When it comes to smoking a brisket, Pecan Lodge pitmaster and co-owner Justin Fourton is among the best in Texas. Their recent appearance on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives is further evidence of that fact.
However, our photo crew at the Dallas Morning News beat Guy Fieri to the airwaves by a couple of weeks with this video of Justin explaining how to prep, cook and cut a brisket. Staff photographer Vernon Bryant spent a day behind the scenes at Pecan Lodge to bring you some of Justin's secrets. Enjoy.......
Here's the third video from our Best of Texas BBQ Tour multimedia package on dallasnews.com. In this piece, Gary Jacobson, Jim Rossman, Bruce Tomaso and me talk about what we look for in great Texas barbecue.
When we sit down to a plate of brisket, ribs and sausage, here are the basic criteria used to judge what we're eating: Taste, tenderness, appearance, texture and smokiness.
Click the video below to see more of our tips on judging great Texas BBQ.
When it comes to Texas BBQ tours, the Posse has a few tips to share with our readers.
We've had 12 BBQ tours since 2009, covering around 5,000 miles. Our last trip, the Best of Texas BBQ Tour, covered 700 miles and 10 top Texas BBQ joints over 48 hours.
Tip no. 1: Do your research and planning, have an agenda. Check out website's like Daniel Vaughn's Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog. Daniel has been to every BBQ joint in Texas and he can save you a trip to a pretender. In fact, his book The Prophets of Smoked Meat will be released in mid-May
Tip no. 2: Pace yourself, don't over eat at any spot, IE: judge but nibble. If it's not any good, stop eating the save room for the good joint down the road. (Think wine tasting.) Try to have some down time between stops.
Tip no. 3: No sides if going to a bunch of joints in one day, we learned that on our first tour four years ago. It just takes up room when you need to be enjoying great smoked meats.
Tip no. 4: Be on the look out for surprises along the way, follow the smoke. A great BBQ surprise is worth the trip itself.
Click the video below to get our tips on planning a great Texas BBQ tour.
Tim Landauer poses in front of the Texas Capitol, left. Son Robby rides between Taylor and Austin.
Here at Posse headquarters, we've been feeling pretty good about ourselves and the nearly 700-mile Best of Texas Tour that we did -- by car -- over a long weekend.
Then we got an email from Tim Landauer, a North Texas resident who, with his son, Robby, took a 6-day, 276-mile tour of the Central Texas barbecue heartland by bicycle last May.
They ate at five of the same joints we did and arrived at the same conclusion: "Franklin's is the best we had," Tim wrote.
A couple of weeks ago we wrote about a chance to buy a piece of Texas BBQ history - the original catering smoker rig at Snow's BBQ in Lexington. Here's a slightly less expensive opportunity to buy another item representing the best in Texas BBQ.
You may have heard about the fire that recently destroyed the original brick pit at Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor. The pit, which was built in 1959, was a total loss after back-to-back pit fires over the weekend of Feb. 23. Pitmaster and owner Wayne Mueller has decided to turn the disaster into a positive thing by offering the original bricks and lid squares for sale to help fund the rebuilding of a new pit.
Brisket, ribs and sausage at Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN)
By Gary Jacobson/Texas BBQ Posse
For a while now, members of the Texas BBQ Posse have strongly suspected that Dallas finally has a joint that can hang with the elite barbecue restaurants in the state.
Our recent Posse Favorites Tour confirmed that suspicion. We drove nearly 700 miles and ate at 10 top places over 48 hours. We scored brisket, pork ribs and sausage, the holy trinity of Texas barbecue, on a 10-point scale.
In the end, we compiled a list of the six top-scoring spots. Pecan Lodge at Dallas Farmers Market placed second overall, snugged tightly between Franklin Barbecue in Austin at No. 1 and Snow’s BBQ in Lexington at No. 3.
That’s stout company. Behind them in our top tier of six were Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor and Fargo’s Pit BBQ in Bryan.
The Posse judges dig into ribs, brisket and sausage at Kreuz Market in Lockhart. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN)
One of the new additions to our reporting of the Best in Texas BBQ Tour was taking advantage of the new video studio at The Dallas Morning News. Some might say the Posse members in the video -- Gary Jacobson, Jim Rossman, Bruce Tomaso and me, Chris Wilkins -- have the perfect faces for radio. We don't disagree, but we had a great time filming these videos.
DMN photojournalist Nathan Hunsinger shot three videos of the Posse discussing the pursuit of great barbecue for dallasnews.com. The video shown below is our discussion of how we ranked the top six BBQ joints in Texas.
Here's a look at our three-page spread in today's Dallas Morning News travel section. The Best of Texas BBQ project was published in print and online on dallasnews.com and the DMN iPad app.
Dallas Morning News editor Bob Mong shared his thoughts on the Posse in his weekly note to the readers published in today's paper:
I can always stop by photo editor Chris Wilkins’ desk and catch up on the top visual journalism of the day.
Here's a big shout out to The Dallas Morning News iPad team for this amazing interactive multimedia package on the Best of Texas BBQ Tour. This has to be one of the best online presentations ever assembled to feature the top BBQ joints in Texas.
Special thanks to iPad editor Paul O'Donnell, designer Amanda Robinson and multimedia editor David Guzman for their hard work making this all come together. Also, thanks to DMN travel editor Cathy Barber for her support on this project.
Click here to see the DMN iPad package showing our picks for the Best in Texas BBQ.
Click here to see the story and links on the DMN Travel section of dallasnews.com.
Snow's BBQ, Lexington. Click on each photo to see a 360-degree panorama.
