Rather than establish origins, the Southern BBQ Trail seeks to collect stories about barbecue—the meat, the wood, the smoke, and the people who have dedicated their lives to the craft of ‘cue.

We share tales of pulled pork, barbecued brisket, homemade sausage, lamb ribs, and even a few secrets about the sauce.

For every different slab of ribs or handful of meat piled on a bun, there is a different story. Oral history interviews with pitmasters and purveyors across the South reveal the various ways in which barbecue traditions have evolved and how styles emerged, helping to explain the importance—and persistence—of the South’s barbecue tradition.

Click on the states listed in the menu (top left) to get to the stories.

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ALABAMA BBQ INTRODUCTION
by Jake York

It is only by cartography, law, and convention that Alabama is a state. From within, it reads like a perverse anthology in which the Appalachians give us a taste of the Carolinas, the Tennessee River guides a northern influence, the pine barrens continue the work of Georgia, the Black Belt gestures toward Mississippi, the coast combines Florida and Mississippi, and the Wiregrass gives you a sense of another world entirely. Read more...

NORTH CAROLINA BBQ INTRODUCTION
By John Shelton Reed

When George Washington “went in to Alexandria to a Barbecue and stayed all Night,” as he wrote in his diary for May 27, 1769, he won eight shillings playing cards and probably ate meat from a whole hog, cooked for hours over hardwood coals, then chopped or “pulled.”  By the early nineteenth century at the latest, a sauce of vinegar and cayenne pepper (originally West Indian) was being sprinkled on the finished product.  This ur-barbecue can be found to this day in eastern North Carolina and the adjoining regions of South Carolina and Virginia, virtually unchanged. Read more...

TEXAS BBQ INTRODUCTION
by Robb Walsh

The pitmaster squints into the smoke as he opens the giant steel door. From your place in line, you watch him fork and flip the juicy, black beef briskets and sizzling pork loins. Your heart beats faster as he opens a steel door to reveal a dozen sausage rings hissing and spitting in the thick white cloud. Slowly, the sweet cloud of oak smoke makes its way to you, carrying with it the aroma of peppery beef, bacon-crisp pork, and juicy garlic sausage. Read more...

The trail goes on...

Oral histories featuring pitmasters and restaurant owners in Memphis and rural Tennessee exist in the Southern Foodways collection, but we have not yet incorporated them to the Southern BBQ Trail. 

In the interim you can browse Memphis BBQ oral histories and the Rural Tennessee BBQ oral histories at SouthernFoodways.com.