These Charred Carrots Prove How Versatile Fire Cooking Can Be

[Celerity]

The recipe from Pat Martin’s new cookbook has Southern flair thanks to whipped buttermilk.

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/life-of-fire-pat-martin-charred-carrots-recipe



It’s September 1990 and Pat Martin is a freshman at Freed-Hardeman in Henderson, Tennessee—and he is hungry. The food available around campus hasn’t been cutting it and McDonald’s won’t do; Martin, a true southerner, is after barbecue.

He stumbles into Thomas & Webb, a joint with six tables, a small flickering TV, and a kind man named Mr. Harold, who would eventually become a mentor to Martin. “He asked me if I wanted hot or mild sauce and then literally did not move his feet—just picks up a thick piece of cardboard and there’s a whole hog laying there and he just picks it right off, makes my sandwich, and gives it to me,” Martin reminisces. “It just slapped me in the face, you know? I immediately remember thinking I have got to learn how to do that.”



By the following year, with wisdom from Mr. Harold firmly under his belt, Martin roasted his first hog. It was a team effort between friends featuring a pit built from masonry bricks borrowed from an on-campus construction site and a repurposed road closed sign that doubled as a spatula large enough to flip a whole hog. The success of it left Martin infatuated with whole hog barbecue—enough so that his debut cookbook, Life of Fire, is almost entirely about mastering the art of whole hog cooking 30 years after he first set eyes on a whole-roasted pig.

“I wanted a procedural book that would mentor somebody through this process,” Martin explains. “I did not want to hide from the fact that what we were talking about was very arduous and very hard. This is not a dumbed down book—it’s cooking whole hog pit barbecue.”



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[KatK]

1. I couldn't resist buying the book (secondhand). Sounds awesome! thanks! n/t