If you hear pitmasters gathered around a smoker, they speak their own language. Learn some of the BBQ terms they use so you can talk the talk.
Does this sentence make any sense to you? “I’m going to put my A9 flat on the barrel after it has blue smoke and look for some bark before I do the Texas crutch. Hopefully, that bend is good enough for a call.”
If not, you should definitely listen to this episode of the BBQ Tips Podcast. Pitmaster, Christie Vanover is going to break down some of the popular slang terms used in the world of BBQ. So you can talk the talk.
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Table of Contents
I’m going to share some of the terms that we use in the barbecue industry on a regular basis.
I want you to quiz yourself and see how many of these you knew. If you knew them all, that’s awesome. If not, no worries. After you listen to this podcast, you will.
Grill Terms
I’m going to break these words down into categories and kind of go alphabetical. So that’ll make it a little bit easy.
We’re going to start with grills. I’ve touched on some of these terms in some of my previous podcasts, so they may sound a little bit familiar to you. First up, is a barrel. If you hear the term barrel, that’s referring to a barrel drum cooker, which is a smoker that is made out of a barrel.
Next up is drum. So a drum and a barrel are pretty much the same thing.
You basically start with an oil drum or a drum container, a barrel container, and you make a smoker out of that. I have a whole podcast series on which Barrel Drum is my favorite.
Jambo. Now, that is a funny word. It’s actually a grill. It’s an offset smoker. They’re custom built. They’re pretty pricey. A lot of the big dogs are using them, but they’re so big that they’re usually on their own trailers. And so people are hauling those to the competitions.
Kamado another funny word, but one that’s not just devoted to competition barbecue. A kamado is a Japanese style of cooker. It’s usually made out of ceramic. You’ve probably heard of the Big Green Egg or the Kamado Joe. Those are kamado style cookers.
Offset. An offset smoker is a smoker where the fire box is on the side. The meat never sits over the fire itself. Instead, the fire is on the side and that heat and smoke then works its way through the chamber and out the exhaust that’s usually on the opposite end.
The last grill I want to touch on is a stick burner. So when people say stick burner, what they’re meaning is that their fuel source is sticks or split logs.
Charcoal Terms
Since we’re talking about fuel, let’s move on to charcoal. In that really crazy sentence I said at the beginning, I mentioned blue smoke.
Blue smoke is the smoke that you want to cook with. Once you light your charcoal, it usually will have a white dirty smoke. Once that burns clean then it’s called blue smoke. It has kind of a clearish bluish tint to it. That’s how it gets its name.
A chimney. A chimney is a metal cylinder that you put your charcoal in, and then you can light your charcoal in that and then dump it into your grill.
Lump. You guys have probably heard of lump charcoal. There’s charcoal briquettes and there’s lump charcoal. Lump charcoal is pre burned wood that removes all the moisture and the sap. And it’s really great for competition barbecue.
Meat Terms
All right. We’ve got our grill. We’ve got our charcoal. Let’s move on to meat. So in that first sentence I used the term A9.
In America, the way that we grade beef is different and how they grade it in Australia. In Australia they use a letter A with numbers. An A9 is a type of Australian beef that has really, really rich marbling. You’ll see a lot of competition cooks are cooking A9 briskets because of that marbling.
Bark. Not the bark you get from a dog. The bark I’m talking about with barbecue is when you get that nice crust, that outer crust on your meat. Now, sometimes people on social media will say, oh, that looks burnt. It’s not burnt. It doesn’t have the charred effect of a burn mark. It’s actually just cooked and rendered fat mixed with the spices that is phenomenal and makes barbecue taste so good.
Bend. You’ll hear the term bend used frequently in barbecue. That is a measurement that we use to test doneness. So if you have a piece of brisket, a slice of brisket, you want it to bend over your finger without breaking. That shows that it’s cooked perfectly.
If you have a rack of ribs and you pick them up from the bone side, you want them to bend and arch over your hand without breaking. So the bend test is a really easy way to tell how good your meat is cooked.
Brisket. When it comes to brisket, there’s three terms that you want to understand. Full packer brisket, brisket flat and brisket point. A brisket is made up of two muscles the flat and the point.
A full packer brisket is when the two muscles are connected.
If you just have the brisket flat, you can buy that separately. That’s going to be the lean meat. And then if you have the brisket point, that’s going to be the fattier muscle that’s part of the brisket.
Compart. Compart is a company that specializes in Duroc pork. Duroc is a really high quality breed of pork that does really well on the competition circuit.
Deckle. Now this one’s going to be controversial. There is a lot of information on the internet that says that the deckle is the brisket point meat. That is not accurate. I have confirmed this with multiple meat scientists. The Deckle is actually the hard fat and intercostal meat on the inner portion of the brisket.
