BBQuest

The Best Barbecue Shows on Streaming – July 2023

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Monk: Earlier this month I power ranked the new barbecue shows this summer but with the ever changing streaming landscape I wanted to revisit the older shows that are currently available on streaming, which I somehow haven’t done since late 2020. Starting with a few of my favorites:

Previously:

The New Barbecue TV Power Rankings of Summer 2023
The Best Barbecue Shows on Streaming (December 2020)

BBQ Pitmasters – Season 1 (Max)

For me and likely many others, this is the show that got me into barbecue on television. It’s first season (the only one currently available on Max) was filmed documentary style, following several competitors over the course of a barbecue competition season across the country. Myron Mixon and Tuffy Stone were two of the competitors followed during the course of this format and would go on to be full-time judges starting in season 3. Noted competition pitmasters Danielle Bennett (aka Diva Q), Johnny Trig, and Harry Soo are also featured in season 1.

Previously: Barbecue on Netflix Streaming (March 2016)

BBQuest (Hulu)

Across three seasons of the travel show co-produced by the Texas Beef Council, host and native Texan Kelsey Pribilski (along with Austrialian-turned-Texas Jess Pryles in season 3) criss-crosses Texas to meet with some of the best pitmasters in the state. She’s in search of the state’s best barbecue as well as secret barbecue menu items. The first season gets the large cities (Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth) out of the way, while season two and three are able to tackle more remote locales. Texas Monthly Barbecue Editor Daniel Vaughn even makes an appearance as Kelsey’s guide for the Big Bend episode (S2E1).

Previously: Season 3

BBQ with Franklin (PBS, Prime Video)

This series was originally made for PBS Austin but is available on both the free PBS streaming app as well as Prime Video. This is very much a process-oriented series about brisket, sausage, whole hog, and other aspects of a barbecue smoke, but Franklin’s such an easygoing on-screen presence that its definitely worth a watch.

Chef’s Table: BBQ (Netflix)

This barbecue and live-fire cooking edition of the Chef’s Table series profiles 4 pitmasters or live-fire cooking chefs, with the Tootsie Tomanetz of Snow’s Barbecue and Rodney Scott episodes being the highlight for American barbecue fans.

Previously: The Best Barbecue Shows on Streaming (December 2020)

Other options:

Netflix

  • Barbecue Showdown – 2 Seasons
  • The Chef Show – S1 V1 E7 “Aaron Franklin” & S1V1E8 “Hot Luck”
  • Cooked – S1 E1 “Fire”
  • High on the Hog – S1 E2 “The Rice Kingdom” & S1 E4 “Freedom”
  • Queer Eye – S3 E3 – “Jones Bar-B-Q”
  • Somebody Feed Phil – S6 E4 “Austin”
  • Street Food: Asia – S1 E9 “Cebu, Philippines”
  • Taco Chronicles – S1 E5 “Barbacoa”
  • Taco Chronicles: Cross the Border – S1 E6 “Dallas”
  • Ugly Delicious – S1 E5 “BBQ”

Hulu

  • The World Food Championship – S1E5 “BBQ”
  • Worth It – S3 E2 “$7 BBQ Ribs Vs. $68 BBQ Ribs” & S2 E10 “$13 BBQ Ribs Vs. $256 BBQ Ribs”

Max

  • BBQ Brawl – 4 Seasons
  • BBQ USA – 2 Seasons

PBS

  • Planet Barbecue with Steven Raichlen
  • Steven Raichlen’s Project Fire
  • Steven Raichlen’s Project Smoke

Prime Video

  • Food Safari – Fire
  • Smoke And Ribbons: A DocQmentary

The Roku Channel

  • Mind of a Chef – S1 E15 “BBQ” & S2 E7 “Lowcountry BBQ”

Our Favorite Posts from 2022

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Monk: 2022 marked the ten year anniversary of the blog and its gone by in a flash. We’re going to take the rest of the year off in order to come out strong in 2023, but before we do we want to 1) wish you all a happy holidays and 2) spotlight one last time some of our favorite original content from 2022.

Without further ado…

Original Content

My summer kicked off with a weekly recap of all 8 episodes of the third season of “BBQ Brawl.” While I was happy to get through those two months mostly unscathed, I also checked out a few other barbecue streaming shows throughout the year featuring notable barbecue personalities like Michael Symon’s “BBQ USA,” “World of Flavor with Big Moe Cason,” and the third season of “BBQuest” which added Hardcore Carnivore’s Jess Pryles as a co-host.

Barbecue Bros AV Club: “BBQ Brawl“ S3 E1 – “‘Cue the Introductions”
Barbecue Bros AV Club: First Impressions of “BBQ USA”
Barbecue Bros AV Club: First Impressions of “World of Flavor With Big Moe Cason”
Barbecue Bros AV Club: “BBQuest” Season 3

We’ve done some updating of our Lexington rankings sadly due to closures but I already know I need to get back to Lexington to try Cafe 71 Smoke House BBQ, which opened this fall in the old Rick’s Smokehouse space.

