Charlie: 12 months ago if you’d asked me about barbecue I’d have looked puzzled pointed to a page in the Argos catalogue and muttered something about living in a flat.
But then I met Al Harris, aka Dr Sweetsmoke, head judge at Grillstock, barbecue champ and Southern gentleman in Manchester one Friday evening in 2013.
[Ed: A passion for BBQ and bourbon means that Al’s in the envious position of getting sponsorship from both Mac’s BBQ (seems only logical) and Buffalo Trace bourbon (so jelly)]
I hadn’t planned on going, I didn’t understand barbecue. In no time I found a band on my wrist and I was drinking bourbon in a bar listening to a live band. In one weekend, I learned more than I could have imagined, ate a whole lot of meat, drank a lot of bourbon and have been lucky enough to call Al a good friend ever since.
So after the meat, music and mayhem that was Grillstock Manchester 2014, I took the opportunity to grab Al, in his role as Head Judge for a chat.
Charlie: Al, I have to ask, what got you into barbecue in the first place?
Al: My mama.
If we tried to talk about the things that got me into barbecue, I couldn’t mention any. It’s just what we do, it’s how we grow up in the South. Barbecue is a way of life, it’s how we cook.
We deal with temperatures and humidity that is absolutely silly – so you wouldn’t take a roast and put it in the oven traditionally as you do here, you’d cook it over an open fire, you’d do things outdoors. We call it cooking, but it’s known as barbecue now. It’s not a whole lot different to cooking in your oven.
Yet it’s totally different to what us British know as barbecue, because we know grilling.
Absolutely different. You’ve got grilling, you’ve got barbecuing, you’ve got smoking a very good pit master will know all three and you can only be called a Pit Master then and only then. If you grill, you’re no Pit Master. If you smoke, you’re no Pit Master, you must have all three.
It’s actually a combination of styles that have come together, but it was for one major purpose. Barbecuing is about the cuts of meat that we use, the brisket, the pork and the ribs. All these cuts were the cuts that were thrown away many years ago and they were given to society to do as best they could with. This is where the term ‘living high off the hog’ comes from – high on the hog is where your loins and your chops come from, the ribs and the brisket is the bottom of the animal.
But now we’ve flipped the script on that, so now high off the hog means the perfect brisket, a succulent rack of ribs, it’s pork you can just dig into, those are the top cuts now and it’s all to do with barbecue. For me it’s quite natural and traditional, it’s what keeps me grounded. When I’m homesick it kind of just brings it all together. And it lets me know that no matter where I am in the world, food is at the core of my existence.
Why did you start competing?
I kind of think that competing wasn’t so much for the fact that I wanted to win anything, it was that I wanted to be around like minded people. Win or lose, or draw, or tie, those things didn’t really matter to me in the beginning. It’s important to me that people are all brought together under a common theme. It’s about the food, it’s about the camaraderie.
I love to compete, I’m a challenging kind of guy and I’ll take anyone and anybody on at any time, so don’t dare me, but if we’re having a good old time with it? That makes me feel solid and at home. I’m not a sensitive or emotional guy, but food takes me back home, it takes me to the South and it keeps me… because I’m 5000+ miles away from it, but I’ve got it here now, I’ve got it with me, and I want to share that love and tell everyone about it.
What brought you to the UK?
It was a good idea when I got on the plane. I don’t know where I am with it now, but it was a really good idea back then.
We came over as a family unit – wife, daughter and son – we wanted to relocate and try something new. I’d never been, we didn’t know, but in 30 days we move over.
At that point I started finding things a bit difficult, there were changes – the climate and what have you. But I also realised that we can cook barbecue in all climates. I wanted to teach people how to cook, in the cold and in the rain and in the winter – you don’t have to sit inside, you can have a hobby that is barbecuing and we learned new techniques, which brought a lot of companies in from the States and we’re now using materials and techniques that make it viable to cook 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
It’s me and the kids now, we’re doing our own thing and getting on with it.
I have to tell you, my daughter’s vegetarian. [Ed: *George Takei voice*oh myyyyy!]
I tell you what, for a daddy – ever since she was an itty bitty little thing and I was wrapped around her little finger, no matter what she does, she isn’t ever wrong. But the worst thing she ever did to me was become a vegetarian.
But from a dad standpoint- she doesn’t drink, she doesn’t smoke, she doesn’t go out, she’s a college graduate, she works 9-5, 5 days a week – and all you want to do baby girl is be a vegetarian? I have no problem, let me slice lettuce for you all day long.
So, what’s next after Grillstock?
First I’m working with Pit Smoked Barbecue trying to feed 100,000 people at Henley Regatta. All we’re cooking is rib eye. I like a challenge and as long as I’ve got a bit of Bourbon, I’m happy.
It’s very very random, I get calls that come to me at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, with all these time zone differences.
And I’ve got Estonia on the books, I’ve got Finland on the books, I’ve got Australia on the books.
One of the most exciting things I’ve got planned, is I’ve been working with Andy Bates himself [ED: see our profile of him here], down in London. So we’re looking to do something called ‘Toast to Toast’ in the third week of July and we’re going to do toasties. I’m going to do a Southern toastie, taking something very very simple and trying to make it absolutely explode.
Finally Al, what do you see next for barbecue in the UK?
Really tough question. I’m a bit excited to see the unknown. We don’t know where it’s going, we’ve never reached the pinnacle. I think we’re going to begin to see teams coming over from the USA to compete. We’ve got a few people looking in, we’ve got Byron Chism from Butt Rub, we’ve got Ray Lamb and he comes over every year and judges – I actually filled his shoes at Grillstock.
I made a phone call to Ray and asked ‘Do you mind?’ and chatted to him on Twitter and said I needed one of his flaming shirts. He said carry on with it. I actually autographed two of his books at Grillstock – Ray is the granddaddy of them all and I sent him a text and asked if he minded and he told me to carry on. But that’s what barbecue is, it’s a big family.
I think I wrote ‘I’m trying to be the best I can and be like Dr BBQ, but for now you deal with Dr Sweetsmoke.’ It’s a bit of a homage to him really.
Barbecue is just growing, growing, growing and I don’t know where it’s going, but I’m going to stay with it, ’til it gets there!
It’s a part of what I do and it feels like home to me.