When you buy it wholesale, you can buy a brisket with deckle on or a brisket with deckle off. Most that I see in the supermarket are deckle off.
Membrane. The membrane is the layer of silver skin that’s on the backside of the rib bones. You want to remove this before you cook your ribs because that little membrane doesn’t really render. It doesn’t cook down. So it can cause a tight chew. So we usually use a paper towel, grip that membrane and just rip it right off before seasoning.
Money Muscle. If you guys watched the pork video you know all about the money muscle. This is the really highly marbled, loin shaped piece of pork that’s on the side of a pork. But
It’s called a money muscle because when teams turn it in, they usually get that call and they get that money.
Mop. Mop is a combination of liquids and spices that’s used for basing your meat to help keep it moist. It’s called a mop because there’s a barbecue tool that looks like a little mop that you dunk in the sauce, and then you mop right on top of the meat.
Prime. If you hear the term prime in barbecue, probably somebody is referring to the grade of beef that they’re cooking. The USDA categorizes beef into select, choice and prime. And prime is the highest grade because it has the most marbling.
A shiner. Now if you’re in Texas, you might think of a shiner and think of a Shiner Bock, which is a really good beer. But in barbecue, a shiner is when you look at a rack of ribs, if on the top side, the bone is actually sticking through.
That means the butcher didn’t do that great of a job. And as they were slicing off that rack of ribs, they went too deep into the meat and exposed the bone. That exposed bone is called a shiner.
Saint Louis cut. When it comes to pork ribs, there’s three main cuts. There’s baby back ribs, which are from the loin area. They have that arch to it. There’s a full spare rib that has some brisket bones on top, plus the Saint Louis cut.
So when you take that rack of spare ribs and you cut off those brisket bones, you’re left with that beautiful rectangle of Saint Louis style ribs. And that’s the cut that is cooked most often on the barbecue circuit.
SRF. SRF is an abbreviation for Snake River farms. It’s a really high quality beef. It’s American Wagyu. It’s the brisket that I use in all my competitions. And if you go to SnakeRiverFarms.com and pick out your own meat and use code girlscangrill, you can save 10%.
Wagyu. Wagyu is a breed of cattle that originated in Japan. Now you can find American Wagyu, Australian Wagyu, but the breed originated in Japan and it is highly marbled, which creates beautiful flavor.
BBQ Cooking Termps
All right, let’s move on to the cooking process.
You guys have probably all heard this one. 321. 321 is a cooking process that a lot of people will use with ribs where they smoke their ribs for three hours, then they wrap them for two hours. Then they unwrap them, give them some sauce and finish them for that final hour. That technique yields really delicious ribs.
Burnt ends. The original meaning of burnt ends were those crispy bits on the edge of a brisket that had really nice bark. They might have been a little bit overcooked, but then they got sauced up and they were super delicious. Now when we make burnt ends, a lot of times we’ll just take the point meat, cut it into cubes, sauce it up and just render it down really nicely. It doesn’t necessarily have that full bark effect like the original burnt ends.
Camrbo. You guys have probably heard me use this term all the time. Cambro is actually a company. The company sells all sorts of kitchen products, but the product that most barbecue pitmasters use is the Cambro that is an insulated food carrier. It’s like a cooler that’s vertical. You can put ice in it and then you can keep your meat cold.
But also once you take the ice out. Once your meat is cooked, you can put your hot meat in there. And it’s so nice and insulated that it will actually keep your food warm. So it’s great for holding your meat before you turn it into the judges.
Fall off the bone. Come on. I know you guys have all heard of that. That’s when you bite into a rib, and it’s so tender that all the meat falls off. And it’s just so delicious. That’s the style that I like to make in my backyard. Or even I like to order at a restaurant.
When it comes to competition, though, you don’t want fall off the bone. You want that meat to have a little bit of integrity when you bite it, so that most of the meat stays on the bone, but you just get a nice clean bite when you do take a bite from the side.
Finishing dust. This is a really important component to competition barbecue. We seasoned all of our meat at the beginning. Sometimes we mop it in the middle, but at the end, you want to take that final bite and then sprinkle it with a little bit of finishing dust, which is basically ground up seasoning of whatever flavor of your choice, just to give it that little extra pop.
Garnish. Now usually in the food world the term garnish just means like sprinkling some nice herbs or spices on top of your food to give it a nice pretty appearance. But in barbecue, the term garnish is referring to the greens that are in the box that you place your meat on top of.
Speaking of greens, greens are just that. It can be romaine lettuce. It can be iceberg lettuce. It can be green leaf lettuce. But it’s the lettuce that you put in the bottom of your box that you put your meat on top of. You need to check with your sanctioning body to see what greens are allowed for your competition. And actually, some competitions don’t even allow greens at all.
