Avett Brother Joe Kwon talks about cooking whole hogs, which he'll do for the second time next weekend

Joe Kwon gets schooled by Sam Jones
 on how to finish whole hog
barbecue at TerraVita.

Last month at Chapel Hill's TerraVita Food & Drink Festival, hundreds of people signed up to take scheduled classes with leading chefs and food advocates from across the South.

Joe Kwon was not among them. The charismatic cellist for The Avett Brothers instead took advantage of a break in touring to attend barbecue school at the elbow of his friend, legendary pitmaster Sam Jones ofSkylight Inn in Ayden and the new Sam Jones Barbecue, which opens Tuesday in Winterville. Jones smoked a huge hog for TerraVita's Hill Fire dinner at Carrboro's Town Commons, which paired him with Raleigh's Ashley Christensen for a showstopper combination of pork and collard greens over heirloom popcorn spoon bread. 

Kwon spent the day soaking up wood smoke and drinking beer with a cluster of friends, all gathered around Jones' smoker. He took notes in his tablet and, along with a handful of folks fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, stood in wide-eyed wonder to watch his friend chop and season massive quantities of moist, flavorful pork.

He will apply the lessons he learned next weekend when he cooks a pig for Wild Yonder's Friendship Feast & Campout. (For details on and tickets for the Nov. 21–22 event in Mebane, click here.) Kwon called from Wisconsin, between shows on the Avetts' tour, to talk about his lifelong love of barbecue and his deep respect for Jones' well-earned acclaim.

INDY: When you built your home in downtown Raleigh, it was important to you to have dedicated space for outdoor entertaining and your smoker, made by Alabama pitmaster Nick Pihakis.
JOE KWON: I've always admired people who had these. I've had this long relationship with North Carolina barbecue from an early age, because of where I grew up in Winston-Salem. I loved going out to eat barbecue because it was so different from the Korean barbecue we ate at home. And today, I love cooking barbecue for friends at my home.

How did you connect with Sam Jones?
In my mind, Sam Jones is the gold standard of barbecue. When I met him, I realized he's married to the sister of someone in my circle from my days with Big Pretty and the Red Rockets [Kwon's band before joining The Avett Brothers]. It was this very chance meeting, but I also know him through Ashley Christensen.

He's the friggin' godfather of barbecue, and we've become good friends. I told him, "I would love to sit with you one day and learn to do this." So that's what we did at TerraVita. We talked and drank beer and I took a lot of notes in my iPad. I've cooked pig before—well, piece— but never a whole hog. It's a very different experience.

Have you had a chance to practice before cooking for the Wild Yonder event?
I did. Five days later, Raleigh Architecture (which designed his house) hosted an event and asked me to cook a pig. It was a good opportunity for me to try out what I learned. I messed up some, but it was amazing. Now all I want to do is cook pig. It's so calming. There's a great camaraderie sitting around the fire.

How did you mess up?
It was a big pig, at least 160 pounds, maybe more like 180. It barely fit on my cooker. I had a flame up in the last 15 minutes and lost all the skin. It was tragic. I was cursing up a storm. The skin is the best part. It's the crunch in all that juicy meat. That's why I need redemption at Wild Yonder.

What was the biggest surprise about the process?
The thing I've learned is the hardest part is getting the sauce mixture just right. I thought you premixed the sauce, but Sam pours it on after he's done most of the chopping. I was blown away. I thought, "That's the part. That's the secret." 

While it was tough to guess ratios, Sam Jones made no secret of his sauce ingredients: apple cider vinegar, Texas Pete's, iodized table salt and pre-ground black pepper—standard items of the Southern pantry.

That's the beauty of how amazing his barbecue is. It's so simple but it's so multi-dimensional. The texture is so amazingly soft and juicy, but at that same time, you've got these crunchy bits of skin and the fat. It's really what sets it apart. 

Sam Jones' portable barbecue gear at TerraVita.

You'll also be preparing Korean-style grilled short ribs to share the flavors of your family's table. What do you think about the wide array of commercial Korean-style barbecue sauces? 
Oh, no, never. It's so easy to make yourself that there's just no excuse to not try it. [See recipe below.]  My mother made this all the time when we were growing up. It's something you can pull together on a weeknight in 30 minutes, but it's really much better if you give the meat more time to marinate. Give it a quick grill and dinner's ready.

