Steve Puppe/Eater
Since Henry Perry, the self-styled father of Kansas Metropolis barbecue, opened his first lunch stand in 1908, locals and vacationers have been making an attempt to pin down what precisely defines the KC barbecue fashion. Some level to our lean, thin-sliced brisket, a workaday preparation meant to be piled in ribbons on a squishy white bun. Others level to burnt ends, one of many metropolis’s proudest innovations: fatty, tender trimmings from beef brisket with crunchy, caramelized bark. However pitmasters listed here are simply as preoccupied with beef and pork ribs, hand-cranked sausages, moist and salty pit ham, and smoked fowl.
Right here’s as near a barbecue thesis assertion as you’ll get: The fashionable Kansas Metropolis “fashion” is doing a bit little bit of the whole lot nicely and doing it with a aspect of sauce.
Below that expansive umbrella, the barbecue eating places on this record vary from walk-up home windows with a handful of picnic tables to full-service eating places with cocktails and material napkins. The easiest way to expertise KC barbecue is to go to each the old-school establishments that helped outline the style and the brand new guard of progressive pitmasters increasing its boundaries.
Liz Prepare dinner is a contract author based mostly in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri, and the creator of the experimental meals publication Haterade.