Hot hold. This is basically what I talked about with the Cambro. This is somewhere that’s insulated where you can hold your meat to keep it hot until it’s ready to serve, or turn in.
Hot and fast. So this is a really popular term on the competition circuit now because so many teams are cooking at higher temperatures, at hotter temperatures, which means that their barbecue gets cooked faster.
Injection. No, this isn’t a vaccine. This is what we use to add flavor to meat. So you can buy an injection needle and then you pull the liquid into that needle, pierce that needle into your meat and insert that injection. And it adds so much more flavor and moisture.
Lollipop. Not the candy. This is a butchering technique that can be done with the drummies of a chicken, or the drumsticks or legs of a chicken. This is when you basically scrape away all the meat on the top end of the bone, and you just leave that ball of meat on the bottom so you have a handle and you can pick it up, and it’s like a lollipop.
Probe. Pitmasters will pierce their meat with an instant read thermometer to see if it’s done. There’s two things happening here. One, obviously inserting the needle into the meat will give a temperature reading and tell you what temperature your meat is at.
But more importantly, we’re looking for feel. You want to probe that needle into the meat. If it goes in smooth like butter, then it’s probably ready. If there’s some resistance, then it’s not quite done.
Scraping skins. I know those of you who listened to the chicken episode know all about this. This is when you take the skin off of your chicken thigh. Turn it so the fat side is up, and then scrape the fat off of it and then put it back on your chicken thigh. We do this so that we get nice bite through skin.
That reminds me of another word that I should tell you guys about. And that’s Jaccard. If you hear the term Jaccard, that’s actually a food tool that has all these little needles in it that you push down on meat, and it can create little holes and help tenderize meat. Or a lot of cooks will use the Jaccard on their chicken skins and it creates these little perforated holes. So that helps the fat render through those holes as well. That way they don’t have to scrape their skins.
Smoke ring. A lot of people like to see that little pink stripe of meat right under the bark on their brisket. That is actually a chemical reaction between the myoglobin in the meat and the nitric oxide from your fuel source. Your smoke ring is going to vary depending on what type of fuel source you have.
You’re not going to get it from a gas grill. You’ll have a smaller one from a pellet grill, but when you cook with wood or charcoal, your smoke ring is going to be larger because there’s more nitric oxide in those fuel sources.
Spritz. This is what we do to keep meat moist. We get a spray bottle or a spritz bottle and fill it with some kind of liquid. And throughout the cook, we just spray that liquid right on to the meat, and it helps keep it moist.
Stall. This is probably one of the most frustrating words in barbecue, because this is when you’ve been smoking a brisket for hours and it just plateaus and it stays at the same temperature for a couple of hours before it breaks through that. Well, what’s happening is the liquid inside the meat is evaporating, causing it to cool. The same time you have your warm grill temperature hitting the meat, and it’s just kind of at the stall stage until that heat can break through.
Texas crutch. This is the secret to breaking through the stall. This is when you take your meat once it’s hit that stall point, and you wrap it in butcher paper or you wrap it in foil, usually with some moisture. This helps accelerate that cooking process so you don’t have to wait those two hours for the stall.
Thermapen. The Thermapen is an instant read digital thermometer made by Thermoworks. It’s probably the number one thermometer that pitmasters use. It’s the one I use myself.
Tight. When meat is tight, that means it’s undercooked. That means when you go to take a bite, it’s going to have a little tug and a little resistance to it. You don’t want your meat to be tight.
Wrap. So wrap is basically the same thing as a Texas crutch. It’s when your meat is partially cooked and you put it on foil or butcher paper, add some moisture and then wrap it up tightly and return it to the grill.
Competition BBQ Terms
All right. Let’s move on to some competition specific words.
Ancillary. I had a whole podcast episode about ancillaries. These are those competition categories that are not required when you’re at a comp. They’re just kind of extra or ancillary competitions that you can enter for some more prizes.
Box. In competition barbecue, the box is the styrofoam clamshell box that the reps will give you, that you put your meat in to turn it into the judges.
Building a box. If you hear somebody say that they hate building a box, they’re probably talking about the greens that they have to put in. Everybody tries to be all perfect to make a little putting green that’s beautiful for the meat to sit on. It’s a long process. So building a box with the greens can be challenging.
But also building a box can mean putting your meat in and deciding if you want to do money muscle, if you want to do pulled, if you want to do burnt ends. It’s kind of how you arrange your box.
Call. When someone says that they hope they get a call, that doesn’t mean they want their mom to call them on the phone. That means that they want to hear their name called from the stage, meaning that they want a top ten prize.
CBA this is the Champions Barbecue Alliance. This is one of the sanctioning bodies that has four meat categories of chicken, ribs, pork and brisket.
