“Well for a lack of a better way of saying it, the only thing I can say is this has got to be the most barbecue crazy bunch of people in the world I’ve ever seen in my life. I have never seen people who love barbecue so much as in this area. And I think the whole hog is just—it’s just an old tradition…And you know that’s kind of our whole name—Old Time; we’re trying to do everything the old time(y) way.” – Chris Siler

Siler’s Old Time BBQ
6060 Hwy. 100 E.
Henderson, TN 38340
(731) 989-2242

Though Chris Siler has owned the Old Time BBQ only since early 2007, he has worked at this place for five years prior. At this spot in a bend in the highway—as the legend goes—the rituals of barbecue have been performed for over a century and a half. Henderson is what it is, men who do not barbecue, who do not eat barbecue, have no place here.

Siler gives full credit for the whole hogs to Ronnie Hampton, pitmaster extraordinaire. On the job Mr. Hampton seems to exist in a meditative state dedicated solely to cooking pigs. He sits and stirs the hickory coal fire for hours each day. As if by instinct he knows the exact moment to “fire” the hogs—that is put more heat under them—by means of a long-handled shovel.

Siler’s assertions of honoring the Old Time smoke-ways are justifiable. He is one of the few who persistently insists on whole hog barbecue. He has also brought back a now forgotten, but once key barbecue ingredient: sorghum molasses. Substituting the now ubiquitous corn syrup with the more earthy, not too sweet taste of sorghum, Siler demonstrates that everything old is new again.

We first visited this location in 2003, when it was known as Bobby’s Bar-B-Q, as part of our initial foray into documenting rural Tennessee ‘cue. Visit the original Bobby’s Bar-B-Q page.

What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Subject: Chris Siler
Date: July 9, 2008
Location: Siler’s Old Time Bar-be-cue – Henderson, TN
Interviewer & Photographer: Rien T. Fertel

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Rien T. Fertel: This is Rien Fertel from the Southern Foodways Alliance. It is July 9, 2008, a Wednesday; a little after 9:15 in the morning. I’m at Siler’s Old Time Barbecue in Henderson, Tennessee. The address is 6060 State Route 100-East. I am with the owner, Chris Siler. Chris, can you please introduce yourself with your name and your birth date please?

Chris Siler: My name is Chris Siler; I was born on May 5, 1975. I’ve been doing barbecue for a few years now.

And for how long have you been the owner of Siler’s Old Time Barbecue?

Four months.

Four months, so recent; that’s—you know not too far back but you have worked at this location. It’s been a barbecue restaurant for a long, long time I think—almost 50 years maybe?

It’s more—there’s been somebody cooking barbecue here in some fashion or a way for about 150 years.

So 150 years at this—in this building?

Well not this building but this location. The building wasn’t built until the ‘60s; before that they used to just cook outside under holes in the ground and under the trees out here. This was at one point in time—it was kind of an oak grove, so everybody would cook out here and they’d just dig a hole in the ground and start cooking the hog. And they’ve been doing that for years.

When did you start working at this location?

I started here in 2002 with Chad Sellers when he was the owner and I worked with him out here for three years. I was his Store Manager. Pretty much then I did the same thing that I do now except for now I’m the owner; so—. [Laughs] It’s a little bit different.

Did you cook? Did you prepare food and sell food, back then when you worked for Chad?

Yeah; I did. We have a full-time cook but it was real important to Chad that you know I knew how to do the cooking and everything like that, so that way if something ever happened, I could fill in. But yeah; I do know how to cook but I ain't going to hide the fact that my cook is better at it than I am.

And what’s that cook’s name?

Ronnie Hampton.

And how long has he been working here?

Ronnie has been here on and off for 10 years. He started out here with the owner—when Bobby Sells used to own this place when it was Bobby’s Barbecue and he worked for Bobby for a number of years and then he—when—Bobby is—is Chad Seller’s daddy-in-law. Chad bought it from—from Bobby and then when Chad had it he worked here with Chad all the way up until I think a year before I bought it back out—or I bought Chad out and then when I bought it out I hired Ronnie back. So on—on and off he’s been here for 10 years.

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Today is a Wednesday; you just put a pig on the pit outside. Let’s talk about when you, you know when you woke up this morning you went and got the pig. Can you talk a bit about that?

Yeah; like on a normal day cooking hogs I usually start at 6:00 in the morning to go to Lexington is where the slaughterhouse is. I live in—I live in Pinson which is just about five miles south of Jackson, or actually my house is about five miles south of Jackson I think. Pinson, the town itself is a little further. But you know and I get up in the morning and go pick up the hog at the slaughterhouse and when we come back we put the hog on. And it’s just—that just starts the process. Usually by 8 o'clock, 8:30 in the morning we have a hog on and then it’s a slow process of firing the hog every—every 15 minutes for a little while then every 45 minutes and then eventually you get to where you’re firing it once an hour and this lasts for 14 hours of firing it. After about 14 hours of firing it the hog can simmer for about 12 hours. And the way our pits are built they hold heat because they’ve been lined with sand inside the blocks, so they hold heat for a long time so you don't have to fire them that much after that first 14 hours. And the pits will stay 300-degrees, 200-degrees forever and when we get back—I’ll come back in the morning, we’ll flip hogs and it’s been 24 hours that the hog was started and cooked. And the majority of that time somebody has to stay out here with it. Like I said you know my cook, he spends 14 hours with it and if he didn’t—if he’s not the one that is spending 14 hours with it I am, and so it’s just—it’s just a long process you have to be patient with.

