Is the Posse going soft on gassers?

Massive wood pile outside Smitty's Market in downtown Lockhart. (Photo by Jeff Haynes) 

In the 4-year history of this blog, no topic has incited more passion than the wood-fired versus gas-fired smoker debate.

The Posse has been pro-wood. All wood. Almost to an extreme. We once called out Texas Monthly for including gas-fired joints on its Top 50 list.

But perhaps we have mellowed a bit as at least one of us edges ever closer to Medicare eligibility. On our recent Mid-Cities mini-tour, we liked the food at Eddie Deen Crossroads Smokehouse in Arlington even though the ribs and chicken are cooked on gas-fired pits in Terrell and transported to Arlington. Their brisket is cooked on wood-fired Oyler pits.

"It's all about the meat," Posse veteran Jim Rossman said. "No matter how it's cooked."

Jambo Texan sandwich at Jambo's BBQ Shack.

Our trip last year to Jambo's BBQ Shack in Rendon probably started our reconsideration. Run by Jamie Geer, builder of the famous Jambo wood-fired pits, the joint used an Ole Hickory smoker fired by gas and some hickory wood.

"Got to," Geer said when asked why he was using gas.

His food was damn good.

Don't get me wrong. We still favor wood-fired smokers. A trip to La Barbecue in Austin last weekend reinforced that feeling. At the moment, no one in Texas is smoking better brisket than John Lewis. It was terrific.

But at the Posse, we're just not as militant about using wood as we once were.

Besides, there are other considerations. We stood in line two hours at La Barbecue. We walked in, ordered and got our food right away at Crossroads.

How Daniel Vaughn, the BBQ Snob, turned himself into the hottest brand in smoked meat

Daniel Vaughn bites into a rib at the Baby Back Shak in 2009. (Photo by David Woo/The Dallas Morning News)

(Note: Rebecca LaFlure is a Texas native, long-time barbecue fan and journalism graduate student at Northwestern University. Prior to attending Northwestern, she worked as a reporter for media outlets in Killeen and Austin. She currently covers national security as a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington D.C. The following article was initially written as a research paper for a 21st Century Media course at Northwestern.)

By Rebecca LaFlure

On March 21, Texas Monthly announced it hired someone for “what may be the most coveted job” in the Lone Star State: the magazine’s first barbecue editor. News of the unusual title spread fast. New York Times writer Manny Fernandez called the new hire “a walking milestone in the history of Texas barbecue.”

I mentioned the newly created position to my friend Matt Goodman, a digital producer for an ABC affiliate in Dallas, Texas. “Let me guess,” he said. “They hired Daniel Vaughn.”

Goodman guessed right. Vaughn managed to turn his love for barbecue into a career. He left his job as a Dallas architect to become the country’s only barbecue editor. Vaughn joined Texas Monthly’s barbecue franchise, which, according to its website, includes a Joint Finder smart phone application, annual barbecue festival and a Top 50 list published every five years. Vaughn regularly produces a mix of barbecue reviews, news articles, interviews and weekly columns for the magazine’s barbecue website, TMBBQ.com.

Vaughn didn’t get the job by chance. He developed a brand as a barbecue expert through a blog he started in 2008 called Full Custom Gospel Barbecue, where Vaughn posted reviews of the hundreds of barbecue joints he visited. “At the time, nobody had done that before,” said R.J. Hinkle, a Dallas-area photographer for QuadGraphics who’s attended barbecue tours with a group called the Texas BBQ Posse. “Not only did he create a brand, but he created a genre and a market.”

Will Texas Monthly's Top 5 BBQ joints be same as those named by its new BBQ editor?

During our live online barbecue chat Monday on DallasNews.com, a reader asked us to predict the Top 5 ranked joints in Texas Monthly's 2013 BBQ issue, which should be available soon.

There was considerable agreement among the four Posse members participating. We each put Franklin Barbecue in Austin No. 1. The next three spots were occupied by the same three joints, although the orders differed: Snow's BBQ in Lexington, La Barbecue in Austin and Pecan Lodge in Dallas.

The fifth spot, depending upon the Posse member, went to either Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor or Kreuz Market in Lockhart.

A few hours after the chat ended, I was finally able to get a copy of Daniel's Vaughn's new book, The Prophets of Smoked Meat, which is due out in a couple of weeks.

Vaughn of course is the celebrated blogger -- Full Custom Gospel BBQ -- who recently became BBQ editor of Texas Monthly.

In his book, Vaughn lists his Top 5, not in any designated order: Fargo's Pit BBQ in Bryan, Louie Mueller, Pecan Lodge, Vera's Backyard Bar-B-Que in Brownsville and Franklin.

"In a region where barbacoa is worshipped, a trip to Vera's can double as Sunday mass," Vaughn writes. "Vera's is the only joint in the state still cooking beef heads with wood smoke..."

It will be interesting to see how Vaughn's Top 5 mimic -- or don't -- Texas Monthly's.

Is Lockhart losing its title as the BBQ Capital of Texas?

Smitty's Market oak wood pile & Caldwell County courthouse. (Photo ©Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse)

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.

Snow's brisket is only meat to score a perfect 10 on Posse's Best of Texas BBQ Tour

Our perfect 10 brisket from Snow's BBQ in Lexington. (Photo by Tom Fox/DMN)

During our recent Best of Texas BBQ Tour, we traveled nearly 700 miles over three days and tasted brisket, pork ribs and sausage at 10 top places in the state.

Each meat was scored on a scale of 1 to 10 (best) by 6 members of Texas BBQ Posse.

Just one received a perfect score: the brisket at Snow's BBQ in Lexington.

About the iguana who thought he was a cat and the python who only eats rats

On a barbecue tour, there is no such thing as down time. Even the long drives bring surprises.

Last year, returning to Dallas from East Texas, we decided that someone should call out Texas Monthly for including joints that use gas-fired pits in its Top 50 BBQ rankings.

We did just that, eventually engaging TM food editor Pat Sharpe in a constructive discussion about the magazine's selection criteria.

Sometimes, we just learn interesting things about our fellow Posse members.

On the first leg of our recent 35-hour, 700-mile dash to the Gulf Coast and back, Posse co-founder Chris Wilkins talked about his family's pet iguana, Ozzy, who recently died.

Acquired when he was not much more than a fingerling, Ozzy, named for, yes, Ozzy Osbourne, eventually grew to more than five feet in length, counting his tail. And, in his golden years, he refused to eat anything but cat food.

"Ozzy thought he was a cat," Wilkins said.

That may be because of all the feline company he kept.  The Wilkins' family still has eight cats and a dog.

Tales of Ozzy led to tales of Azeem, the nearly five-foot-long ball python owned by Posse member Phil Lamb, who was the wheelman on this trip.

"Snakes have no personality," said Lamb, who acquired Azeem two decades ago.

Lamb said he named Azeem after Kevin Costner's sidekick, played by Morgan Freeman, in the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Still in college when he bought the snake, Lamb initially tried to feed him mice, but Azeem refused.

Worried Azeem would starve, Lamb asked the previous owner for advice. The owner said he fed the snake rats, and once a snake tasted rat he never went back to mouse.

So, for 20 years, Azeem has had a steady diet of -- yes, live -- rats.

"Don't ever feed a snake a gerbil," Lamb advised. "They're expensive, and the snake will never go back to rats."


Photo of Azeem by Phil Lamb (bottom), photo of Ozzy by Chris Wilkins/Texas BBQ Posse