I have been cooking whole hogs for a little while now, and ribs/butts and briskets for much longer. (Wonder if I could haul my pit onto the beach?
)
I really liked this article and thought I'd share it here. Jambone is supposed to have Sunday pig roasts, maybe they'll turn out something like this. Anyone on the board from around this area in Alabama? I think I could hang with some fellas named Junior, Sonny and Gump
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120850655828030.xml&coll=2
Barbecue clubs kindle a savory rural tradition
Whole-hog feasts are `old-fashioned country'
Friday, April 18, 2008
THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer
GEIGER -- Behind the same tin-roof shack where the Timillichee Barbecue Club was founded 81 years ago, Junior Brown blazed a propane flamethrower into a 10-foot-tall furnace packed with a pile of hickory wood.
Soon crackling in red flame, the fire sent the familiar scented smoke skyward and dropped precious hot coals below, coals that would be used to cook the whole hog waiting on a nearby pit. The next evening the pig would be the centerpiece of the season's first communal feast.
"You're in old-fashioned country," said J. M. "Sonny" Kuykendall, 76, Timillichee's oldest member.
Sumter County takes its traditions seriously, and one of those traditions is barbecue.
Timillichee is the oldest of a half-dozen barbecue clubs centered in tiny Sumter County towns such as Geiger, Epes, Boyd, Emelle, Sumterville and Cuba. Sumter is southwest of Birmingham on the Mississippi state line.
From spring to early fall, the clubs meet monthly, cooking up their own brands of barbecue, topped with distinctive club sauces and served with a bounteous supply of side dishes for families and invited guests.
It's a sacramental supper that ties together neighbors and generations.
"In the country, the only time you see folks is when you go to church, go to a funeral or go to a barbecue club," said Gump Ozment, member of the Sumterville Club.
Store-bought? Never!:
The clubs also spawn intra-county bragging contests about preparation methods and the nuances of each club's special sauce recipe.
When asked to describe the Emelle Barbecue Club, Lolita Smith said right off the bat: "It's the best one in Sumter County."
Like the wine regions of France, each club has a subtly different sauce. Smith said you'll never find a store-bought barbecue sauce in a club member's refrigerator.
John T. Edge, food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, was thrilled to hear of such a rich rural tradition that has survived in good health into the 21st century. The Foodways Alliance, based at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South.
In an era of vanishing Southern traditions, Edge said, the thriving barbecue clubs of Sumter County are a prize.
"So many people in the South are wringing their hands and wondering what happened to communal events that brought unrelated people together to celebrate their common bonds," he said. "Finding these barbecue clubs is the foodways equivalent of finding a country juke in the Mississippi Delta where Muddy Waters is still playing an acoustic guitar."
Out from the swamp:
The Timillichee Barbecue Club was founded in 1927 in a shack originally situated "down in the swamp," as Kuykendall described it, near a creek.
Originally, it was something of a men's social club where they went to shoot craps and play cards. But it became a tamer family affair. In 1947, club members disassembled the shack and moved it to an oak-shaded acre closer to the highway. Weathered roll tar paper covers the sides of the shack, topped with a rusting tin roof. Front and back porches are supported by unfinished cedar posts.
The Timillichee Club sticks to tradition, cooking whole hogs on a pit. However, members don't let tradition totally block innovation.
The club's fire furnace would inspire envy and awe in the casual barbecuer. What was a 1,000-gallon fuel tank has been outfitted with air vents, a suspended grate and a swinging door where wood is loaded and coals dropping from the grate can be extracted to feed the pit.
For a full-on feast with guests, members cook three hogs, weighing 150 to 200 pounds each, overnight Thursday, allowing them to stay warm all through the day Friday.
On Friday evening, the pork is pulled and served with the club's sacred sauce recipe, sharing the 50-foot-long serving table with a cornucopia of coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, cookies, cakes and pies.
The 24 member families and their guests gather at the picnic tables beneath the shade of oak trees, as they've been doing for generations.
At Timillichee, membership was once very coveted and more restrictive. One blackball could sink an applicant. Now it takes three blackballs, and club members have a hard time recalling turning anyone down when there was an open space.
"Nowadays, you've got to be one tough bird not to get in," Junior Brown said.