The Lexington Barbecue Rankings: June 2022 Update

I also am trying a new post format with the “best barbecue within an hour of [insert major city here].” I’ve started with Charlotte but will work on posts for both Raleigh as well as the eastern part of the state.

Best barbecue within an hour of Charlotte – October 2022

We also went to a few festivals this year! May was a busy month in Charlotte with both the Smoke & Grapes event at the Charlotte Wine & Food Festival as well as the successful first annual Carolina BBQ Festival hosted by Lewis Donald of Sweet Lew’s BBQ.

Recap: Smoke & Grapes at the Charlotte Wine & Food Festival featuring Jon G’s Barbecue
The Carolina BBQ Festival Delivered on its Promise to Put Charlotte Barbecue on the Map

In November, I went to Charleston for the second annual Holy Smokes Barbecue Festival and had a grand time in the lowcountry.

Holy Smokes Brought Pitmasters from All Over to the South Carolina Lowcountry

I can’t wait to see what festivals I’ll make it to in 2023.

Reviews

We’re up to 327 reviews on the site now, and in 2022 we added 23 more. Not quite our most productive year, but still an average of nearly 2 per month.

Rudy got to finally try Noble Smoke in Charlotte in February, and left pretty impressed with a 4.5 hog review.

Speedy loved pretty much everything about the relatively new Bringle’s Smoking Oasis in Nashville, from the space to the bar to of course the food (in particular the beef rib and the brisket). Another 4.5 hog meal.

But from the looks of it, Speedy’s favorite meal of the year was at Prime Barbecue in Knightdale when he was back in North Carolina this summer. He gave it our prestigious 5 hog rating, the first since our most recent Jon G’s Barbecue review from 2021.

I got in on the 4.5 hog action with a couple of joints in the Carolinas: Lawrence Barbecue in Durham and Palmira BBQ in Charleston. At Lawrence, in addition to the fun atmosphere at Boxyard RTP and the Lawrence Barbecue-inspired beer from Trophy Brewing, the pork and brisket were highlights of the meal. At Palmira, I got to chat with owner and pitmaster Hector Garate and both the whole hog barbecue and hash and rice shone through.

And last but not least, I can’t forget my mini whole hog barbecue tour in eastern North Carolina in the spring, where I visited B’s Barbecue, Skylight Inn, and the original location of Sam Jones BBQ.

I did a brief writeup for The Smoke Sheet, which a version of showed up on the site as well.

Eastern NC Whole Hog Tour, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Dichotomy of NC Barbecue

With that, the 2022 posts are done for the year. But we’ll be back in January with all new content.

Happy Holidays and see you all in 2023!

Friday Find: Kelsey Pribilski of “BBQuest” Wants Everyone to Know That She is Indeed a Native Texan

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Monk: While BBQuest host Kelsey Pribilski was technically born in Georgia, she wants to settle once and for all that her family is originally from Texas and she has lived there all her life minus a few years growing up in other states as an Army brat. This and some good behind-the-scenes of the show in this latest interview from Kevin’s BBQ Joints. For more on BBQuest, I reviewed season 3 in a recent post.

Description: In this episode, I sit down with Kelsey Pribilski from BBQuest which is now in its third season and is produced by the Texas Beef Council.

Barbecue Bros AV Club: “BBQuest” Season 3

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Monk: Kelsey Pribilski and the Texas Beef Council are back for the third season of “BBQuest,” and this time they’ve brought along author, live fire chef, and beef expert Jess Pryles of Hardcore Carnivore.

While the first two seasons focused on Kelsey’s (at times unsubtly staged) solo quest to try secret menu items at barbecue restaurants across Texas, with aspiring meat scientist Pryles in tow in season three they go beyond the pit (as the show is subtitled) to also talk with the cattle ranchers across the Lonestar State that provide the beef for Texas barbecue.

Each episode is structured to pair the barbecue restaurants with a cattle rancher that may be taking a similar approach, whether that’s the traditional route of barbecue paired with the old school cattle ranchers or the newer fusion barbecue restaurants and the next generation of a cattle feed yard that are using technology to innovate in the space.

Pribilski and Pryles have an easy chemistry and I like the duo compared with the rotating guest host approach they did for the first two seasons. Each episode runs about 20 minutes which makes for an easy watch. Between spotlighting the newer barbecue joints and shining a light on an industry that folks may unfortunately overlook when visiting those joints, “BBQuest” is well worth the time of streaming viewers hungry for barbecue content.

All 4 episodes of “BBQuest” are available to watch on Hulu or on the Beef Loving Texas YouTube page