Southern Barbecue With a Fiery Dip and a Deep History

In a narrow swath of Kentucky and Tennessee, the specialty is a pork-shoulder steak, grilled and dunked in a tongue-torturing hot sauce.

TOMPKINSVILLE, Ky. — This is the Southern barbecue you’ve probably never heard of.

Not baby back ribs thickly crusted with spice rub and served “dry,” as it’s done in Memphis. Not slow-smoked chicken dipped in mayonnaise-based “white” barbecue sauce — a longstanding specialty of Decatur, Ala. Not even mutton, smoked the better part of a day, then sauced with a Worcestershire-and lemon-based “black dip” — the barbecue calling card of Owensboro, Ky.

No, you’ll find this barbecue chiefly here in Monroe County, and a handful of surrounding counties in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee, where it goes by the name shoulder plate, or shoulder sandwich.

In fact, you might question whether to call it barbecue at all.

Just don’t question Anita Hamilton Bartlett, the proprietor of R&S Barbecue in Tompkinsville (population 2,273), just north of the Tennessee state line.

Five days a week for the last 27 years, the affable Ms. Bartlett, 60, and her team have followed an immutable ritual. At 5 a.m., they stoke a tall metal firebox behind the restaurant to burn hickory flats (rough-sawed planks) down to embers. At 9:30 a.m., they start the precarious process of transferring the glowing coals on a shovel to a stone hearth built into the back wall of the kitchen. Dips are simmered, slaws (creamy or vinegar) are mixed, and green beans are boiled to within an inch of their lives, in true Southern tradition.

When the one-room restaurant, with its beige metal siding and mismatched tables and chairs, opens at 10:30 a.m., Ms. Bartlett has already started grilling the pork-shoulder steaks that constitute both the house specialty and the essence of Monroe County barbecue. . .

But these pork steaks don’t become barbecue until they are dipped — not once, but twice — in a fiery amalgam of vinegar, melted butter, lard, salt and tongue-torturing doses of black and cayenne peppers.

The first dip is swabbed on the meat as it grills with a miniature cotton mop. Once cooked, the steaks are plunged into a pot of dip, coating the surface with a peppery, buttery veneer. Customers with a masochistic bent order their pork steaks dipped a third time. If you really want to punish yourself, you ask for a separate cup of dip on the side.

The result may make you think of Buffalo wings, with grilled pork steaks standing in for deep-fried chicken. But Buffalo wings don’t taste of wood smoke. You may be reminded of jerky, as the thin slices of pork acquire a firm texture in the 30 minutes or so they spend over the embers. . .

Mr. Walden took over in 2005. He follows the basic Monroe County formula, but with a few subtle twists.

His dip contains ketchup and yellow mustard in addition to the usual vinegar, butter, lard and cayenne; they makes it a whisper sharper and sweeter. (Maybe that’s why he goes through 30 gallons of dip a day.) The grilling time is shorter — 15 minutes — and once cooked, the pork steaks rest in dip on a steam table, which makes them a little moister.

Backyard BBQ also serves an ingenious appetizer: a hard-boiled egg pickled in Monroe County dip for seven days, which gives it a jumpsuit-orange hue and a tart, peppery bite. Desserts run from colorful Funfetti-style frosted cake to deep-fried apple pie — both made by a freelance local baker named Betty Hammer.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/dining/monroe-county-pork-steaks-bbq.html?