Beef short ribs used to be really cheap. Now, everyone wants to eat short ribs so the price has gone up. It's important to get them cut across the bone so you get three or four pieces per rib. Very few places will sell that. I always go to S-Mart in Cary. They cut them nice and thin, which is how I like them.

Other than flavor profile, what's the biggest difference between Korean and North Carolina barbecue?
Korean barbecue is really fast. I still love it and make it all the time. But for me, that long process of cooking North Carolina barbecue is a more satisfying experience. It's about sitting there, putting the time in. That's a big part of the soul of it. 

Your mother will mark her 70th birthday on Saturday. What's for dinner?
Skylight Inn is catering barbecue for us, and we're getting some sides from Beasley's (Chicken + Honey). I'd love to cook it myself, but I'll get back into town at 2, and the party's at 5. I'll be lucky to get home, take a shower and change clothes, and get there in time to help set up.

Joe Kwon's Galbi: Korean-style BBQ Short Ribs
5 lbs. beef short ribs, cut across the bone into thin pieces
10 tbs. sugar
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 onion, grated
2 stalks green onion, diced
8 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tbs. toasted sesame oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Peel garlic and onion; mince the garlic and grate the onion. Transfer half of the garlic and onion to a small mixing bowl or cup, then add soy sauce, 5 tablespoons sugar, sesame oil, green onion. Mix well and set aside.

Arrange spare ribs in a large, deep dish and evenly distribute the remaining sugar, plus salt and pepper, on all the ribs. Then sprinkle on remaining onion and garlic; let the beef sit 15 minutes. Pour the marinade over the beef, coating each piece. Cover and place in refrigerator at least 30 minutes or several hours before grilling.


Remove ribs from marinade, shaking off excess liquid. Grill to a nice medium, about 4-5 minutes per side, and serve with short grain rice and kimchi. 

This post first appeared in Indy Week.

Virginia Willis to christen cooking school at new Whole Foods in Charlotte

For information or to register for the inaugural class Virginia Willis
will teach on Wednesday at Salud!, visit the Whole Foods-Charlotte website.

For some folks, turning the calendar past Labor Day means closing the door on summer. It triggers a primal reflex to transfer whites and summer brights to the back of the closet to allow the autumnal advance of more burnished shades. Others can’t resist the call to compulsively buy mums to anchor their front porch steps.

Virginia Willis felt a similar itch driving back to still-hot Atlanta this week from a cool summer spent in New England. “Hello fall!” she declared on her Facebook page before starting the journey, which will bring her to Charlotte on Wednesday to celebrate the opening of Salud!, the in-store cooking school of the new Whole Foods at 6610 Fairview Road.

“They wrote to me and asked if I’d be the first,” said Willis, a standard bearer for contemporary Southern cuisine as exemplified in her current book, Basic to Brilliant, Y'all: 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways To Dress Them Up for Company. “I hope people agree it’s again time to talk about greens and braising.”

While a bit sad to bid adieu to butter beans, tomatoes and especially okra – she’s currently researching the beloved pods for a volume in the acclaimed UNC Press Savor the South series – Willis is ready for the arrival of fall crops. Wednesday’s class menu features Garlic Stuffed Pork Roast (see recipe below), Winter Greens and Butternut Squash Gratin, and Bittersweet Chocolate Bread Pudding with Goat Cheese Caramel Sauce.

“My mind started going there when I saw the first tiny brushstrokes of color on the leaves in New England,” she said. “I find this happens all the time with the seasons. I love summer vegetables, but then when you see those first baskets of apples at the farmers' market stands, it is just so wonderful.”

The changing seasons inspires Willis to apply an artist’s color wheel to her chef’s palate, which also leans toward a different vocabulary of cooking techniques.

“For me, the cooking is different: more braising and less grilling,” she said. “The best part is when there’s a little bit of overlap, like right now. You get to enjoy it all.”

Photos courtesy of Virginia Willis from
previous cooking classes.

