Top 5: BBQ Sides

TOP 5

by DANNIELLE KYRILLOS

BBQ SIDES

1

BAKED SQUASH

JOHN MUELLER MEAT CO. 2500 E. 6TH ST. AUSTIN, TX 78702 WWW.JOHNMUELLERMEATCO.COM

Portrait by Peter Hurley

Dannielle Kyrillos, a series judge on Bravo’s Top Chef Just Desserts and expert on all things food and entertaining, shares her five favorite BBQ sides.

In barbecue as in the rest of life, it’s important to be familiar with—but not overwhelmed by—the backstory. The epic and dramatic family saga surrounding the Muellers and their various smoky enterprises is vaguely interesting but best gingerly stepped over on the way to John Mueller’s baked squash. The mercurial and masterful cook, known for the peppercrusted brisket and ribs he coaxes out of a smoker by a trailer in a chain-linksurrounded yard behind an old bar, turns squash into a decadence that transcends its spot on the menu under “Sides.” Most every meat-seeking customer also orders, with omnivorous pride, the cheesy, melty, gooey but not mushy black-pepper-specked yellow squash. Maybe more cheese than squash, infused with meaty smoke through osmosis, it weighs heavily in John Mueller’s column when considering where to plop down to get your hands dirty in Austin.

HUSH PUPPIES

ALLEN & SON BAR-B-CUE 6203 MILLHOUSE RD. CHAPEL HILL, NC 27516 919.942.7576

It’s a safe bet that many Northerners first discover the vinegary surprise that is Eastern Carolina barbecue at something called a pig pickin’. If you didn’t grow up around this almost clear-sauced BBQ style, it’s hard to imagine it exists, in all its tomato-less glory, until you watch this glorious native party unfold. Strong, prototypical pit masters hop out of a dusty old pickup truck and load the box trailing it with hickory wood charcoal and a pig on a spit that cooks slowly all day. The meat gets so tender you pick it off the animal with a fork, and what plays off the tangy tenderness best are baked then fried balls of cornmeal called hush puppies. Allen & Son’s are light and fluffy on the inside, crunchy on the outside, and coated in a heavenly veil of honey: art from corn mush.

TOP 5: BBQ SIDES 2

BBQ SPAGHETTI

COZY CORNER | 745 N. PARKWAY | MEMPHIS, TN 38105 | 901.527.9158

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As my mom would say, the idea of noodles, let alone noodles drenched in barbecue sauce, at a place you visit expressly to enjoy barbecue-sauce-drenched meats seems like gilding the lily. Sorry Mom, but especially in Memphis, you would be entirely wrong. BBQ spaghetti is as a natural addition to a meaty meal to Memphians as it is weirdsounding to the rest of us, and the beloved Cozy Corner is the place to open your mind and your mouth to it. Even today it’s notable that a woman, Desiree Robinson, runs Cozy, and in each bite of anything, you can taste the decades of history she’s preserving. But the spaghetti! Overcooked in a good way, to make the strands big, fat and plump like worms so they soak up tons of the sauce, the spaghetti is without any meat—unlike many other versions—and immediately explains itself as absolutely necessary.

4

HASH AND RICE

WISE BAR-B-Q HOUSE 25548 US HIGHWAY 76 NEWBERRY, SC 29108 803.276.6699

Leave no meat unused! The longtime battle cry of pit masters throughout history, but nowhere more masterfully heeded than in colonial South Carolina, where a succulent, stew-y hash made from less desirable cuts of pork stewed for countless hours in a cast iron kettle was the result. Virtually unknown outside the state, hash these days is usually made from pork shoulder. Other variables depend on the region and the family, so of course variations are endless. Wise BarB-Q House is in the middle of nowhere, is open just a few days a week, and the proprietor concocts his mustardy vinegary masterpiece in a more than forty-year-old family kettle. The hash is served over white rice, and while it is hard to believe it’s a side dish rather than the main attraction, it’s clear it’s a badge of distinction.

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FRIED GREEN BEANS

L C’S BAR-B-Q | 5800 BLUE PKWY | KANSAS CITY, MO 64129 | 816.923.4484

It is a million times easier to think about the best barbecue side dishes than the best barbecue. Meat and its fat and how it is sliced and spiced and sauced and smoked are topics so nuanced and personal that you can’t win trying to pick a winner. But when you consider what that meat is served with, you make progress into the mind of the proprietor. Is a side utilitarian like sauce-sopping bread, an afterthought from someone thinking his ribs stand alone, or an intentional delight that plays smartly off the main event? Among KC barbecue institutions, L C’s ambience is considered nonexistent, its meat has raving fans, and its fried green beans are snappy sentinels whose cornmeal coating can’t help but get saucy and whose inner green crispness contrasts beautifully with the surrounding tender mess. They’re spicy and for a second let you fool yourself into feeling you’re eating healthily.