Chasing points. Different sanctioning bodies will have team of the year awards for the teams that scored the most points or had the highest scores throughout the year. So teams who are chasing points are trying to get those first place calls so that they can be named the team of the year.
Circuit. A circuit is known as a competition circuit or a barbecue circuit, which is a collection of competitions held throughout the year.
Contest. This is just another name for a barbecue competition.
DAL. This stands for Dead Ass Last. When you compete, if you end up last, a lot of times teams will say I’m DAL or I don’t want to be DAL.
Grand champion. Or sometimes we just say GC. This is the overall winner of a competition.
IBCA stands for the International Barbecue Cookers Association. This is another sanctioning body. Their categories involve beef brisket, spare ribs and half chickens.
KCBS. This is the Kansas City Barbecue Society. This is the sanctioning body that I compete with and they do brisket, chicken, ribs and pork.
MBN is the Memphis Barbecue Network another sanctioning body. Their categories are whole hog pork ribs and pulled pork.
People’s choice or PC. This is an extra optional category at some barbecue competitions. This is where you make meat and you actually serve it to the public. Most of the time you’ll get like a 50/50 proceed out of it. The people running the event will get 50% of your profits, and then you’ll get 50% of your profits.
So it’s a way to make a little extra money, but it’s definitely added work, especially if you’re trying to focus on the competition itself.
It’s called people’s choice because basically the public tastes your food, and then they get to judge which one they think is the best. So if you win people’s choice, that means you are the people’s favorite.
Rep. Sanctioning bodies have reps or representatives. This is to make sure that the contest is run in accordance with the rules of that sanctioning body.
Reserve Grand Champion or RGC. This is the team that gets the second highest points overall, so they basically get second place.
Sanctioning body. I’ve already used this term over and over. Basically, a sanctioning body is an organization that runs barbecue competitions. They have a very firm set of rules for the judges and for the cooks. And they make sure that those standards are followed so that it’s a fair competition.
SCA. SCA is another sanctioning body, not so much in the barbecue space, but in the grilling space that stands for the Steak Cookoff Association. In these competitions, you usually turn in one steak. Sometimes there’s a double or a triple or quad. And so you may turn in more than one steak. And they oftentimes have ancillary competitions tied in with them as well.
Turn in. This is basically the time that you have to turn your box of meat into the judges. With KCBS, you get a ten-minute window. So you’ve got to make sure that your meat is turned in by that turn in time. Otherwise, you don’t make the cut and you get disqualified for that category.
World champion. To be a world champion, you have to win one of the following contests: the Jack, the American Royal. Memphis In May, the Houston Rodeo or the KCBS Invitational. There is also a World Food Championship Series and you could win that one too. You.
There are two other words that I want to touch on. The first is shiggin. Shiggin is a term that you’re going to hear all the time, and people kind of joke about it and make fun of it. But what it ultimately means is that a cook spies on another cook to figure out their flavor profiles, their techniques, their methods.
I’ll be honest, most teams are pretty open, so there’s no need to shig anymore. So don’t be that kind of person that’s spying on someone else. Just go up and introduce yourself and ask them questions. And the team’s probably going to help you out.
The last word I want to touch on is pitmaster. So the term pitmaster is pretty subjective. Do you call yourself a pitmaster or not? Is a quandary that I kind of dealt with for several years.
The technical term of a pitmaster is the person who manages the pit or the fire while cooking meat, which can technically be anybody who lights a fire one day and cooks meat.
To me, the term pitmaster is kind of like the term chef. The official definition of chef is basically somebody who cooks food for money for somebody else. That means that almost anybody could be a chef. But I personally feel like the title of chef is earned. So I’m very cautious about calling myself a chef. I’ve never worked in a restaurant.
I cook and I do get paid to cook, but I don’t consider myself a chef. I think it’s the same thing with Pitmaster. I cook over fire. I cook meat over fire. I can manage fires, but it took me a long time before I felt confident enough to call myself a pitmaster.
Now that I have cooked on dozens of grills and made hundreds of recipes and done all sorts of experiments and failures and successes, I do truly feel like that I’ve earned the title of a Pitmaster. But it’s up to you to decide.
If you feel like that, you could drive out into the woods and somebody could give you an unknown fuel source, grill and protein, and you could knock it out of the park, then you’ve probably earned those creds.
If you’re still working on it, no problem. You’ll get there someday. If that’s a goal that you have.
I hope that this episode has been fun for you guys. I hope you learned a few new things.
I’d love to hear from you guys. If you think there’s a word out there that I didn’t touch on, go ahead and leave it in the comments and define it so other people know what it is. Let me know also, did you know all of these? Were you surprised by any of them? Go ahead and leave a comment for that as well.
Until next time guys! Happy grilling!
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