– The “BeerBQ” hotdog from Triple C made with pulled pork and a sauce made with their smoked amber beer was JJ’s Red Hots best selling hot dog in its “brewdogs” series
– No NC festival made this list of barbecue festivals from USA Today (h/t bbqboard)
– This list of five meals you can’t miss in NC includes Luella’s Bar-B-Que in Asheville; more coverage from the Asheville Citizen-Times
At Luella’s, you can get an order of ribs (excellent), beef brisket (also excellent), chopped pork (some of the best I’ve had, and I’m a certified barbecue judge), and tempeh. The tempeh, a locally made soy-based product, is the veggie surprise. The menu says it’s “almost blasphemous, but so good we’ll forgive you.” And whether you’re a vegetarian or not, it’s worth a taste. Served glazed with a sweet-hot sauce and impregnated with hickory smoke, you’ll hardly notice you’re not eating meat. The chef/owner told me that two of his frequent customers are both vegetarians, and they rave about this dish.
– More lists: 12 Bones in Asheville and Hubba Hubba Smokehouse in Flat Rock (30 miles southeast of Asheville) make this list of America’s 35 best ribs
– The Jiggy with the Piggy BBQ Challenge at the Research Center in Kannapolis is this weekend
– The 10th edition of the Texas Pete Twin City RibFest will take place June 5-8 in Winston-Salem and according to the producer of the festival Allen McDavid it distinguishes from other “cook-offs” by the following:
Barbecue festivals like the Texas Pete Twin City RibFest have the requisite competition but that takes a back seat to satisfying the appetites of thousands of festival attendees who appreciate the choice of barbecue from several nationally renowned pitmasters with the necessary equipment necessary to feed thousands of hungry attendees. According to McDavid, “Our BBQ teams generally go through a tractor trailer load of meat every RibFest. If we don’t have rain, it’s more.”
– The Dallas Observer was not thrilled with Texas Ranger pitcher Matt Harrison (originally from Durham) and his preference for NC barbecue
It’s worse because this means that the Texas Rangers let someone from North Carolina answer a barbecue question on their account. Without censoring it. And let me remind you, the tweet is still there. Nobody immediately deleted it. No interns were fired over this.