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Where There's Smoke: The Barbecue
Let's get something straight: Throwing a steak or a batch of burgers on the Weber? That's not barbecue. Not in the true, slow-cooked, dry-rubbed, or, alternatively, sauce-slathered sense of the word. Barbecue is an art form -- one that's slightly daunting to any chef whose New York kitchen isn't equipped with a soot-encrusted smoker and several cords of hickory wood. But in fact, there's nothing daunting about rigging an impromptu pit out of a kettle grill and rustling up a rack of ribs or a smoked chicken when the craving strikes -- and that craving has been striking nightly since Danny Meyer opened his rollicking roadhouse, Blue Smoke, two months ago. Under the tutelage of Illinois pit master Mike Mills, Meyer and his culinary team -- Michael Romano and Kenny Callaghan -- have become assiduous students of Memphis-style dry-rubbed barbecue, and not only have they adapted their restaurant methods for the backyard barbecuer (lopping a good five hours off the cooking time), they've shared their recipes for an all-American picnic-table feast, from curry-tinged deviled eggs to smoky stovetop "pit" beans. Meyer even unearthed his grandmother's potato-salad recipe. But don't expect him to be as generous with his proprietary Blue Smoke Magic Dust rub and sauce: Some secrets just have to stay that way.
Plus: More Barbecue Resources
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