When planning started for our Best of Texas BBQ Tour, we wanted to come up with a unique way to let readers experience the best BBQ joints in Texas. Welcome to the BBQ panorama project, a way to take a virtual tour of each joint without leaving your easy chair.
Dallas Morning News staff photographer Tom Fox shot the panoramas using a specially-designed rig consisting of a tripod bracket that helped him to align and shoot six separate photos of each place, which were then stitched together using software that forms the full 360-degree panorama.
You can click on each photo on this blog post to go to the related panorama hosted on dallasnews.com. Once you're there, you can use your mouse or touchpad to navigate your way around each BBQ joint. This technology works even better on the iPad, where you can simply hold up the panorama in front of you and slowly turn in a circle as the image on the screen moves with you.
Also, thanks to Dallas Morning News multimedia producer David Guzman for his hard work putting these together. Enjoy!
The faces behind our top six BBQ joints, clockwise from top left: Aaron Franklin of Franklin BBQ, Justin Fourton of Pecan Lodge, Tootsie Tomanetz of Snow's BBQ, Roy Perez of Kreuz Market, Wayne Mueller of Louie Mueller Barbecue, Belender Wells & Alan Caldwell of Fargo's Pit BBQ. (Photos by Tom Fox/DMN)
The Dallas Morning News posted the results of the Posse's Best of Texas BBQ Tour today on its Web site. The results will appear on the paper's iPad's application this weekend and in the newspaper's travel section on Sunday.
It was an exceedingly close finish. With 30 being the best possible score, less than a point separated the top three joints -- Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Pecan Lodge in Dallas and Snow's BBQ in Lexington.
Over 48 hours we ate at 10 top places. Six judges from the Posse rated the brisket, pork ribs and sausage at each on a scale of 1 to 10. We averaged the scores for each meat and then added them to determine the overall winner.
Posse BBQ judges (L-R) Jim Rossman, Bruce Tomaso and Gary Jacobson sample the meats at Fargo's Pit BBQ in Bryan. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN)
In some respects, our recent Best of Texas barbecue tour was like a cookoff. Only the food didn't come to the judges, we went to the food.
Eating at 10 places over 48 hours and scoring each joint's brisket, pork ribs and sausage -- the three foundation meats of Texas BBQ -- gave us a good framework for comparison.
It also focused our attention entirely on the basics.
Order of award-winning ribs at Pecan Lodge in the Dallas Farmer's Market. (Tom Fox/DMN)
While we wait for the full results of the Posse's recent Best of Texas barbecue tour to be published in The Dallas Morning News this weekend, we can reveal one more detail:
Pecan Lodge in Dallas won the pork rib category. Five of our six judges rated pitmaster Justin Fourton's ribs a perfect 10. The sixth judge scored a 9.
Even now, four weeks later, we're still complimenting ourselves for our nifty navigation of the long lines at Franklin Barbecue in Austin during the Posse's Best of Texas Tour. People can begin queuing up two hours before the joint opens and the number can quickly grow to a hundred or more.
We took advantage of Franklin's advance-order service and had Posse members and Austin residents Libby Jacobson and Mike Gagne pick up our food before the place opened for regular business.
"It was a glorious feeling," Libby said of walking past the line and directly inside the restaurant to the pick-up counter. "You feel like you're someone special."
We had several firsts for the Posse on our recent Best of Texas BBQ Tour. This was the first tour spanning three days and also our first trip taken to rank the top joints in the state. The results will be published in The Dallas Morning News and online on March 10.
Another first was to have the Morning News assign a staff photographer to travel with us, documenting the 700-mile journey to the best BBQ joints in Texas. The Posse is made up mainly of photographers and writers, but we'd never had someone fully dedicated to shooting the trip. There's a big difference between shooting with your iPhone or happy snapper, as opposed to using full pro gear.
Regular readers know we had some internal Posse conflict before our recent Best of Texas Tour.
Should sausage count equally with brisket and pork ribs when trying to rate the best joints in the state?
Initially, we decided, no, sausage should count less. Then we got an impassioned defense of the sausage maker's art from Posse member Bryan Gooding, the sausage king of Oak Cliff after his victory last fall in the Blues, Bandits and BBQ cookoff.
A Posse rule of thumb: The more homemade the sign, the more down home the barbecue.
BBQ Signs of our Times is back again, this time with a mix of new and historic photos. This is our sixth blog post on classic BBQ signs.
If you happen to see a cool sign while you're out on the Texas BBQ Trail, please snap a photo and keep us in mind. If you're a fan of our Texas BBQ Posse Facebook or Twitter page, you can upload a photo for us to include on a future BBQ signs blog post.
At the Posse, we're ready to declare State Highway 130, the high-speed tollway that skirts Austin, the Barbecue Super Expressway.
However, we're beginning to wonder whether Lockhart, one of the main stops on that highway, still deserves its title as the BBQ capital of Texas.
Yes, we know that's borderline smoked-meat heresy. But on our recent Best of Texas Tour, we ate at three Lockhart joints and only one -- Kreuz Market -- made our top tier of six. The others -- Smitty's Market and Chisholm Trail Bar-B-Que -- were well off the pace.
Aaron Franklin has made it cool to stand in a long line for barbecue. That has been the norm at his joint in Austin going back to its trailer days in 2009.
Now, the phenomenon appears to be spreading, as we discovered on our recent Best of Texas BBQ Tour.
Discipline and portion control were the guiding principles of our recent Best of Texas BBQ Tour. They have to be when you eat at 10 places over a period of about 48 hours.
But while we focused on -- and scored -- only brisket, pork ribs and sausage, we did manage to sample other fare on the first day of the tour, when we visited only 3 places.
