Category Archives: ANSC 117 Texas Barbecue
Texas Barbecue says goodbye to Snazzy Seniors
The first Texas Barbecue class for freshmen was held in the fall of 2009, and with the second class in 2010, we began having a few students who had been in the previous class help out with the current class. Four students from the 2010 class, Jenny Bohac, Tyler Rosser, Taylor Adcock, and Chloe Geye, decided that they wanted to serve as assistants in the 2011 class, and we called them “Super Sophomores.” At the end of the 2011, Ray Riley and I said goodbye to Jenny, Tyler, Taylor, and… Read More →
Fifth Texas Barbecue class comes to an end
In 2009, Ray Riley and I began teaching Texas Barbecue as a first-year seminar for incoming freshmen at Texas A&M University. The first-year seminars served as venues for students to be in small student number classes and as a way to help them more easily make the transition from high school to college. This was the fifth year we have taught the class, and it has had several course names and numbers throughout the year: UPAS 181, UGST 181, and ANSC 289. The first-year seminars are no longer… Read More →
Whole pig cooking in Texas Barbecue
The last lecture in Texas Barbecue each year is whole pig cooking at the Savell home. This is always one of the highlights of the semester, and the students enjoy seeing the process of cooking a whole pig in a cinder-block pit. We obtained a smaller pig than our usual ones we have cooked in the past. This pig weighed about 85 pounds and was much easier to handle and cook compared to the usual 150- to 200-pound pigs we usually get to cook. We had planned to… Read More →
Anatomy of a cinder-block pit
Several years ago, my son-in-law, Thomas Larriviere and I built this cinder-block pit in my backyard so that we could host the whole-hog cooking demonstrations for the Texas Barbecue class and Barbecue Summer Camp. We have received many requests for how to build such a pit so here are some photos and tips for how we built this one. Cinder blocks are a great building tool for many things. I like to think of them as “adult Legos.” These blocks are 8 X 8 X 16 inches so… Read More →
Three ways to prepare turkeys for Thanksgiving
In Texas Barbecue, one of our lectures is on three methods of preparing Turkeys: by smoking, by rotisserie, and by frying. We have this lecture leading up to Thanksgiving so that the students can learn something about these methods of preparation and can share these with their families during the holidays. We purchased four turkeys around the 10-pound range. The turkeys were frozen when we purchased them, and we placed them in a refrigerated cooler for about four days to allow them to thaw. All four were brined… Read More →
Learning about cuts of beef
Learning about Texas Barbecue also requires that you learn about cuts of meat. In Texas Barbecue, we emphasize the importance of knowing about the names of cuts, where they are located on the carcass, and their potential uses as items to barbecue or other cookery applications. Because these are freshmen, we do not go into as much detail as we would for ANSC 307 “Meats,” but it clear that our students just love seeing the carcasses and cuts since this is so foreign for most of them. Ray Riley… Read More →
Briskets: to wrap or not to wrap!
This week’s Texas Barbecue class was about briskets with the focal point of comparing wrapped versus non-wrapped briskets. Now if there is anything that can start an argument, it is whether it is acceptable to wrap briskets during the cooking process. By wrapping, we are referring to wrapping with aluminum foil, a process that has been termed, “Texas Crutch,” as a reference to using foil to help the cooking process. We cooked four briskets on an offset trailer pit beginning at around 11 PM on Thursday night. The… Read More →
Robb Walsh guest lectures in Texas Barbecue
Robb Walsh, food editor/restaurant critic of the Houstonia Magazine, guest lectured today in ANSC 289 Texas Barbecue. This is the fifth year that Walsh has lectured in the class, and his great book, “Legends of Texas Barbecue,” (Amazon.com link) is the inspiration for the course and the textbook we have used since the beginning. Walsh visited with the students about the role of the Central Texas German Meat Markets and their smoked meats as the basis for what we think today about Texas Barbecue and how briskets became the… Read More →
Lamb and goat barbecue
Lamb and goat are not high-volume meat products in the U.S., and they are most commonly consumed by various ethnic groups where tradition and culture drive the preferences for them. Although both lamb and goat may be used in Texas Barbecue, lamb may be most often used in West Texas, and goat, especially cabrito, would be prepared most often in South Texas. For class, we prepared lamb and goat three different ways: spit-roasted goat, crown rack of lamb, and rotisserie-roasted rosemary lamb leg. The spit-roasted goat was placed… Read More →
BBQ Genius Counter at SEC Communicators Association meeting
Our group was asked to prepare Texas Barbecue and set up the BBQ Genius Counter at the SEC Communicators Association annual meeting held in College Station in June, 2013. We smoked beef briskets, pork shoulders, and Aggieland sausage from the Rosenthal Meat Center and served it to the visitors from across the SEC. Upon arrival of the participants, we quickly told them about our freshmen class, Texas Barbecue, the BBQ Genius Counter, and the workshops, Barbecue Summer Camp and Camp Brisket. After a few more activities, it was time… Read More →
