After eating the most luscious brisket in Texas and the finest chopped pork in the Carolinas, I was convinced that pit masters were descendents of Houdini. They put tough, hulking cuts of meat into a strange contraption and, hours later, haul out tremblingly tender barbecue imbued with smoky flavor and encased in a dark, glistening crust. I didn’t know how they did it—I was just happy to eat the results. And it goes without saying that I never thought a schlub like me from Teaneck, New Jersey could make anything close to what these grizzled old hands from Memphis and Lexington did. At least, not until I met Adam Perry Lang.

Adam worked under great chefs like Daniel Boulud before ditching haute cuisine for humble barbecue. He traveled the South to study the craft of meat cooked low and slow with charcoal and wood. He opened an unassuming spot with communal tables and paper plates in New York City named Daisy May’s BBQ USA that won national praise. He even entered some of the most prestigious barbecue competitions—the American Royal in Kansas City and the World Pork Expo in Des Moines—and won.

Before I started working with Adam on his first cookbook, Serious Barbecue (Hyperion, $35), I was a pitiful outdoor cook. Where I grew up, barbecue meant burgers cooked on a grill. I thought I was ambitious when I added American cheese. Under Adam’s tutelage, I graduated from hot dogs and burgers to pricey dry-aged Porterhouses, at first keeping him on the phone from the coal-lighting beginning to the butter-basting end. I trailed him in the supermarket as he identified fat-flecked strips and rejected unmarbled duds. I looked on as he browned rib eyes that I swear were half a foot thick. It’s a sure sign that you’re a capable griller when you drop major cash on a steak without having a panic attack while it cooks.

Yet despite my newfound confidence, I still cowered before Southern barbecue’s reputation. The process seemed so onerous, requiring heaps of logs and elephantine cookers, inscrutable to all except the most seasoned practitioners—those Texas-born vets who talk in drawls about achieving blue smoke or their devotion to post oak. Grilling took just a few minutes of concentration and some charcoal. Barbecue, I thought, took 12 hours and a miracle.

The more I watched Adam do it, including a crash-course day at the World Series of Barbecue in Kansas City when he barbecued chicken thighs, briskets, pork shoulders, and ribs all at once, the more I felt like I could give it a shot myself. I began to entertain a fantasy: I would tell Adam I was ready, and with teary eyes, he would offer me his best cooker, like a father handing his son the keys to the Benz. Then I remembered that like most city dwellers, neither I nor anyone I know has enough outdoor space for a chair let alone a Big Green Egg (a cooker that holds heat so well you hardly have to add charcoal), Backwoods Smoker (an awesome stacked model), or some other device designed for Southern barbecue. My quest was over before it started. Dejectedly, I told Adam, and he smiled. He loves his big tricked-out barbecues, he told me, with their dampers, deflector plates, and fireboxes, but all you need is a charcoal grill, even one that’s small enough to fit on a fire escape.

To understand why, he explained, is to understand how simple barbecue really is. While grilling means cooking meat directly over a source of relatively high heat (say, smoldering coals or a gas burner), barbecue means cooking your meat with relatively low heat that’s not direct, either because it’s deflected by something or because it’s far enough away from the stuff you’re cooking. Translation for your grill: Instead of putting meat on grates right above your coals, you pile the coals on one side and put the meat on the other (see illustration). And instead of cooking with red-hot coals, you wait until their heat has subsided.

This lower, gentler heat slowly breaks down tough meat—technically, as the science geek in Adam loves to remind me, breaking down the meat’s collagen into gelatin—to give it that unbelievably succulent texture. And to give your meat that smack of smoke typical of great barbecue, you put wood chunks, soaked in water to slow their burn, directly on the hot coals. The only part that takes any effort is keeping the heat consistent, which is a cinch if you’re using gas (just don’t mess with the knob once you reach your ideal temperature) and nearly as easy if you’re using charcoal. That’s it. Winning barbecue competitions, where the bar is set skyscrapingly high, requires another level of understanding and skill. Making something incredibly delicious, however, well, it seems even I can do that.

Make It: Pulled Pork

 

1. Combine the brine ingredients, stirring to dissolve the sugar and salt. Put the pork in a baking dish or disposable aluminum pan. Use the syringe to inject the pork all over with the brine, making sure you get some into the center of the meat. Let the pork sit for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

2. An hour and a half before the pork is finished resting, start preparing your grill. Light about 30 briquettes using your chimney starter by putting crumpled newspaper in the bottom, placing coals on top, and lighting the newspaper. (Do not use lighter fluid because it will lend a nasty aftertaste to whatever you’re cooking.) Wait until the coals turn gray, about 30 minutes. Pile these coals on one side of the grill’s bottom rack. Put a disposable aluminum pan filled with about 2 cups of water on the other.

