The Hot Sauce Cookbook (12 page)

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Makes about 3 pounds, enough for 6 to 10 sandwiches
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Boston butts, the bottom part of the pork shoulder, are easy to find at the grocery store. You will also sometimes find the top part of the shoulder, a cut known in the meat-cutting business as a “picnic.” The picnic has a big piece of pig skin still attached and two large bones with the shoulder joint inside. The skin on the picnic keeps the meat very moist, but the large shoulder bones drastically reduce the yield. In other words, you get a lot more meat from a Boston butt than a picnic, but picnic meat is juicier.   
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Some pitmasters cook picnics instead of Boston butts because they are so much moister. You can also cook one of each and chop the meats together to approximate the texture of a whole pork shoulder.   
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Serve the minced or shredded meat on a tray with side dishes and sandwich fixin’s or on
BBQ Pork Sandwiches
.

1 Boston butt or pork picnic, about 8 pounds

1 tablespoon salt, plus more to season

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to season

1 teaspoon garlic powder

2 onions, peeled

2 cups
Pepper Vinegar

¼ cup Texas Pete Hot Sauce or
Texas Pete–Style Pepper Sauce

Rinse the meat and set aside. Combine the salt, pepper, and garlic powder and rub it all over the meat. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Cut the onions in half and put them in the water pan of your smoker. (If your smoker didn’t come with a water pan, use a fireproof steel bowl.) Add water to fill the pan.

Remove the pork from the refrigerator an hour before cooking to allow it come to room temperature. Set up your smoker for indirect heat
with a water pan. Use hardwood lump charcoal or charcoal briquettes. Maintain a temperature between between 225°F and 275°F. If you are cooking a picnic, place the meat in the smoker skin-side down. The skin will shrink and harden, serving as a vessel to contain the fat and juice. Keep it skin-side down throughout the cooking time.

Replenish the charcoal and the water in the water pan as needed. Mop the meat with the Pepper Vinegar whenever you open the lid. Expect a cooking time of an hour a pound, or 8 hours—more if you raise the lid often or if the fire goes out. For chopped pork, you need to reach an internal temperature of 190°F. For pulled pork, an internal temperature of 200°F is best.

When the meat is done, allow it to rest for at least 15 minutes. Then remove the skin and bones. For chopped pork, put the meat and fat on a chopping block and mince with a pair of meat cleavers. For pulled pork, pull the meat away from the bone and shred it into little pieces, massaging the big chunks of fat into the shredded meat. Chop any pieces that don’t come apart easily. Season the meat with salt and pepper and Texas Pete to taste.

BBQ Pork Sandwiches

BBQ PORK SANDWICHES

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Makes 4 (¼-pound) sandwiches or 3 (⅓-pound) sandwiches
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A perfect barbecue sandwich is a delicate balance between yin and yang. It is not too dry and not too squishy. The aggressively peppery, vinegar sauce must be balanced by the right amount of palate-calming creamy coleslaw, and the red and white juices of the two should drip in harmony onto the plate. And, of course, the barbecue itself must drip fat and smell like smoke.   
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Size is a matter of appetite. Most barbecue joints serve their chopped pork sandwiches on a hamburger bun. Since hamburger buns range in size from 3½ to 5 inches in diameter, the amount of meat varies—and so, therefore, does the amount of sauce and slaw. Figure ¼ pound of meat for a small bun and ⅓ pound for a large bun. The volume of slaw should equal about half the volume of meat.

For the slaw

3 cups chopped green cabbage

½ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons white vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For the sandwiches

3 to 4 hamburger buns

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 pound
Texas Pete BBQ Pork

Texas Pete Hot Sauce,
Texas Pete–Style Pepper Sauce
, or
Trey Moran’s Ancho BBQ Sauce

To make the slaw, combine the cabbage, mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper in a food processor and pulse eight or ten times until the cabbage is the size of confetti. Refrigerate for an hour or so before serving to meld the flavors.

To make the sandwiches, toast and butter the buns. Mix the pork with desired sauce until moist and divide the meat among the bottom hamburger buns. Top each with slaw and the crown bun. Serve the sauce and remaining slaw on the side.