The pork recipe is a perfect transition to fall cooking. Studded with garlic and braised in milk, it delivers an Italian-inspired meal that is both simple to prepare and terrific for impressing dinner guests. It’s a classic example of the basic-to-brilliant model.

“The truth is, I don’t think that my recipes are terribly difficult,” Willis said. “I really try to give the home cook the tools and techniques to make something more chef-inspired. Someone will look at that meal and be impressed, but really it’s a simple dish.”

Willis enjoys teaching this recipe because the involved skills are so practical. “Cooking one large dish for a dinner is much less risk than making individual everything,” she said. “I love doing that for a special occasion, but you don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen when you have company. It’s a braised dish that makes it own gravy. It’s really user friendly.”

The dessert selection is just as decadent as it sounds, but no more difficult to master. “I make it a point in my classes that it’s important to balance all the flavors of a meal. With all the strong flavors of this menu, the dessert has to be intense to stand up to it,” she said. “Also, that bread pudding is just ridiculously good.”

Willis has made plenty of bread puddings over the years, but the “brilliant” part of this recipe – the goat cheese caramel sauce – was the result of “a happy accident.” While cooking a fundraiser dinner at a friend’s restaurant, they ran out of heavy cream to make a traditional caramel sauce.

“All they had was goat cheese, so that’s what we used,” she recalled with a laugh, citing the importance of gaining comfort with basic recipes and techniques so home cooks can make similarly confident creative choices. “It turned out to be incredible. No kidding, it’s easy to make and over-the-top good.”

Garlic-Studded Pork Roast in Milk
(Reprinted with permission from Bon Appétit, Y’all: Basic to Brilliant, 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House.)

Serves 4 to 6

This recipe has more of an Italian influence than French or Southern. When in my early twenties, I took the night train from Paris by myself and met my mother and two friends in Rome. It was one of the more adult events of my life at that point. It always seemed a bonus when getting on a “fast train” to actually arrive at the correct destination. Board the wrong one and you are a long way from where you need to be. I was a little terrified, but I got there. So, now when faced with a challenge, I consider myself most fortunate if I speak the language and have the currency.

We enjoyed this simple country dish while traveling from Florence to Venice. Traditionally, pork shoulder is braised and slow cooked. Since the shoulder muscle gets exercise, it’s tough and needs long, slow cooking. By adapting this recipe to using a loin, the cooking time is drastically reduced.

1 (4-pound) center-cut boneless pork loin
2 cloves garlic, very thinly sliced and seasoned with salt and pepper
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons pure olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 onion, preferably Vidalia, chopped
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 cups whole milk, or 1 cup whole milk and 1 cup heavy cream, warmed
Bouquet garni (1 sprig flat-leaf parsley, 2 sprigs thyme, and 4 fresh sage leaves, tied together in cheesecloth)
Fresh sage leaves, for garnish

Cut several slits in the pork and insert the garlic slivers in the slits. Set aside to come to room temperature. Season the roast on all sides with salt and pepper.

Heat the oil and butter over high heat in a large, heavy pot until shimmering. Add the meat and brown on all sides, about 8 minutes. Remove to a plate. 

Decrease the heat to medium. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring occasionally, for 2 minutes. Add the warmed milk and bring to a boil, whisking until smooth. Add the bouquet garni, the pork, and any juices that have collected on the plate. Decrease the heat to simmer.

Simmer, uncovered, turning the meat occasionally and scraping the bottom of the pot. (As the milk cooks, it starts to curdle and form small curds.) Stir often to keep the curds from sticking and cook until the pork is tender and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center of the meat registers 140°F to 145°F, about 1 hour. The pork will be slightly pink in the center (this is desirable).

Transfer the pork to a cutting board, preferably with a moat. Tent with aluminum foil to keep warm. Let it rest for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, taste the curds and adjust for seasoning with salt and pepper. Transfer to a warmed serving platter. Slice the pork loin about ¼ inch thick and place on the curds. Garnish with sage leaves and serve.

Brilliant: Short Recipe
Pork Roast Stuffed with Sausage

This presentation looks pretty impressive, but it’s very simple to do.

