Barbecue, Barbeque, Bar-B-Q, BBQ

 
 

Barbecue, Barbeque, Bar-B-Q, BBQ. No matter what you call it, no one has done a better job of documenting one of the South’s favorite foods — and more importantly, the people who make it — than the Southern Foodways Alliance.

For almost 20 years now, the Southern Foodways Alliance — part of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture — has used the medium of video to document how the South eats.

For more than a decade, the SFA’s primary filmmaking documentarian has been the multitalented Joe York. A long time ago in our feature about the SFA, we called York “the Scorsese of Southern food,” and we meant it.

Today, we’re happy to bring you — with the blessing of our good friends at the SFA — a selection of six of York’s short films about barbecue and the pitmasters who make it around the South.

 

More from the Southern Foodways Alliance Here.

Southern Foodways Alliance Films

  • “Helen’s Bar-B-Que” — a visit with Helen Turner of Helen's Bar-B-Que in Brownsville, Tennessee, a winner of the SFA’s prestigious Keeper of the Flame Award. If you think barbecue is a man’s world, then you haven’t met Helen Turner.

  • “To Live and Die in Avoyelles Parish” — a film that’ll take you to Louisiana to learn about the cochon de lait tradition

  • “Ovens Are for Pies” — a 2013 film about McClard’s in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

  • “Cut/Chop/Cook” — a 2010 profile of pitmaster Rodney Scott at Scott’s B-B-Q in Hemingway, South Carolina.

  • “Capitol Q” — a great visit with the Jones family at the Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina.

  • “Whole Hog” — a paean to cooking the whole animal at once, from B.E. Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Lexington, Tennessee.