Backyard Oyster Bar

BACKYARD OYSTER BAR

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Serves 15 as a starter
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Since their invention, Louisiana pepper sauces have always been served with raw oysters on the half shell in Gulf Coast oyster bars. Oysters and pepper sauce were so closely linked that an illustration in magazine ads for Tabasco Sauce in the early 1900s depicted a bottle of the pepper sauce inside an oyster shell. “A most delightful seasoning for oysters, soups, fish, game, etc., etc.” read the copy.   
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It’s easy to set up an oyster bar in your backyard. You will need one small galvanized washtub, one soup pot, three ten-pound bags of regular ice and one ten-pound bag of shaved ice. The shaved ice isn’t absolutely necessary, but it sure looks good. Your local grocery store probably uses shaved ice in their seafood display. Ask them in advance to set some aside for the appointed day.   
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Oysters taste great outdoors in cool weather. Put some lemon wedges and Tabasco sauce on ice with the oysters. Set the table with crackers or rye bread and butter. Serve the oysters with cold beer, or gin martinis.

100 oysters, fresh and unshucked

6 lemons, cut into wedges

1 bottle Tabasco sauce or
Homemade Pepper Sauce

Rye bread, for serving (optional)

Cultured butter, for serving (optional)

Saltines, for serving (optional)

Wash out the tub and drain it. Turn the soup pot upside down in the bottom of the galvanized tub to cut down on the amount of ice required and the overall weight. Set the tub up so the top is at counter surface height so that you can display the oysters where people can see them. Dump the big ice cubes in to fill the tub at least half way up and cover the top with a layer of finely crushed ice. Shuck as people eat the oysters so they are always freshly opened—don’t try to shuck too far in advance.

To serve the oysters, set out the lemon wedges and pepper sauce, along with accompaniments such as rye bread with cultured butter or a sleeve of saltines, if desired. Provide oyster plates and cocktail forks if you have them, or make do with paper plates and toothpicks. Don’t forget to provide a place to dump the shells. Beyond that, you can make your oyster party as casual or elegant as you like.

———CHAPTER 5———

INTERNATIONAL PEPPER SAUCES

To be considered a local in the café scene
in Chiang Mai, Thailand, you have to eat the fiery jungle curry without wincing, whining, or panting like a dog. In Bangladesh, you are considered a wimp if you can’t handle the bhut jolokia hot sauce. The starring role of chiles in Asian cuisine is odd when you consider that capsicum pods aren’t native there. Chile peppers didn’t grow in Asia or Africa until the Spanish and Portuguese began spreading them after the first voyage of Columbus.

But don’t try telling the fiery food–loving locals in Southeast Asia or Africa that their chiles are actually American. Over the four centuries since their introduction, the chiles have hybridized into unique forms. African piri-piri peppers, Thai chiles, and other localized pod types inspire intense loyalty among those who eat them.

The strange relationship between humankind and peppers got started thousands of years ago. It’s easy to imagine a native American cave dweller taking his first bite of a chile pepper, but its hard to understand why he would take a second. The most popular theory for why humans started eating peppers is that highly seasoned food causes “gustatory sweating.” Early humans ate peppers because they cooled them off in hot weather by increasing perspiration, particularly of the scalp.

Gustatory sweating might still be part of the reason that chile peppers and hot sauces are beloved in hot climates—that and the fact that pepper plants flourish in the tropics and subtropics with very little effort and are therefore relatively inexpensive. But why do people who have air conditioners eat hot peppers? And what about the increased
popularity of hot sauces in the northern part of the United States, Canada, and Great Britain?

Exactly why modern people who live in air-conditioned houses crave foods that are painful to eat has long been a mystery. Psychologists have developed several theories. One holds that eating ever hotter hot sauces is a thrill-seeking behavior akin to riding roller coasters or going to see horror movies. The body reacts to the perceived danger by producing a rush of endorphins, a powerful painkiller, which induces a natural high. And the rush of endorphins is habit-forming.

Another explanation is that eating chile peppers is tied to changes in our culture. Humankind’s traditional food neophobia (fear of new foods) kept us from getting poisoned for most of our evolutionary history. But scholarly studies suggest that in modern urban areas, our ancient food neophobia is being replaced by a new food neophilia (love of new foods).

As people are exposed to other cultures—through travel, trade, or television—their willingness to try foreign foods increases. The fast-food hamburger may be the most familiar symbol of globalization, but globalization has also made the United States, a country where eating raw fish was once considered ridiculous, one of the world’s largest consumers of sushi. And when it comes to chiles, the globalization that started some four hundred years ago in America is coming back around.

Twenty years ago, the popularity of Mexican food got Americans eating more chile peppers and picante sauces. The chips and salsa proved to be a gateway drug that led to the extremely hot foods served in Asian restaurants. The innocent inquiry “Mild, medium, hot, or Thai hot?” made us all realize that there are levels of spiciness we had never even considered before.