Lolita Smith said that while some clubs have more expansive policies on admission, the Emelle Club keeps it to people with an Emelle connection.
"You have to either live in Emelle, (have) grown up in Emelle or own property here. We wanted to keep it in the community," she said.
`It's tradition':
Emelle, which is just a little bit younger than Timillichee, also sticks to cooking whole hogs. Members believe it's important for the children to understand where pork actually comes from, Smith said. And it's important for them to know what homemade sauce tastes like.
"We have the same recipe. It's ketchup-based, with vinegar. It's the same recipe that has been around since it was founded in the 1930s," she said. "It's tradition. I'm 54, and when I was growing up my parents were in the same club."
The Emelle Club holds its gatherings at a cement block "community house" with no air conditioning, surrounded by picnic tables.
"It's like a big outdoor picnic," she said. "When someone moves away and comes back, they really want to get invited to a barbecue club."
A few clubs have turned to professionals to do the cooking. Hickory, the traditional fuel for a barbecue fire, is harder to come by now, as pine plantations have replaced the indigenous forest.
It's also much harder to get whole hogs nowadays, and they require more care and attention to cook.
"Most of us have had to go to (pork) shoulders," Virginia Ozment of the Sumterville Club said. "There is no one who knows how to cook them (whole hogs) anymore. And you can't get one."
The secret's out:
While the Sumter County Clubs are for the most part a local secret, word is spreading.
George Aust grew up in Geiger and was a member of the Timillichee club until he moved to Brewton and opened up George's Old Time Barbecue Restaurant. He now sells a sauce based on the Timillichee recipe that is stocked in stores statewide or available online at www.georgesbarbecue.com.
"I changed the recipe up a little bit, but it is almost like it," Aust said. "I put a little bit more in it."
This year, the barbecue tradition spawned the idea for the Sucarnochee BBQ and Blues Cook-off, being held this weekend in conjunction with the annual Sucarnochee Folklife Festival. However, none of the clubs contacted was competing in the inaugural cook-off competition.
They already know who cooks the best barbecue.
E-mail: tspencer@bhamnews.com
? 2008 The Birmingham News ? 2008 al.com All Rights Reserved.
)I really liked this article and thought I'd share it here. Jambone is supposed to have Sunday pig roasts, maybe they'll turn out something like this. Anyone on the board from around this area in Alabama? I think I could hang with some fellas named Junior, Sonny and Gump
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120850655828030.xml&coll=2
Barbecue clubs kindle a savory rural tradition
Whole-hog feasts are `old-fashioned country'
Friday, April 18, 2008
THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer
GEIGER -- Behind the same tin-roof shack where the Timillichee Barbecue Club was founded 81 years ago, Junior Brown blazed a propane flamethrower into a 10-foot-tall furnace packed with a pile of hickory wood.
Soon crackling in red flame, the fire sent the familiar scented smoke skyward and dropped precious hot coals below, coals that would be used to cook the whole hog waiting on a nearby pit. The next evening the pig would be the centerpiece of the season's first communal feast.
"You're in old-fashioned country," said J. M. "Sonny" Kuykendall, 76, Timillichee's oldest member.
Sumter County takes its traditions seriously, and one of those traditions is barbecue.
Timillichee is the oldest of a half-dozen barbecue clubs centered in tiny Sumter County towns such as Geiger, Epes, Boyd, Emelle, Sumterville and Cuba. Sumter is southwest of Birmingham on the Mississippi state line.
From spring to early fall, the clubs meet monthly, cooking up their own brands of barbecue, topped with distinctive club sauces and served with a bounteous supply of side dishes for families and invited guests.
It's a sacramental supper that ties together neighbors and generations.
"In the country, the only time you see folks is when you go to church, go to a funeral or go to a barbecue club," said Gump Ozment, member of the Sumterville Club.
Store-bought? Never!:
The clubs also spawn intra-county bragging contests about preparation methods and the nuances of each club's special sauce recipe.
When asked to describe the Emelle Barbecue Club, Lolita Smith said right off the bat: "It's the best one in Sumter County."
Like the wine regions of France, each club has a subtly different sauce. Smith said you'll never find a store-bought barbecue sauce in a club member's refrigerator.
