Nowhere to Go From Here

The news from the barbecue front is both good and bad. Good, because I am making better barbecue than I have ever had; better than I ever thought possible. Bad because I have eaten pork sandwiches for the last 4 days.

To recap, I moved from pork butts to pork bellies, using the new Weber Smokey Mountain smoker and hickory chunks. The resulting product was like barbecue from a dream. Chewy, delicous bark. Smoky fat with a decadent texture. Truly shocking.

I started reheating slices for sandwiches. That worked out extremely well, to the point where it made me think pulled pork sandwiches were probably a waste of time. And pulled pork is marvelous.

Yesterday, I made a mustard sauce without tomatoes, and it blew my mind. Best sauce I have ever had. Nothing else comes close, and I have had plenty of good sauce. The simple recipe is in yesterday’s post.

Today, I went even further. I heated up the pork, toasted some buns, and made sandwiches using pork, big dill pickle slabs, and slices of raw onions. I applied sauce above and below the meat.

I don’t see how a sandwich could be any better than this. The onions added crunch and, well, onions. The pickle slabs made the sandwich juicer, and the pickle flavor improved the meat and sauce exponentially.

I have never had barbecue anywhere that was anywhere near as good as this. I wish one of the local joints would start making these sandwiches.

From now on, we are not going anywhere without this sauce. We may go out for ribs, but we are not relying on restaurant sauce. Without shame, I will stride through the door with a squeeze bottle of my own sauce in my hand.

I’m also going to ask for pickles and onions.

I don’t really know what to do now. My motivation for continuing to experiment is gone. I don’t particularly want barbecue to be better than this.