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We have continued our ground beef sale and have added steaks.  This is a great time to save money on beef steaks. Save $2.00 per pound on these beef steaks.

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This course is accredited by the International HACCP Alliance.

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A group of Aggies involved in the Texas Barbecue program at Texas A&M University participated in the 2022 Houston BBQ Festival, which was held in the Humble Civic Center Arena in Humble, Texas on Sunday, April 3, 2022. Those in attendance from Texas A&M University were faculty Davey Griffin, Ray Riley, Jade Cooper, and Jeff Savell, and graduate students Sydni Borders, Kylie Burriss, MacKenzie Chapman, Shelley Curry, Ayleen Gonzalez, Kaylee Greiner, Katie Kendrick, Lilly Kochevar, Lauren Lee, Ian Lovell, Thachary Mayer, Trent Schwartz, Tori Teegarden, Paige Williams.

We enjoy going to the festival each year to talk to folks about Texas Barbecue and to see so many of the pitmasters we have gotten to know through festivals and camps and to make new acquaintances with those we have not met yet. One of the most common questions we get is not about how to cook better barbecue, but how to get into the always-sold-out Barbecue Summer Camp and Camp Brisket, two outstanding programs we conduct with Foodways Texas.

The Houston BBQ Festival has two great champions, Chris Reid and Michael Fulmer. Chris and Michael are the event founders, and thanks for always inviting us each year and allowing us to interact with barbecue specialists and enthusiasts from around the Houston area. Your passion for shedding the spotlight on these great barbecue endeavors is making a difference throughout the southeast Texas area. The number of great barbecue establishments in the Houston area keeps increasing, and your efforts to highlight and support them has made a difference in this recognition.

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The Texas Barbecue Town Hall Meeting, a one-day event dedicated to those involved in the commercial barbecue business, will be held at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas on Monday, January 24, 2022. This meeting will be hosted by the Meat Science program of the Department of Animal Science and will be held in the The Shirley & Joe Swinbank ’74 AgriLife Center and the Rosenthal Meat Center.

“We have had six town hall meetings with great turnouts, and we look forward to this year’s event,” according to Jeff Savell, one of the leaders of the Texas Barbecue program at Texas A&M University.

Three speakers have been confirmed for this year’s town hall meeting: David Anderson, economist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, will be back again to give an update on the livestock and meat markets, Brandon Hurtado, Hurtado Barbecue, Arlington, Texas will discuss the role of social media in growing your business, and Homer Robertson, Deputy Fire Chief, City of Fort Worth and World Champion Chuck Wagon Competitor on how to fireproof your business. In addition, participants will get a chance to see view beef carcasses and meat cuts at the Rosenthal Center in the afternoon.

The meeting will begin at 10 AM (coffee and kolaches at 9:30 AM) and end around 3 PM and will involve both lectures and hands-on demonstrations. “We choose Mondays for these meetings knowing that many restaurants are closed that day, which may allow for some operators to bring key in-house staff with them,” said Savell. “Hopefully, people can drive in, attend the meeting and be back home later that night without having to spend too much time away.”

The Texas Barbecue program at Texas A&M University is coordinated by Davey Griffin, Ray Riley, and Jeff Savell, and it includes the first-year seminar, ANSC 117, Texas Barbecue; Barbecue Summer Camp and Camp Brisket, conducted with Foodways Texas; and the Barbecue Genius Counter.

The Texas Barbecue Town Hall Meeting is sponsored by the E.M. “Manny” Rosenthal Chair in Animal Science. To register for the meeting, email Jeff Savell at j-savell@tamu.edu or call at 979-845-3992 (office) or 979-255-6676 (mobile), or contact Davey Griffin at dgriff@tamu.edu or call at 979-229-0273. Details about parking, meeting locations, appropriate dress for the refrigerated meat coolers, etc., will be sent to the attendees before the meeting.

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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 it makes it easy to lay out and configure the size you want to build. In addition, these blocks are not too expensive, can be found at any home improvement store or lumber yard, and can be easily replaced if broken.

We located the pit in a seldom-used part of the yard. We cleared remaining grass and put down sandbox sand to level the area. We purchased 18 X 18 inch concrete blocks to serve as the base of the pits. The blocks where fire has been built have cracked, but not to the point where they are unusable. Fire bricks would be good to place inside the pit, but for no more than what this pit is used, I don’t think they are necessary.

The pit is four-courses high, which is about the right height to place the stand inside it that holds the whole-hog (I have cooked briskets and Boston butts on the stand, and it works well for that, too). The stand is made of expanded metal inside a rectangle of angle iron with four handles attached so that the stand can be carried to and from the pit. The legs are adjustable so that the height of the stand can be raised or lowered or can be removed so that the stand with the pig on it can be placed on a table for serving. My friend, Bill Averyt, who owns a machine shop, built this stand for me.

Another great feature of this pit is the four rectangle pans that Bill built for it. These serve as either the fire pans or drip pans so that the grease does not get into the fire area and start a grease fire. There are times we built a fire in the two end pans and leave the two middle pans to catch the grease, or as the photo at the top depicts, one fire is built in the end and the other three pans serve as grease-catch pans.

The last feature of the pit is the top. Bill made this out of sheet metal so that it is in two pieces that fit one over the other (about four inches or so). Also, Bill drilled two holes for dial thermometers, although now we just use the one over the middle of the pit. Corrugated sheet metal could be used here is you do not have someone who can fabricate some metal for you.

The pit holds its heat very well. On each side and on the bottom course of blocks, there are blocks that are turned on their sides so that air can enter the pit. We use cinder blocks to close these makeshift dampers and that seems to work quite well.

I am sure that there are many ways of improving this pit or to make your own that would suit your needs. The only real costs are in the stand, drip pans, and top, but with the ingenuity that most barbecue fanatics possess, that is not much of a challenge.

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To understand “dark cutting beef,” it is necessary to understand how the bright red color of beef occurs. At death, the muscle attempts to maintain all normal activities. To do so, it must have energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). To get ATP, it breaks down glycogen through postmortem glycolysis. A by-product of postmortem glycolysis is lactic acid. Lactic acid builds up in the muscle over a 16 to 24 hour period post-slaughter. A normal level of lactic acid (pH of 5.6) in the muscle will cause the meat to be bright cherry-red in color when it is exposed to oxygen for a short time period.

In “dark cutting beef,” the animal undergoes long-term stress before slaughter. This stress may be from transportation, rough handling, changing weather conditions such as cold fronts, or anything that causes the animal to draw on its glycogen reserves before slaughter. At death, there is limited amount of glycogen available to be converted to lactic acid, the muscle pH will be higher-than-normal (pH of 6.0 or higher), and the color of meat will be darker than normal.

“Dark cutting beef” occurs in 1 to 2% of beef carcasses. The percentage will be higher in the fall and winter months, and will be most evident two to three days after a sudden change in ambient temperature, especially if rain and wind accompany the temperature drop. There are different gradients of “dark cutting beef” ranging from slightly dark to very dark purple depending on how much glycogen is depleted in the living animal.

The chart below depicts the incidence of dark cutting, by month, during 2016.

“Dark cutting beef” is used in the food service industry rather than the retail industry because of its color. There is no real palatability problem with “dark cutting beef,” and this is why it is used in the food service industry where the raw product is cooked before the consumer sees it.

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