Daniel Vaughn Knows Where to Find the Best BBQ in Texas

Daniel Vaughn knows a lot about barbecue. He’s the author of “The Prophets of Smoked Meat: A Journey Through Texas Barbecue,” the co-author of “Whole Hog BBQ: The Gospel of Carolina Barbecue,” and the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly — if you’ve ever wondered who they trust with their “Best of Barbecue” lists, it’s Daniel.

He’s tasted smoked offerings from over 1,800 barbecue joints, most of which are in Texas. If he tells you a coffee-rubbed brisket (or whole-hog BBQ, or smoked chicken) is worth eating, it is. Lucky for us, he sat down with Chris Kimball in a recent episode of Milk Street Radio to talk everything barbecue. Read on for highlights and be sure listen to the full interview here.

Three must-try Texas barbecue joints

First off, I would send you to Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, Texas. It's just a place that exudes central Texas-style barbecue. It's in a small town. It's in a beautiful building. They've got the old brick pit. It's got smoke stains on the wall. Massive beef rib covered in black pepper. That would be the place to send you.

For the for the best party in Texas, they throw it every Saturday, that’s Snow’s Barbecue. You would meet 90-year-old Tootsie Thomas, who is still cooking pork steaks and half chickens over direct heat. They serve great brisket as well. They're only open once a week, their opening hours start at 8 a.m. on Saturday. You can still hear the cow mooing in the auction barn down the street. People get in line. They bring their chairs starting at midnight the night before. So, it is quite the party once things actually get fired up the next morning.

[And] 3rd Coast BBQ in Spring, Texas—it's just north of Houston—it’s a small neighborhood joint. It's kind of strange to think of that in Houston, but you go back through all these different apartment complexes, and boom, there's this restaurant right there in the middle. They host crawfish boils on some weekends when crawfish is in season. The barbecue itself and the menu [have] a good Gulf Coast flair to them, as you might expect from a place called Third Coast. Their potato salad uses crawfish seasonings to boil their potatoes, and then they're mixed in with some of your Cajun Trinity—onions and green peppers and celery.

It's this unusual presentation at a barbecue joint, whether it's inspired by Gulf cuisine or Texas cuisine, or wherever it might be.

On using coffee grounds the right way

Most experiences with coffee as an important rub element are usually pretty negative, right? It either doesn't come through at all, or it just sort of muddies the surface of of the barbecue. And so when I was talking to Brendyn Todd, who runs Brendyn's Barbecue—this is Nacogdoches, Texas, so small town, but lots of history—but like two-thirds of his rub is coffee grounds. And we're not talking like some high-end roastery here. He's just ordering essentially a Folgers equivalent off of Amazon. And one thing I didn't think about when he first described it was the fact that he finishes them off wrapped in foil. And so actually, what's collecting in the bottom of the foil—as the briskets finish cooking and as it's resting—is that you have this brew that's made from the coffee on the rub and all the fat and moisture dripping from the brisket itself. So, it's like this meat fat coffee, and then he's pouring that over the top of it right before he slices it up and serves it. So, you get this sort of double dose of coffee on the brisket.

You don’t need wagyu to make great barbecue

You say you're using wagyu beef and all of a sudden, that's supposed to make everything better. And nothing against wagyu. I love Wagyu beef, but it's this sort of silver bullet, you know, “I don't need to know how to cook. I've got wagyu beef.” Prime beef is certainly more popular these days, to be used in briskets and beef ribs, but some of the best places out there are doing it with choice beef. Goldee's Barbecue, they use all choice grade beef. And a place that we've loved for many, many years, Snow's Barbecue in Lexington, they buy select or better, which means all the briskets that they get in are either select or choice grade briskets, and they've routinely been listed as one of the best barbecue joints in the country.

Barbecue kitchens are just different

What is a barbecue kitchen? The level of cleanliness that you find on the floor and sometimes on the equipment of a pit room isn't something that you would find acceptable in any other kitchen environment. But for some reason, for barbecue, seeing a not-so-neat stack of wood outside is, I think, a good sign that good barbecue is ahead of you, and smelling that smoke. These are all symbols that you're going to be in for a good meal.

Honorable (not-from-Texas) mention

And then, there are those times where you've had something maybe several times, and you feel like you know what to expect when you go to eat it. But then it just wows you once more, right? And that is the the whole hog barbecue sandwich at Skylight Inn in Ayden, North Carolina, and it is chopped pork with a light vinegar sauce, and it's a really sweet slaw on a squishy white bun. And one of the things they do that's a little different than other whole-hog joints is they crisp up that skin over the fire, then they chop the skin into the meat, so you get this tender, juicy meat and these crunchy bits of skin, and it all comes together in this perfect handheld sandwich. And every time I eat it, I'm like, “Oh, it is this good.” It's just that reminder over and over.

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.