What Is Chicago-Style Barbecue, Anyway?

Do they have any black eyed peas, beef neck bones, corn bread, and Kool-Aid?” an older Bronzeville gentleman ponders to a younger female in line for Honey 1 on Chicago’s South Side. “No, then why’s this line so long?” The line is for that sweet and smoky scent of ribs wafting past the glass partition, separating customers in a waiting area no bigger than a closet from the aquarium smoker in back. His confusion — although he was half kidding — is warranted. Barbecue in Chicago is as convoluted and divided as the city itself. Granted, Chicago lacks a barbecue identity as deeply rooted as Memphis or Kansas City, but that does not mean it lacks quality and its own trademark spin on the American culinary staple.

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The first reported barbecue restaurant in Chicago can be traced back to 1930s, according to food historian Peter Engler. It was one of several that popped up throughout the city's South Side as millions of African Americans migrated from the Mississippi Delta. They brought a style of cooking defined by quickly smoking meats over direct heat and covering it with sweet sauce.

At the same time, Eastern European immigrants found pockets throughout Chicago's North Side to call home, and they brought their affinity for sausages and boiled meats with them. Combine these two immigrant styles and you have the city's signature barbecue items of today: boiled and smoked ribs covered in sauce as well as the classic rib tip combo served with sausage, sauce, french fries, and white bread. But the peaceful exchange between North and South Side barbecue styles stops there.

From the type of meat used to the styles of smoker, wood, and sauce, Chicago is a divided barbecue town. Here, Eater breaks down the often historically rooted different approaches that characterize the North and South Sides.

The Meat

Chicago, the city that welcomes you with open arms, a shot of Malort, and a pound of pork butt, has been a meat eater's paradise since the 1800s. It was in 1865 that the Union Stockyard became the central distributor for live animals. By the 1920s, the city was a butchery epicenter. Hence, the stockyard palate was born. The affinity for rib tips — a strip of cartilage-rich meat that is often a discarded byproduct from St. Louis-style rib — developed because the cut was the right price (at one point, free) for South Side pitmasters. The meat begged for utilitarian style of cooking catered to this cheap cut of meat that cooked relatively quickly compared to other, more expensive, barbecue cuts such as pork butt or brisket. These pricier cuts have historically been featured at North Side establishments.

However, as adventurous foodies venture down to 75th street to bulletproof-glass-encased Lem's, the lines between North Side and South Side barbecue begin to blur and the price of meat begins to rise. "Over the last five years, [rib tips] have gotten very popular and, the more popular they get, the more the price goes up," says Robert Adams Sr., pitmaster at Honey 1 BBQ. "I used to get them for 60-cents a pound and now they're $1.50 a pound." Last year, he moved his barbecue restaurant from Bucktown to Bronzeville in order to increase business, and brought with it the smoked brisket, a menu item that was also popular at the original location. But the tips still reign supreme. The "meat candy," as it's lovingly nicknamed, creates an incredibly tender piece of 'cue that develops a chewy bark on the outside and juicy meat on the inside that is easily pulled away from the few remaining bones.

"The interesting thing about tips is, in my humble opinion, rib tips are the perfect combination of what people crave in a rib and the fatty richness of bacon," says County Barbecue chef Erick Williams, who also claims his tips are some of the best in the city. "Because there's a good amount of gelatin and fat in rib tips and when they're cooked slow and long they give you a little bit of a chew. You get the texture and some of that moistness that you get out of bacon, and then, at the same time, you still get that unique flavor that you only get from ribs." County on Taylor Street is the few North Side spot serving tips, in addition to other North Side staples such as brisket, pulled pork, chicken, and racks of ribs.

The Smoker

[Clockwise from top left] Ribs in the smoker at Smoque, the aquarium smoker at Lem's, and the smokestack at Lem's.

The other most defining characteristic of "traditional" Chicago barbecue is the aquarium smoker, a feisty beast made by Avenue Metal since 1954. You can spot one by looking at the roof of an establishment. A tall smokestack billows meat-scented fumes that can be smelled blocks away. "Where there's no smoke, there's not real ribs," Carmen and Lynn Lemon's father, legendary pitmaster who passed away in December, told his daughters, who now run the restaurant. "If you don't see a stack with smoke coming out, not real barbecue," Carmen adds. This smokestack is attached to a tempered glass chamber that looks like a fish tank, hence the name, which sits directly on top of another chamber filled with burning wood or a combination of wood and charcoal. The lower chamber houses a roaring fire that needs to be constantly monitored and regularly sprayed down with a hose to prevent flare-ups as well as burnt meat.

To see one in action, head down to 75th Street. The aquarium smoker at Lem's is the largest in the city, according to Carmen. All 64-square-feet of it are continuously stuffed with piles of ribs of all cuts and sizes as well as housemade sausages. At Lem's, these smokers need to be replaced every decade or so. Their current one will be retired after the Fourth of July and replaced with a new model. "We go through a pit quite fast," Carmen says. "This is like your car, this is the driving force of your business."

