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Community Corner

It's A Memorial Day Meat-A-Palooza

Your Patch guide to smoky, savory, saucy barbecue goodness.

The park or the beach?  Corona or Karl Strauss?  String bikini or one-piece?  So many decisions arise when planning your Memorial Day celebrations, but none are more pertinent than deciding what to do with your meat: grill or barbecue?

In these health-conscious times, grilling is the obvious answer, but come on—it’s the unofficial start of summer.  There’s three whole months ahead of worrying about how you look in your seasonal wardrobe, so grant yourself at least one day of indulgence.

And when it comes to indulgence, barbecue is the winner hands-down.

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The origins of America’s unique brand of smoky, savory, saucy meat cooking are obscure, but many point to the Caribbean as the birthplace of “barabicu,” which translates to “sacred fire pit.”  As opposed to the high, direct heat involved in grilling, barbecue is all about time, patience, and, of course, smoke.  In traditional American barbecuing, hot coals are dispersed to the sides, letting the hot smoke from flavored wood chips slow cook the meat and infuse it with deliciously complex flavors.

However, there isn’t a singular form of American barbecue—there are several, primarily originating in the South, including Kansas City-style, Memphis-style, North Carolina-style, Texas-style and others.  And even those categories have sub-categories.

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The menu from in Lemon Grove, for instance, differs from East Texas offerings mainly in the type of wood used to smoke the meat—East Texas uses hickory, while West Texas uses mesquite or red oak, although Coop’s owner Brad Cooper sticks with red oak because good mesquite is hard to find in Southern California.

According to Cooper, the difference between Texas barbecue and its Southern peers is the use of dry rub—a seasoning mix that’s rubbed on the meat prior to cooking—as opposed to the “wet mop” used in Kansas City, the Carolinas and elsewhere.

in Lemon Grove employs both dry and wet methods in its Arkansas/Memphis barbecue, but owner Duntae Bright pointed out another major difference between his style and Texas style—the type of meat.  In the deep South, he said, pork is often the barbecue meat of choice, while Texas focuses more on beef (Barnes and Coop’s serve both, as well as chicken).  However, side dishes are nearly universal—coleslaw, potato salad, cornbread, and of course, beans all serve as complementary tastes and textures to the meaty star of the show. 

So how do these two Southern-style establishments—carnivorous strongholds in a California town named after fruit—stack up to the “real deal?”  Cooper said that traveling Texans have remarked how his barbecue is better than famous Texas joints featured on the Food Network, such as Brian’s BBQ and Salt Lick Bar-B-Que.

As for Bright, he said simply, “We’ve been around for over 30 years, and we’ve had customers from all over the world.” In other words, the barbecue speaks for itself. 

In fact, Bright is so confident in his menu, little has changed over the decades.  Barnes’ 70-year-old sauce recipe has been passed down through the generations, and as Bright puts it, “If it isn’t broke, why fix it?”

Cooper, on the other hand, tweaked the recipe his father passed on to him. Every pit master tries to set himself apart, Cooper said, but even so, whenever he’s treated to his father’s barbecue, “I eat like I’ve never eaten barbecue before!”

For those who plan to barbecue at home for Memorial Day, Cooper and Bright have the same advice: smoke it slow—barbecue is not for the impatient.

Other helpful barbecue tips:

  • Never use cheap charcoal—most cheap brands are made with sawdust and glues, and will only ruin the flavor of the meat.  Make sure your charcoal is made with hardwood.
  • Leave fat on the meat when barbecuing—it will give the meat a better flavor, and a lot of the fat will end up melting off anyhow.
  • There should not be any flames in the grill when smoking meat—if the charcoal flares up, take the food off the rack and increase the rack’s distance from the flames.
  • Make sure to keep the grill/smoker closed—you don’t want all that flavorful smoke escaping!
  • Always cook more than you intend to eat—no one has the time to barbecue every day, so make those leftovers last as long as possible.

And, of course, if barbecuing for yourself requires more time and effort than you’re willing to devote on the last day of your three-day weekend, Cooper suggests that “you can always just come to Coop’s.”  Both Coop’s and Barnes will be open on Memorial Day.

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