Author Bio

James R. Veteto is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Texas. He is Director of the Southern Seed Legacy.

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Edward M. Maclin is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Georgia.

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Main Description

Texas has its barbecue tradition, and a library of books to go with it. Same with the Carolinas. The mid-South, however, is a region with as many opinions as styles of cooking. In The Slaw and the Slow Cooked, editors James Veteto and Edward Maclin seek to right a wrong--namely, a deeper understanding of the larger experience of barbecue in this legendary American culinary territory.

In developing the book, Veteto and Maclin cast a wide net for divergent approaches. Food writer John Edge introduces us to Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna, Arkansas, a possibly century-old restaurant serving top-notch pork and simultaneously challenging race and class boundaries. Kristen Bradley-Shurtz explores the 150-plus-year tradition of the St. Patrick's Irish Picnic in McEwen, Tennessee. And no barbecue book would be complete without an insider's story, provided here by Jonathan Deutsch's "embedded" reporting inside a competitive barbecue team. Veteto and Maclin conclude with a glimpse into the future of barbecue culture: online, in the smoker, and fresh from the farm.

The Slaw and the Slow Cooked stands as a challenge to barbecue aficionados and a statement on the Mid-South's important place at the table. Intended for food lovers, anthropologists, and sociologists alike, The Slaw and the Slow Cooked demonstrates barbecue's status as a common language of the South.

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Reviews

"The Slaw and the Slow-Cooked has far wider relevance than the Mid-South of its subtitle. Its contributors examine many aspects of America's oldest Slow Food, from its primeval origins into the age of Twitter and Facebook. They treat their savory subject seriously, but not (thank the Lord) solemnly. You don't have to be a barbecue nut to enjoy this book, but if you are one, you'll be in hog heaven."
--John Shelton Reed, co-author, Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue

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"A rich and informative window on Mid-South barbecue."
--Andrew Warnes, author of Savage Barbecue

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At a Glance

The world of barbecue in the Mid-South

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Table of Contents

CONTENTS

Foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan

Chapter One: Introduction: Smoked Meat and the Anthropology of Food - James R. Veteto and Edward M. Maclin

Chapter Two: A History of Barbecue in the Mid-South Region - Robert Moss

Chapter Three: Patronage in the Pits: A Portrait, in Black and White, of Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna, Arkansas - John T. Edge

Chapter Four: Piney Woods Traditions at the Crossroads: Barbecue and Regional Identity in South Arkansas and North Louisiana - Justin M. Nolan

Chapter Five: Priests, Pork Shoulders, and Chicken Halves: Barbecue for a Cause at St. Patrick's Irish Picnic - Kristen Bradley-Shurtz

Chapter Six: Identity, Authenticity, Persistence and Loss in the West TN Whole Hog Barbecue Tradition - Rien Fertel
Chapter Seven: The Changing Landscape of Mid-South Barbecue - Edward M. Maclin

Chapter Eight: Swine by Design: Inside a Competition Barbecue Team - Jonathan Deutsch

Chapter Nine: Barbecue as Slow Food - Angela Knipple and Paul Knipple

Chapter Ten: Southern Barbecue Sauce and Heirloom Tomatoes - James R. Veteto

Chapter Eleven: Mid-South Barbecue in the Digital Age and Sustainable Future Directions - Edward M. Maclin and James R. Veteto

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Extras

Excerpt

"Start with a coa, a sharpened, skinned stick that be used for digging and planting seeds or for skewering and smoking mammalian meats, fish or fowl. Coa may indeed be one of the oldest and widespread words in the Americas-including the Caribbean. It may also be embedded in one of the oldest and most ubiquitous means of slowly smoking meats and making them savory and storable, rather than leaving them raw and perishable: the babricot of the Taino and Carib, the barbacoa of the Hispanicized natives and immigrants, and the barbecue of the Anglicized natives and immigrants of the New World.

"When meat, fish or fowl is crucified on coa skewer and placed over red-hot coals, the flesh does not perish but is made immortal and imminently memorable by both fire and smoke. The coas may be set vertically as the barbecue racks in Argentina are set, or woven into a horizontal grate as they are in northern Mexico, or leaned at 60 degree angles as they are at salmon bakes in the Pacific Northwest. Of course, the primacy of the quality of the meat itself matters most-whether it is from pig or peccary, Criollo cattle or Churro sheep-but whatever meat that gets chosen will be transmogrified by the kind of wood used to roast or grill it: hickory, oak, pecan, alder or mesquite. Each wood offers a certain intensity and duration of heat which reshapes the muscle and fat cells in the meat, but it also infuses the meat with anti-oxidants from the smoke passing through it. Sweet smoke, savory smoke, dark smoke or light-they enter the scene as wisps of vaporized carbon and secondary chemicals which waft up from the fire and linger at the heart of matter."

--From the Foreword