What’s the weight of the pig when you pick it up?

The carcass weight is usually—I usually—we usually aim for a 250 carcass but it fluctuates. Just like the one I put on today was a 192 but like I said it—it fluctuates a good little bit.

And after the 24-cycle of cooking how—how much do you know how much it weighs, how much the shrinkage of the meat is?

You can figure a hog that’s about 190—you’re going to get just a little bit less than half of that and half of that weight in barbecue. It’s—so you wouldn’t quite get—you wouldn’t quite get 95-pounds out of it but you know it will be—it will be less than that; it will be closer to 80. It just fluctuates; it just depends a lot—sometimes hogs are fattier. If they have more fat you get less meat out of them ‘cause there’s more fat than meat. But usually if the—if the farmer—the farmer has got a good stock in his breeding program usually they come out about the same. There’s not a lot—there’s not a lot of difference and not a lot of fluctuation. So I mean you can usually figure—you can usually easily figure it’s a third of whatever the body weight was alive is what you’re going to get out of it barbecue wise.

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When a customer comes in the building what does—and he asks for a sandwich do you—does he specify what cut he wants, what sort of meat he wants from what part of the pig or do you pick if he doesn’t ask?

If—if—usually the customer doesn’t ask I just usually start with the shoulder—the shoulder end of the hog just ‘cause I don't know—it just seems always—always right to start at the front and work your way to the back. But yeah; I mean a lot of the people who know me well come in here and they order specific cuts and so that’s not—that’s not really an issue or a problem. That’s—that’s something—that actually I think it’s an advantage to having whole hog barbecue you don't get with the shoulders—cooking shoulders or hams is that when somebody comes in they can—if they’ve been around this for a while everybody has got their own name for different cuts of meat. And you learn it after a while and so you kind of know that when they come in this person likes this; this person likes this; this person likes this and then you have that advantage of okay how—this person wants really lean meat. And then doing the whole hog you have that opportunity to have very lean meat, whereas doing shoulders—shoulder meat is lean, but it’s not as lean as other like ham or tenderloin or something like that. So I mean you have that advantage a lot and it—it helps with your customer base.

Can you talk about some of the nicknames for the cuts of meat?

Some of it is the one that’s probably I think the—the cut of meat that has absolutely the most unusual names for it is—what would be on the hog would be the bacon strips, which is nicknamed middlin’; I’ve heard it belly lean; let’s see—stringy; let’s see what was another one—people call it—I hear them call it rib-meat, side-meat, just different things like that. I mean it—it always struck me funny, people—you know especially—the belly lean was the one that always struck me funny because this is actually—there is absolutely nothing lean about that meat at all.

Is it the fattiest part on the pig?

It is definitely the fattiest part of the pig but it’s—without a doubt it’s the softest and probably the best tasting meat in a hog, but it is definitely the fattiest part of the pig.

And why do they call it middlin’?

Because it’s actually directly in the middle of the ham and the shoulder.

And it’s also stringy; that’s why they call it stringy?

It’s the—it stretches from the shoulder and fans out and stretches all the way back to the ham and it’s just one layer of meat and—and when you pull it, it all comes off in long strings if it doesn’t tear.

And what color is—is this meat? Is it white—?

It’s—it’s a very bright white.

So just kind of glistening with fat?

Well it comes with a layer of fat on the top of it and a layer of fat on the bottom of it, so it—which is why it has so much flavor to it and why it’s so juicy. And if you’re cooking sows which most of the time when you slaughter it’s what they are—they’re sows. This is under the mammary so it—it has a sweet taste to it from that. I’ve been told that’s where the sweet taste comes from but it has a little bit of a sweeter taste to the meat. So but it’s just—and there’s not much of it in a hog; that’s one of the key things is people with our business I’ll have people start calling at 8—9 o'clock in the morning ordering middlin’ and that’s usually the very first meat that I run out of. And I can—I can have—for example, 4th of July, I had six hogs. At 7:30 in the morning I was out of middlin’ meat for the day.

Are some people so particular—and I’m guessing they are that maybe they come in late in the day and their favorite part of the pig is gone and they just like—they leave; they can't eat?

Happens all the time. I—I have a—and I have—I have a loyal base of customers. They are loyal customers; they come in all the time. They know me well. And you know spending three years out here before, and like I said I spent so much time here before, most of the community knows me, so I mean they come in and I—I tell them. I’m not going to lie to you; I’m just going to be honest with you and tell you what I got. And—and I have a good little number of people that you know they appreciate that and they understand that. They’re not real mad about it but they—that’s all they’ll eat is their particular cuts. And they’ll usually leave. And most of the time they tell me before they leave, well hold me a pound of it tomorrow. And I’ll come by here and pick it up in the morning or something like that. So it’s not really so much like I lose them; it’s just that day I don't have what they want so they don't come—they don't buy anything that day and they just come back the next day.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

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