These aquarium smokers are only seen on the South Side and far West Side for three reasons: It's expensive, inconsistent, and labor-intensive. "It's an expensive piece of equipment, just as expensive as any other smoker," Williams says. "They're custom-made, like many smokers are, and you cannot, no matter how hard you try, cook something like brisket in it and get a really consistent product." That's why, on the North Side, a very different smoker is king. Rotisserie smokers such as the Southern Pride and Ole Hickory are the workhorses at County, Smoque, and Blackwood BBQ. These feature a large chamber where spinning racks are exposed to low, indirect heat as well as smoke produced by burning wood in an adjacent chamber. However, its use of gas as the primary heating mechanism causes South Side purists to turn up their noses.

The Wood

Red oak logs are continuously fed, flamed and hosed down to produce the ideal amount of smoke and heat at Honey 1.

Another divide between the North and South Side is the use of wood. Of course, barbecue is nothing without that deep smoke flavor — achieved with charcoal or even a bottle of liquid smoke if you are a total blasphemer. But how much wood is used, the type of wood, and its proximity to the meat is what may give South Side barbecue the advantage. "The difference is it's authentic," Adams says. "The new model is gas. Wood is harder to cook with, because it flames and you have to watch and control the fire at all time. For me, it's better, more tender, and you get a good smoke ring from wood. Gas is just like if your mother is cooking it — she just goes in there, turns the dial up, sets it and walks away — you can't do that here."

Adams fuels the Honey 1 smoker with red oak, because it holds heat well as well as water. At Lem's, a combination of charcoal under hickory woods allows for more consistent heat and a heavy smoke that infused into the meat. On the North Side it's a whole different story, where chefs use mostly local woods to feed smoke into the the rotisserie smokers. Blackwood fires up its Southern Pride with hickory and apple wood mixed with some Michigan cherry tree wood.

"When you think about the flavors from the smoke, every tree has different characteristics, not only physically, but when you burn as fuel to cook with," says Blackwood's pitmaster Dylan Lipe. "To me, the sugars and stuff that are naturally in apple trees, once they are burned, they develop a very subtle sweetness, and add buttery-ness to the meat. They attach really well to the fat, and I get a nice velvety, buttery flavor from the meat when we use apple. And for me, hickory is like the salt and pepper. It's that umami effect — you can't quite put your finger on it, but it balances out your spices — it's a layer of flavor underneath there that brings out the richness in pork."

The Sauce

"I don't think barbecue is really barbecue without a sauce," Adams preaches. It's true that a generous ladleful of sauce is essential to any order of rib tips. Honey 1's is sweeter — although recently they made the switch from sugar to honey to decrease the sweetness — while Lem's takes on a vinegary tang. Both are tomato-based, like their North-side cousins, but considerably thinner and more glaze-like. Pitmasters across the city agree that sauce is the supporting actor, not the star. An overly sweet sauce easily masks over-cooked barbecue, while properly balanced sauces — the recipes to which are often guarded secrets passed down from generation to generation — accentuate the meats smoky flavor and assorted spices.

"Sauce should compliment the meat, not make the meat," Williams says recalling one of his ultimate professional pleasures at County of watching customers debate whether or not to dip his tips in sauce. First, enjoying the meat naked to savor its smoke and spice flavors, and then dipping it in the tangy condiment for an entirely different yet equally enjoyable culinary experience. "When you put your sweat and tears into something, it's just cool to see somebody be as thoughtful about the dining process as you were about the cooking process. That's why we do what we do, and that's part of why we set out to be different. [Prior to opening,] we ate some really good barbecue in Chicago. There isn't a lack thereof. At the same time, we thought that we could add something that was a little unique to what was out there. We felt like we accomplished that."

That desire to define itself outside of the classic barbecue canon, maybe more than all the meat, and smoke, and sauce in the city, is the definition of Chicago-style barbecue. "Chicago certainly has its barbecue traditions, but it's more a culinary city that loves barbecue," says Barry Sorkin, owner of Smoque. "You've got all these great cooks in Chicago that aren't bound to any traditions, but love food and have mad culinary skills." Whether it's eating a plate of tips in the parking lot of Lem's with sauce-soaked fries getting stuck between the seats or pulling apart slow smoked ribs at the patio of Smoque, the city may be divided when it comes to barbecue, but it is united by a relentless love of smoked meat.

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Smoque

3800 North Pulaski Road, Chicago, IL 60641

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Blackwood BBQ

307 W Lake St, Chicago, IL 60606 (312) 621-9663 Visit Website

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County Barbeque

1352 West Taylor Street, , IL 60607 (312) 624-8648 Visit Website

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Lem's BBQ House

311 E 75th St, Chicago, IL 60619 (773) 994-2428 Visit Website

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Honey 1 BBQ

2241 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60647 (773) 227-5130 Visit Website