they had phased out the
groceries and built some pits, and Ed had persuaded James Kirby, an elderly pit master
in town, to come out of retirement to help man the pits and teach him the old ways.
“Because, by the late nineties, you couldn’t find the kind of traditional
barbecue we wanted to cook. It had died out when everyone switched to gas units. But
there’s a most definite distinction between wood- or charcoal-cooked barbecue and
gas-cooked barbecue. You can taste the difference.” Mr. Kirby was a purist of the
old school, committed to cooking with live fire, and he had a few tricks to teach Ed,
including a technique he called “banking.”
The first time he and Mr. Kirby put a big
pig on to cook, Ed had figured they’d be up all night tending to the fire, so he
laid in a supply of sandwiches and coffee. “But after we got the pig on, and I was
settling in for the night, Mr. Kirby got up, went to the door, and put on his hat. I
asked him where he was going.
“‘You can sit here all night if
you want to, but I’m going home.’ He explained to me that if you bank the
coals right—place them strategically around the pit—and then shut down all the drafts,
that pig’ll sit there and simmer all night, without you having to add more
coals.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep a wink
that night because I just knew that pig was going to burn down the store. But when I
came back to check on it at four in the morning and opened the grill, I could not
believe my eyes. It was the prettiest pig you ever laid eyes on! This beautifulhoney color, and the meat was so done it was literally falling off the
bone.” Mr. Kirby taught Ed the finer points of banking coals; he also showed him
how to crisp the pigskin into crackling.
It wasn’t long before Mitchell’s
Ribs, Chicken & Barbecue had earned a reputation, and the national food writers and
then the academics found their way to Wilson, a town of fifty thousand located on I-95,
“halfway between New York and Miami,” as the visitors’ bureau likes to
point out. The attention had a curious effect on Mitchell, altering his understanding of
who he was and what he was doing in a way that perhaps only an outsider bearing fresh
context can do. A turning point came in 2001, when Ed read an oral history—of Ed
Mitchell—done by a historian named David Cecelski. The history here was Ed’s
own—Cecelski had taken down the skeletal first draft of the narrative you’ve just
read—but reading it helped Ed to see his story in a new light.
“I did not fully realize that what I
was doing—which to me was just old-fashioned barbecue, the fabric of our lives but
nothing all that special—was really a part of the larger African-American story, of our
contribution. And that felt very good.”
Ed Mitchell’s barbecue was becoming
aware of itself, a process that deepened in 2002, when the Southern Foodways Alliance
recognized Mitchell as a leading eastern North Carolina, whole-hog pit master by
inviting him to cook at a symposium on barbecue. The Alliance is a program at the
University of Mississippi established in 1999 and run by historian John T. Edge to
chronicle and celebrate, and thereby help to preserve, Southern foodways. Edge had found
that talking about food—something Southerners could always talk (and argue) about even
when it was too uncomfortable to talk (and argue) about anything else—was a good way to
broach some of the more difficult issues of Southern history. “Food,” Edge
told me, “is one of the ways the South is working through its race
quandaries.”
Edge invited Mitchell to the barbecue symposium
at the university in October of 2002. “So we went down to Oxford, Mississippi, and
it opened my eyes,” Mitchell told me. There were pit masters from every region,
every tradition, as well as scholars, journalists, and panels on the history,
techniques, and regional variations of barbecue. “The symposium was very
informative to me. I realized this thing
groceries and built some pits, and Ed had persuaded James Kirby, an elderly pit master
in town, to come out of retirement to help man the pits and teach him the old ways.
“Because, by the late nineties, you couldn’t find the kind of traditional
barbecue we wanted to cook. It had died out when everyone switched to gas units. But
there’s a most definite distinction between wood- or charcoal-cooked barbecue and
gas-cooked barbecue. You can taste the difference.” Mr. Kirby was a purist of the
old school, committed to cooking with live fire, and he had a few tricks to teach Ed,
including a technique he called “banking.”
The first time he and Mr. Kirby put a big
pig on to cook, Ed had figured they’d be up all night tending to the fire, so he
laid in a supply of sandwiches and coffee. “But after we got the pig on, and I was
settling in for the night, Mr. Kirby got up, went to the door, and put on his hat. I
asked him where he was going.
“‘You can sit here all night if
you want to, but I’m going home.’ He explained to me that if you bank the
coals right—place them strategically around the pit—and then shut down all the drafts,
that pig’ll sit there and simmer all night, without you having to add more
coals.
“Well, I couldn’t sleep a wink
that night because I just knew that pig was going to burn down the store. But when I
came back to check on it at four in the morning and opened the grill, I could not
believe my eyes. It was the prettiest pig you ever laid eyes on! This beautifulhoney color, and the meat was so done it was literally falling off the
bone.” Mr. Kirby taught Ed the finer points of banking coals; he also showed him
how to crisp the pigskin into crackling.
It wasn’t long before Mitchell’s
Ribs, Chicken & Barbecue had earned a reputation, and the national food writers and
then the academics found their way to Wilson, a town of fifty thousand located on I-95,
“halfway between New York and Miami,” as the visitors’ bureau likes to
point out. The attention had a curious effect on Mitchell, altering his understanding of
who he was and what he was doing in a way that perhaps only an outsider bearing fresh
context can do. A turning point came in 2001, when Ed read an oral history—of Ed
Mitchell—done by a historian named David Cecelski. The history here was Ed’s
own—Cecelski had taken down the skeletal first draft of the narrative you’ve just
read—but reading it helped Ed to see his story in a new light.
“I did not fully realize that what I
was doing—which to me was just old-fashioned barbecue, the fabric of our lives but
nothing all that special—was really a part of the larger African-American story, of our
contribution. And that felt very good.”
Ed Mitchell’s barbecue was becoming
aware of itself, a process that deepened in 2002, when the Southern Foodways Alliance
recognized Mitchell as a leading eastern North Carolina, whole-hog pit master by
inviting him to cook at a symposium on barbecue. The Alliance is a program at the
University of Mississippi established in 1999 and run by historian John T. Edge to
chronicle and celebrate, and thereby help to preserve, Southern foodways. Edge had found
that talking about food—something Southerners could always talk (and argue) about even
when it was too uncomfortable to talk (and argue) about anything else—was a good way to
broach some of the more difficult issues of Southern history. “Food,” Edge
told me, “is one of the ways the South is working through its race
quandaries.”
Edge invited Mitchell to the barbecue symposium
at the university in October of 2002. “So we went down to Oxford, Mississippi, and
it opened my eyes,” Mitchell told me. There were pit masters from every region,
every tradition, as well as scholars, journalists, and panels on the history,
techniques, and regional variations of barbecue. “The symposium was very
informative to me. I realized this thing
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