A lot of us have quite a tailored list to go through before we bestow the “Best” title upon anything having to do with barbecue or pulled meat.

For one, the best barbecue has to come from the hands of people who travel to county fairs by Mack Trucks packed with logs, iron smokers and grills the size of sedans. If it doesn’t come from a vehicle that beeps while backing up, we don’t want it.

If we have it at a restaurant, it has to be served by a burly dude in overalls and a shirt that looks like it was snatched from a picnic table. Better still if his fingers are perpetually curled into a loose fist, even when he’s not holding an iron pitchfork. And his smokehouse has to be no smaller than your two-car garage.

In other words, if it ain’t dirty or country, we don’t want none. Please turn your non-beeping vehicle around and go back whence you came.

It’s a similar story when we’re barbecuing at home. There are rituals up the wazoo, making it more of an event rather than a cuisine or cooking method. Many of us prep for days, marinating and coaxing any and all flavor into the meat. We won’t even look at our grills unless they can be filled with a pricy sack of (soaked) wood chips. No meat will touch anyone’s lips until you’ve stealthily added the “secret ingredient” to it, either. Modesty? Forget about it. “This is the absolute best (insert slow-cooked meat here) that you’ll ever know,” you say, as you plunk a heaping pile of charred and sauced animal onto a tablecloth resembling the ‘cue waiter’s shirt. “It’s the best. I’m the best. You will never have it better than this. Ever.”  (Click on “Read the rest of this entry” for more)

We are so funny about our food. I love the enthusiasm and the ritual of a summer barbecue as much as the next person, but I miss the days of throwing some meat on a grill – naked of any bells and whistles or what have you – and just going with the flow. Some of the best steaks I’ve had are the meat-plus-fire kind, minus any marinades or sauces.

So when I’m making pulled pork or beef, I like to season it only with salt and pepper before it goes on a grill. No secret ingredients. When I bypass the grill and make it in the oven (gasp!), not even the purists seem to notice.

But then again, I’ve got some bells and whistles up my sleeve, too. I like to serve this pulled beef slider-style with sweet Hawaiian rolls and grilled pineapples. (You can also sub pork shoulder for beef.) If you’re going this route, you may need to season your beef again, after you add barbecue sauce. And with the addition of bacon (seriously, why not?), you get some of the salt you need to cut through the sweetness. As for sauce, I haven’t had a chance to perfect my own (yet another ritual in itself), so I experiment with the gazillion bottles of sauce out there to try. I like Stubb’s barbecue sauce, for a more vinegary North Carolina taste.

PULLED BEEF

• Yield: 4 servings
• 6 strips bacon
• 2 pounds beef chuck
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• salt and pepper
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 to 3 cups of barbecue sauce
• Hamburger buns or Hawaiian rolls

PROCEDURE:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper. Lay bacon strips over parchment. Bake pan for 10-15 minutes, or until bacon is crispy. Remove from oven and let cool on pan. Reduce oven heat to 250 degrees and leave oven door open while you dress the beef.
2. Drizzle olive oil over the bottom of a medium roasting pan. Place meat in roasting pan, and coast with sugar (you want kind of a thin crust). Season generously with salt and pepper and cover with onions. Tent pan with aluminum foil.
3. Roast meat for 3 to 4-1/2 hours, or until beef is fork tender and can be pulled apart easily. Remove from oven, and set aside to cool slightly. Meanwhile, chop bacon into small-dice bits.
4. When meat can be handled, shred apart and add barbecue sauce and bacon. Mix until evenly coated and bacon is distributed. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and add more barbecue sauce if you will. Serve hot on toasted buns or Hawaiian rolls.

– Cynthia Furey

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under In the kitchen, Main dishes, Meat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.