Smoke Gets in Your Prize: Local Experts Are Right On ‘Cue

Standing next to the hulking Southern Pride smoker in the back of his restaurant, Jabo Lawson talks about barbecue the way Stevie Ray Vaughn could talk about guitar or Ted Williams about squaring up a fastball.

With a sopping wet hunk of hickory in his hand, running a finger along the three all-important elements — bark, pulp and sap — he notes how all three commingle to make the ideal smoke.

“You see, it has a completely different flavor,” he says, pointing to the bark. “It has completely different character even though it’s from the same piece of wood.”

And it’s not just wood. Oh goodness, no, it’s not just wood. For Jabo, who learned the art of barbecue from his father, the original Jabo back in Mcloud, Oklahoma, it is now and always will be hickory. Apologies to the folks in Texas and their fondness for mesquite, but Jabo is a hickory man. The pork shoulder and beef briskets that come out of that hulking smoker will always have been kissed by real hickory smoke, never charcoal.

For Jabo, that’s just what barbecue is. It starts with meat cooked low and slow with a wood fire, where the flavors of the meat, the smoke and the dry rub mix perfectly. Then you marry that with sauce — always homemade in the fashion of the old pit masters — and that’s barbecue.

“If he is a true pit master, if he is from North Carolina or Kansas City, no matter who he is or where he is from, if he is cooking real authentic barbecue, that’s the way it is,” Jabo says.

Those are the hard and fast rules at Jabo’s Bar-Be-Q, and Jabo lives them by them everyday.

And there lies one of the truly wonderful things about this uniquely American cuisine. Everybody in the game has rules. Some say charcoal’s OK, some say sauce on the side, some say slather it on. But everybody who has ever done it has slapped their stamp on it, and every American who has ever huddled near a smoldering fire for hours, letting that smoke permeate their clothes like a bad cologne, knows exactly what the rules are for barbecue. And they know the rules because, well, they probably made them up. Between bites of brisket so tender it might fall apart if you look at it funny, they’ll argue with you about those rules. Then they’ll probably steal your BBQ moves when they get home.

John Head knows these disputes well. As a consultant for barbecue restaurants around the world and teacher at the Master BBQ School in Denver, Head has certified almost 200 barbecue cooks in the art of smoking meats.

That means he has had plenty of chances to watch the great and never-ending battles about the art’s rules play out. While Head has a few strict rules — there has to be wood smoke, the food must be cooked low and slow, and darn it, don’t slather that sauce on until at least the very end — he tries not to be too doctrinaire about it all.

“Everybody cooks barbecue to their own tastes — even restaurateurs, even the best pit masters,” he says. “And if someone else doesn’t like it, they are absolutely offended and surprised.”

There is no bigger fight in the barbecue world than the never-ending battle over where the heat comes from. Head said that fight — the cage match between gas and charcoal and wood and electric smokers — has raged for decades and probably won’t stop. While he insists smoke from real wood — never that junk that comes in a bottle — has to be part of the equation, he doesn’t mind if that smoke came from an electric smoker or charcoal or simply burning wood.

Part of the allure of barbecue, Head says, is that it is the only cuisine that is truly, 100-percent American. From the moment pigs landed in the Southern United States, Americans have been cooking them low and slow, a practice Texans took up and used on beef, and one that people across the country use on chicken.

“This is ours,” Head says. “Nobody else smokes stuff like this.”

At Moe’s Barbecue in Aurora, manager Sam Chapman says the goal everyday is to spread that famous Southern hospitality. Each evening she wants the sprawling BBQ joint and bowling alley to feel like a dinner party where friends eat together and leave with full bellies and smiling faces.

“That’s kind of our motto, and lots of whiskey,” she says with a laugh.

But like anybody in the barbecue game, Champan says she often comes across otherwise happy customers who just have to tell the experts at Moe’s how barbecue should be done. She used to get offended when someone who ate every scrap of their pulled pork or beef brisket pulled her aside to give a few tips on how it should be done. But now, with Moe’s having 40 locations around the country, she knows full well they are doing plenty right when they throw meat over an applewood fire. So these days, the everyday experts don’t get to her.

“I just say, ‘I’d love to try yours some time,’” she says.

Smoke Links

Jabo’s Bar-Be-Q
9682 E Arapahoe Road
303-799-4432
www.jabosbarbeq.com

Moe’s Original Barbecue
2727 S Parker Road
720-306-6979
moesdenver.com
Master BBQ School in Denver
303- 321-3375
bbqcookingschool.com