPEAKER: And it's all just bound together. It's just really tasty. The barbecue mix is made separately. The dough is made separately. And then, of course, they're combined. And they take a spoon, get a certain amount in there, fold the dough around it. And then let it proof and then bake.
I start with just the pork bun as is. Then you need a little hot sauce. And it's a little sweet. A little salt to it. And then, perfect bun. (SINGING) Pork bun. Loveliness. They're great.
DUFF GOLDMAN: I love barbecue. My favorite barbecue sandwich is at Gates Bar-B-Q in Kansas City. But my favorite plate of barbecue is at The Salt Lick in Austin, Texas. It's huge.
I think The Salt Lick should have, like, galvanized buckets that they serve the barbecue in so you get a bucket of barbecue. It's all the barbecue. You got pork ribs, sausage, beef brisket. Awesome.
SPEAKER: It's probably more than a healthy man ought to eat. But it's really good.
DUFF GOLDMAN: You go to The Salt Lick, the food is great. But it's the whole experience. You pull into the parking lot. There are Texas Rangers directing the parking because the place is so busy. They all have six shooters. Six shooters!
I mean, everyone's just kind of hanging out and talking and sharing. It's real family style. This is funny. I went in there, and there's a picture of Bobby Flay at The Salt Lick. Bobby got here before I did, right?
BOBBY FLAY: Hey, Duff, sorry I beat you to The Salt Lick. But you know how it is. Barbecue is my game.
SPEAKER: And I'm like, darn! They have this giant fire pit--
SPEAKER: What separates us completely from everybody else is what's right behind me, this big, open pit.
SPEAKER: --where they're roasting all this meat, grilling up all this sausage.
SPEAKER: We hang them inside the pits here in order for them to take on a lot more of the smoke flavor.
SPEAKER: The flavor of the sausage is-- it gets you right here. It's so intense. I enjoy the texture. I like the casing. I like the meat. The brisket is super tender. It's really good.
SPEAKER: To do this one plate, it probably takes 22 hours.
SPEAKER: They put sauce on everything.
SPEAKER: We have a special sauce that was brought to Texas by my father's family when they moved here in 1867. And over the years, it's been Texa-fied. It's one of those, we'd have to kill you if you knew.
BOBBY FLAY: You know what, Duff, that sounds great. But here's the real deal. When I go there, I want to eat the beef ribs. I want to eat the beef ribs at The Salt Lick because they're fantastic I eat a ton of those beef ribs. They're just so special. I don't even think they're on the menu. Or they have them, like, one day a week or something.
SPEAKER: In order to keep the customers satisfied, I started serving beef ribs on Sunday afternoons.
BOBBY FLAY: The Salt Lick makes their own barbecue rules. They have lots of flavor. And because it's the rib, it has lots of fat running through it. So it's got lots of delicious moisture. It's almost like brisket on a bone.
SPEAKER: I believe our beef ribs are very special because we marinate with our barbecue sauce. And it creates this burnt exterior on the outside of it.
BOBBY FLAY: I always eat it with their habanero barbecue sauce.
SPEAKER: We take the regular same barbecue sauce and add some habanero sauce to spice it up.
BOBBY FLAY: It's so good. I don't usually cook beef ribs. It's one of those things that I leave to The Salt Lick. If you go there, plan ahead. Bring your own beer. Bring a big appetite. And ask them if the beef ribs are around.
DUFF GOLDMAN: You want to know where to get the good stuff, ask the people who know. Who knows? Doctors? No. The bus driver? No. If we say go there, [WHISPERS] we're not kidding.
[MUSIC PLAYING]