John T. Edge, food writer and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, was thrilled to hear of such a rich rural tradition that has survived in good health into the 21st century. The Foodways Alliance, based at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South.
In an era of vanishing Southern traditions, Edge said, the thriving barbecue clubs of Sumter County are a prize.
"So many people in the South are wringing their hands and wondering what happened to communal events that brought unrelated people together to celebrate their common bonds," he said. "Finding these barbecue clubs is the foodways equivalent of finding a country juke in the Mississippi Delta where Muddy Waters is still playing an acoustic guitar."
Out from the swamp:
The Timillichee Barbecue Club was founded in 1927 in a shack originally situated "down in the swamp," as Kuykendall described it, near a creek.
Originally, it was something of a men's social club where they went to shoot craps and play cards. But it became a tamer family affair. In 1947, club members disassembled the shack and moved it to an oak-shaded acre closer to the highway. Weathered roll tar paper covers the sides of the shack, topped with a rusting tin roof. Front and back porches are supported by unfinished cedar posts.
The Timillichee Club sticks to tradition, cooking whole hogs on a pit. However, members don't let tradition totally block innovation.
The club's fire furnace would inspire envy and awe in the casual barbecuer. What was a 1,000-gallon fuel tank has been outfitted with air vents, a suspended grate and a swinging door where wood is loaded and coals dropping from the grate can be extracted to feed the pit.
For a full-on feast with guests, members cook three hogs, weighing 150 to 200 pounds each, overnight Thursday, allowing them to stay warm all through the day Friday.
On Friday evening, the pork is pulled and served with the club's sacred sauce recipe, sharing the 50-foot-long serving table with a cornucopia of coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, cookies, cakes and pies.
The 24 member families and their guests gather at the picnic tables beneath the shade of oak trees, as they've been doing for generations.
At Timillichee, membership was once very coveted and more restrictive. One blackball could sink an applicant. Now it takes three blackballs, and club members have a hard time recalling turning anyone down when there was an open space.
"Nowadays, you've got to be one tough bird not to get in," Junior Brown said.
Lolita Smith said that while some clubs have more expansive policies on admission, the Emelle Club keeps it to people with an Emelle connection.
"You have to either live in Emelle, (have) grown up in Emelle or own property here. We wanted to keep it in the community," she said.
`It's tradition':
Emelle, which is just a little bit younger than Timillichee, also sticks to cooking whole hogs. Members believe it's important for the children to understand where pork actually comes from, Smith said. And it's important for them to know what homemade sauce tastes like.
"We have the same recipe. It's ketchup-based, with vinegar. It's the same recipe that has been around since it was founded in the 1930s," she said. "It's tradition. I'm 54, and when I was growing up my parents were in the same club."
The Emelle Club holds its gatherings at a cement block "community house" with no air conditioning, surrounded by picnic tables.
"It's like a big outdoor picnic," she said. "When someone moves away and comes back, they really want to get invited to a barbecue club."
A few clubs have turned to professionals to do the cooking. Hickory, the traditional fuel for a barbecue fire, is harder to come by now, as pine plantations have replaced the indigenous forest.
It's also much harder to get whole hogs nowadays, and they require more care and attention to cook.
"Most of us have had to go to (pork) shoulders," Virginia Ozment of the Sumterville Club said. "There is no one who knows how to cook them (whole hogs) anymore. And you can't get one."
The secret's out:
While the Sumter County Clubs are for the most part a local secret, word is spreading.
George Aust grew up in Geiger and was a member of the Timillichee club until he moved to Brewton and opened up George's Old Time Barbecue Restaurant. He now sells a sauce based on the Timillichee recipe that is stocked in stores statewide or available online at www.georgesbarbecue.com.
"I changed the recipe up a little bit, but it is almost like it," Aust said. "I put a little bit more in it."
This year, the barbecue tradition spawned the idea for the Sucarnochee BBQ and Blues Cook-off, being held this weekend in conjunction with the annual Sucarnochee Folklife Festival. However, none of the clubs contacted was competing in the inaugural cook-off competition.
They already know who cooks the best barbecue.
E-mail: tspencer@bhamnews.com
? 2008 The Birmingham News ? 2008 al.com All Rights Reserved.
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