3. The temperature will at first be too hot for your pork. You want the heat to drop to about 250° F. Open the grill’s bottom vent all the way; open the top vent halfway. Close the grill lid and wait about 45 minutes. If your grill doesn’t have a temperature gauge, open the grill and hold your hand about 6 inches above the grate. You should be able to keep it there for 9 or 10 seconds before you have to pull it away. If you have to pull away sooner, close the lid, wait a little longer, and then test again.

4. While you’re waiting for the temperature to drop, pat the pork dry with paper towels. Combine the Mustard Moisturizer ingredients in a bowl and mix until smooth; in another bowl, combine the Seasoning Blend ingredients. Use a brush or your hands to add a light coat of the Mustard Moisturizer to the outside of the pork. Sprinkle on just enough seasoning blend to make a thin layer (save the rest for another use). Use a brush or your hands to coat the pork with a very thin coat of canola oil. If you’re using a remote thermometer, put its prong into the thickest part of the pork making sure it isn’t touching bone.

5. Once the temperature of the coals is at about 250°, put a cup or so of the soaked wood chunks directly on the coals (if you’re using chips, put them inside a foil packet poked with holes, and put that on the coals), then put on the grill’s top grate. Put the pork, fat-side down, on the top grate above the pan and close the grill lid. Grab a good book, and cook the pork for 6 hours, rotating the pork 180 degrees after about 4 hours (so the side closest to the coals doesn’t get too dark). Replenishing the wood every hour for the first three hours, adding more water to the aluminum pan if its level gets low. Your task while the pork cooks is to keep the temperature relatively steady at 250°.

6. To do that, you’ll have to add about 12 lit and ashed-over briquettes every hour (you can light them in the chimney starter). Some grills have a way to add coals without removing the grate, such as a little flap in the side that opens. But if your grill doesn’t, and many don’t, you have to remove the grate (and the meat), add the coals, and return to the grate and the meat back to where they were. Handle any temperature drops or spikes in between by tweaking the top vent, opening it slightly to raise the temperature and closing it slightly (but never all the way) to lower it. Resist opening the grill lid more than you have to, because that’ll cause temperature spikes and let smoke out.

7. When the remote thermometer reads 160° (after about 6 hours) combine the Wrapping Mixture ingredients and stir until smooth. Remove the pork from the cooker (heat-proof gloves come in handy here) and put it on top of two large sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil. Take out the thermometer. Pour the Wrapping Mixture on top of the butt, reinsert the thermometer, and wrap the pork tightly in the foil. Put the pork back in the cooker, and cook until the temperature reaches 193°, 2 ½ to 3 hours, adding lit coals as necessary to maintain your temperature. Don’t freak out when the pork’s temperature suddenly stops climbing for a while once when it reaches about 160°. Good things are happening during this temperature plateau, which will last around an hour or two. It’ll start climbing again—just ride it out. Take a short nap. Phone a friend. Enjoy the wait.

8. Carefully take the pork out of the cooker (it’ll be really tender), unwrap it, and drizzle it with the BBQ Sauce. Put it back, unwrapped, into the cooker for 20 minutes, then take it out, wrap it in foil, and let it rest for 30 minutes. Pull the pork, using your hands (in heat-proof gloves), two forks, or bear claws (a cool tool made for just this purpose), and drizzle on more sauce. Pile the pork with slaw, like they do in both Tennessee (where the slaw is mustardy) and North Carolina (where it’s sweet and filled with mayonaisse) on a hamburger bun. Savor.

Hops to It: Five Beers that Play Well With Barbecue

Smoke Ale, Rogue Brewery
Newport, Oregon
Brewed in the style of the German Rauchbiers (smoke beers), for which green malt is roasted over a wood fire, this smoky beer with a hoppy finish matches beautifully with the pork, especially if it’s lightly sauced.

Imperial Porter, Southampton Publick House
Southampton, New York
This dark, dry (but not bitter) beer provides an excellent foil to sweet, saucy pork. A touch of smokiness and toffee-like sweetness keeps drinking it interesting.

Ebel’s Weiss, Two Brothers Brewing Company
Warrenville, Illinois
Its fizzy crispness cuts into the pork’s lovely fattiness, and its mellow maltiness accentuates the meat’s inherent sweetness.

Carolina Nut Brown Ale, Carolina Brewing Company
Holly Springs, North Carolina
This classic brown ale—which tastes like roasted hazelnuts and caramel—is strong enough to stand up to the intense flavors of barbecue and a malty complexity that’ll make you want to continue drinking it even after the pork is gone.

Allagash Dubbel, Allagash Brewing Company
Portland, Maine
With its brown sugar sweetness and a subtle tang of yeast, this Belgian-style dubbel doesn’t back down when faced with smoky, saucy meat.