In Life of Fire (Clarkson Potter, Apr.), pitmaster Martin guides readers through the ins and outs of open-flame cooking—from building one’s own pit to roasting a whole hog.
Your book focuses on whole-hog barbecue, a style of barbecuing that, you remark, is fast becoming “endangered.” Why is that?
The economics of barbecue are broken. Barbecue is America’s peasant food, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. It’s always been affordable, but it never fiscally grew the way, say, hamburgers did. No one would be shocked to see a six-ounce burger going for $12. But meat for a barbecue sandwich the same size could entail up to 24 hours of cook time for a whole hog. Cooking pork all night over an open pit is unbelievably laborious. I charge $6 for a sandwich in 2022. That’s cheap to people living in metropolitan areas, but to the rest of America that’s normal. If pitmasters in smaller towns raise their prices 25 cents, it’s a bloodletting from their guest base. Even though there’s been a resurgence of barbecue in big cities like New York—where people are accustomed to paying more for a barbecue sandwich—it’s not happening yet in smaller cities throughout the South. So there’s no economic incentive for the younger generation to pursue barbecuing as a career. Until people get accustomed from a societal standpoint that barbecue’s not supposed to be cheap—because it’s a skill, not a recipe—you’re going to see this decline in family-run barbecue restaurants.
A lot of the recipes from your Nashville restaurant, Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, date back to your college days in the ’90s, when you were making rubs, sauces, and slaws in your dorm room. How did that come about?
I’ve eaten barbecue my whole life. After I left Mississippi to go to college in Henderson, Tenn., I sought barbecue joints in town and found Thomas & Webb Barbecue, just a little shack run by one guy named Harold. When I ordered at the window, he took one step, picked this lid up, and underneath was a whole hog. He made my sandwich right there. I had to learn how to do that. So I befriended Mr. Harold, and he taught me everything.
If you could give one piece of advice to barbecue beginners, what would it be?
Swallow the fact that you’re going to mess it up. Also, rather than starting with a whole hog, try beginning with open pit ribs to get accustomed to pit barbecue and go bigger from there. A lot of people don’t cook over a live fire because they’re afraid they’re going to screw it up. You can’t set a temperature gauge, so there is a risk that you’ll screw it up and have to order pizza. But be okay with that. It’s like life: you screw up, get up, brush your knees off, and do it again.