Using a knife, cut a slit in one end of the roast. Then, take a knife-sharpening steel and create a hole through the center length of the pork loin. Repeat with the other end. Widen the tunnel using your fingers and by rotating the steel in the loin at both ends. Insert 2 or 3 fully cooked sausages (about 8 ounces total—I like Aidell’s Italian-style with mozzarella, but any cooked sausage will do). Proceed with the Basic recipe. The presentation and added flavor at the center is Brilliant.

Ribs epitomize barbecue for Steven Raichlen

Steven Raichlen will participate in a demonstration and book signing event at 6 p.m. July 25 at Fearrington Village in Pittsboro in celebration of his book, Best Ribs Ever: A Barbecue Bible Cookbook: 100 Killer Recipes. Tickets are $40 each and include samples of ribs, beer and an autographed copy of the book. For information, call 919-542-3030.

There are lots of foods called barbecue, but most North Carolina purists sit in the same pew when it comes to the holy trinity of whole hog, pork shoulder and wood smoke.

Steven Raichlen doesn’t mind sitting in the next row. After spreading the gospel of barbecue around the globe and teaching countless fans how to make it at home through his popular books and cooking shows, Raichlen remains devoted to a certain cut.

“If I were to pick one dish that epitomizes barbecue, that stands as the pin-up for it all, it has to be ribs,” said Raichlen, author of the new collection Best Ribs Ever (Workman Press).  “There’s just something so primal about it. Any food eaten with your bare hands, preferably outdoors, takes you back 1.8 million years ago to the whole king of the hill thing.”

Raichlen credits the built-in flavor boost provided by marrow-rich rib bones and feels a bit sorry for those who deny themselves the pleasure that comes with the relatively high ratio of fat to meat.

“Hey, fat equals flavor,” he said, noting that barbecue is not a subject fit for calorie counting. “It’s extraordinarily versatile. I know people in North Carolina will disagree, but for me, it just doesn’t get any better.”

Raichlen is an ardent admirer of the Carolina ‘cue – he’s especially keen on Allen & Son, the celebrated Chapel Hill smokehouse that remains faithful to the low and slow method – but he thinks those who try to pass off electric- or gas-cooked meat as the real deal deserve a sort of barbecue ex-communication.

In his travels to research this and other books and broadcasts – he reckons he’s circumnavigated the globe at least a half-dozen times in search of barbecue heaven – Raichlen said he’s come across many exceptional cooks whose methods are rooted in the Tar Heel tradition of pit barbecue.

The owner of the Auberge Shulamit inn and restaurant in Rosh Pina, Israel, finally found the smokey flavor she wanted to feature after a friend from North Carolina came over and crafted a pit to cook meat. “She was very taken with this and tried it with goose, which is delicious,” said Raichlen, who wrote about the restaurant’s Smoked Egg Pâté in Planet Barbecue. “If you’re willing to broaden your definitions, you open yourself up to some amazing barbecue experiences.”

There are some places, however, that Raichlen just won’t go.  “Boiling, braising and microwaving – that’s just wrong,” he said, enumerating the three “heresies” defined in the book.

“Some people would argue that smoking low and slow is the barbecue analog of braising, but it’s different when you rely on natural juices to flavor the meat,” he said. “Braising the ribs in the oven then throwing them on the grill to brown them up is very different. Same goes for boiling or microwaving. You might make something very tasty, but it’s just not barbecue.”

Raichlen suggests that newbies start with the appropriately titled First Timer Ribs, a simply seasoned feast that explains step by step how to prep the meat and cook it to perfection. 

Rotisserie collars are available spit-style and
specially made for ribs, such as this Weber Rib-o-Lator.
(Photo: www.virtualweberbullet.com)

Ever the barbecue missionary, he's hopeful that the recipes in Best Ribs Ever will encourage cooks to venture beyond the basics to enjoy exotic seasonings – and not just with baby backs and short ribs, but also lamb. One of his personal favorites is North African “Mechoui” of Lamb Ribs served with a spicy harissa.

Part of this dish’s appeal is the method of cooking with a rotisserie collar, which can be ordered online for most gas or kettle-type grills.

“I use one to cook a spit-roasted chicken at least once a week, and it’s an especially good way to cook ribs,” said Raichlen. “Honestly, it’s somewhat in the spirit of a Carolina pig pickin’, and who can resist that?”

Amen.