I Am Not a Pitmaster

I wrote a song about sauce. I have never run a pit in my life.

That is the hypocrisy at the centre of “Sauce That” and I think it is funnier to admit it than to let someone catch it.

What I actually am

A guy who watched people do it properly all night at a competition in Port Aransas and came away converted. An enthusiast. A customer.

Those are real categories. Most people who love a craft are standing outside it, and that is not a lesser relationship — it is just a different one. The mistake would be claiming otherwise.

Why the respect is not casual

Because I saw the work.

Competition barbecue is an overnight job where the main skill is managing a fire you cannot fully control, for twelve to sixteen hours, with one shot. There is the stall — the stretch where the temperature stops climbing for hours and panicking ruins everything. There is the spritzing schedule, kept at three in the morning. There is the fact that two people with the same cut and the same wood will produce meaningfully different food, which means it is technique, which means it is a craft.

You cannot fake your way into that in a weekend. I know, because I watched people who had clearly spent years.

2M Smokehouse

Which is why I am genuinely delighted that 2M Smokehouse — from here, San Antonio — won Food Network's Pitmasters.

Esaul and Grecia Ramos took it. Nine teams, eight challenges over eleven days, cooks running twelve hours at a stretch, a round cooked entirely in underground chambers with hot coals, and teams building their own pits. Then a finale for up to $50,000.

2M opened on the Southeast Side in 2016. It has Michelin Guide recognition, Esaul has two James Beard nominations, and they are opening in Terminal B at San Antonio International.

Texas barbecue conversation defaults to Austin and the Hill Country. San Antonio gets treated as a side note, and anyone who actually eats here knows that is wrong. A national title settles it in a way no amount of local insistence could.

Where this leaves the song

“Sauce That” is not a pitmaster's song. It is a song by somebody who stood next to the fire at two in the morning, understood he was watching something real, ate the result, and could not stop thinking about it.

That is an honest position to write from. The thing I will not do is lie, and claiming the craft would be the easiest lie available.

I make coffee, which I also do not roast — Pulp does that. There is a pattern here. I am extremely comfortable being the guy who loves the thing and pays the people who are good at it.