Where there’s smoke, there’s barbecue

It's summertime - time to fire up the grill, slap some steaks on it, slather them with barbecue sauce, cook them up quickly and invite guests over for barbecued steaks, right?

Well, not according to a founding father of the American Barbecue Association (ABBQA). "Barbecue is slow cooked, using live hardwood for smoking the meat - not fast cooking, not hot temperatures like 400, 600, 800 degrees like you would get over a steak grill," said John Mitchell, co-owner of John and Margie's Ranch House Restaurant.

"We sell a really delicious steak because we season it with a char-crust seasoning and then we grill it over a hot grill. But again, that's not barbecuing, that's grilling."

Adding barbecue sauce will not qualify that char-crusted steak as barbecue, either, unless it's cooked in California. "In California, barbecue means it's got sauce on it," Mitchell said with a chuckle. "It could be barbecued broccoli. But sauce has nothing to do with whether or not it's barbecue."

According to the terms of the ABBQA, neither carne asada nor pit barbecue qualify as barbecue, he said. "Carne asada is not barbecue, although I guess you could say it's the Mexican barbocoa. It's what Hispanic people call barbecue."

What's known as pit barbecue is actually a large pot roast, he said with a grin. The meat is cooked at high temperatures and there's no smoke down in the pit, he explained.

"They fill this big pit with wood, set it on fire, and then they burn it all day until it's reduced to nothing but coals. Then they take the pan of meat, lower it and set it right on top of those coals. They cover the hole with a metal roof of some kind, and then they cover that with about two feet of dirt.

"There is no smoke. To get smoke, there's got to be some oxygen. If they've done it right, they've sealed it, so that it can't get oxygen."
But with Mitchell's open-pit barbecue equipment, meat can be smoked slowly at low temperatures, he said. "I'm a purist when it comes to barbecue. I want smoke, and I want slow cooking - 200, 225, 250 degrees, max."

Though his restaurant offers a variety of foods, barbecue is its specialty, he said. Pulled pork, ribs, brisket, tri-tip, chicken and riblets are among the barbecued food available at the restaurant. But the restaurant also does special orders, such as barbecued turkeys, as well as catering.

Behind the restaurant are two commercial mobile barbecue units. "We can do 500 pounds of meat in each one of them, or 90 racks of ribs in each one at a time," Mitchell said. "We used this for the Hospice (fundraising dinner), when we served 4,000 people at the fairgrounds back in February. And we did the rodeo.

"We do the Hospice Ocean-to-Ocean (fundraiser) every year. We pull this down there and cook 25 prime ribs in each unit at one time. It's literally barbecued prime rib because we cook it slow. But we don't put much smoke on because we don't want to overpower the meat ... It's got so much marbling and fat that it absorbs the smoke."

Thirty to 40 minutes before serving the prime rib, it sits on the racks so the grease can drain off the meat, he said. Mitchell's method of barbecuing is healthier than some other cooking methods because the grease is rendered out, he said.

People can barbecue meat at home on grills if they use indirect heat, with meat in the front and coals in the back, for instance, and cook at a medium temperature, he said. Or they can use small smokers, which are becoming more and more affordable, he added.

Like a smaller version of his barbecue equipment, one smoker has doors, racks and a hot plate at the bottom. "You can put an iron skillet with three or four chips of hickory wood or mesquite wood or apple wood or whatever wood you would like to smoke with, down in the bottom, plug it in and close the door. Come back in six hours, or set the temperature where you want it to cook it faster."

The self-described barbecue purist grew up in North Carolina, where there was a barbecue restaurant on every street corner, just as there are numerous taco stands in Yuma, he said.

"I grew up eating and loving good barbecue, worked my way through the University of North Carolina, working in barbecue restaurants, so I opened up a barbecue restaurant ... I guess I was about 23 years old when I started, and I'm 66 now, so I've been doing this for 43 years."

He has learned a lot about regional differences in barbecue in those 43 years. While pork butt smoked with hickory wood is the barbecue of choice in North Carolina, tri-tips smoked with mesquite wood are more popular in Yuma and other areas of the Southwest, he said.

"The choice of wood is an individual thing. I grew up in North Carolina, so I like hickory. If I'd grown up in Arizona or Texas, I'd probably prefer mesquite."

The same thing is true with the sauces, he said. "You go to eastern North Carolina, you get the vinegar-based sauce. Western North Carolina, it's the red ketchup-based sauce. South Carolina is mustard barbecue sauce, mustard base with a lot of different seasonings."

No barbecue sauce is added to meats while they're cooking at Mitchell's restaurant, but three types of sauces are placed on the table for customers who choose to use them. "About 65 percent of our customers do not use sauce," Mitchell said.

But those that do have a choice of his North Carolina-style, sharp, vinegar-based sauce called "Hogwash," a sweet and sharp ketchup-based sauce and his executive chef's sweet and sharp fruit-based California sauce.

The vinegar in Hogwash cuts the grease in the pork and cleanses the palate so that the next bite is tasted more fully, he said. The ketchup-based sauce is the most popular, and the California sauce kind of "twerks" your taste buds around, he said.

John and Margie's Ranch House Restaurant is located at 4340 E. 32nd St., and the number is 317-3155.