By Gabriel H. Sanchez, The New York Times
My mother often jokes that her children’s first taste of barbecue was in the womb.
It’s the food my father would bring home every night to their tiny apartment in Lockhart, Texas, after working shifts in a nearby barbecue pit. A pair of Big Red sodas and a paper bag stained dark with the fragrant grease of beef ribs and smoked brisket heralded the arrival of a true Southern feast for this young couple about to have their first child — me.
In Lockhart, a small city just south of Austin, barbecue is still the feast of choice. Anywhere friends and family meet, butcher paper unfurls to reveal a mosaic of smoked meats and pickled jalapeños, juicy links of sausage that snap into a savory crumble, nestled between foam cups of potato salad, frijoles and baked mac — and always served with a stack of white bread and warm tortillas.
Twenty-five years ago, state lawmakers declared Lockhart the barbecue capital of Texas, in acknowledgment of its four historic smokehouses and their contributions to the tradition of Texas barbecue.
Lockhart is also the place five generations of my family have called home. Many of them — uncles, cousins, in-laws — have tended the fires at Kreuz Market, which has served Texans for more than a century.
Sausages ready for the smoke pits at the original Kreuz Market, now called Smitty’s Market, in Lockhart, Texas, June 11, 2024. Five generations of relatives in Gabriel H. Sanchez’s family have tended the fires at the smokehouse, which has served Texans for more than a century. (Katherine Squier/The New York Times)
The work they did was grueling. Some evenings my father would return home with a nose like Rudolph’s, near-frostbitten from hours filling sausage casings in a subzero icebox. Other times, his hands were tinged by the flames of the pits, and his clothes blackened with ash and soot. When the Texas sun beats down at 100 degrees or more, there is often little reprieve in a kitchen like this.
Maybe it’s the demanding nature of the work, or the legacy it carries forward, but those who trade their sweat and stamina for barbecue perfection share an ingrained sense of pride and reverence. It’s evident in how visitors are welcomed into Lockhart today. And it was palpable in the quiet moments my parents shared over barbecue dinners.
My great-grandfather was the first to work at Kreuz (pronounced krites by locals) Market, in the early 1960s, when the restaurant was one of the few places where a brown-skinned person was welcomed to order a meal as well as cook it.
His son, my grandfather, preferred to eat rather than cook the barbecue and never worked at Kreuz. But he has always been quick to the draw when asked about our Chicano roots and how we ended up in Lockhart. “Our people never crossed the border,” he’ll shout in his raspy Spanglish. “The border crossed us!”
In the years after the United States annexed Texas in 1845 and later warred with Mexico, the border was reshaped. Lockhart, an ideal layover spot between San Antonio and Kansas City, Missouri, became a rest stop for cowboys driving cattle on the Chisholm Trail, many of whom were Black or Hispanic. These cowboys’ taste for the flavors of charcoal and barbacoa helped stoke the region’s appetite for smoked meats.
In 1900, a son of German immigrants named Charles Kreuz established his market. To cut down on waste, he began smoking the unsold cuts in the tradition of his European heritage — stringing up rings of sausage links like Christmas lights over the relentless warmth of slow-burning post oak. Tougher cuts of beef were smoked at low temperatures for many hours or even days, until the fats and collagen broke down into a rich, aromatic jus that saturated each bite.
Nearly a century later my father, Dennis Sanchez, tossed oak logs into the market’s sweltering fires. For him and many others who have called Lockhart home, what drew them to these fires was a support system they had known their whole lives: This restaurant has always been a place for family, and an opportunity to find dignity in hard work.
Shortly after I was born in 1989, my dad found a similar home in the Marine Corps, where he served for 36 years. We began a nomadic life as a military family, moving across the country to one base after another. In 2004, after serving during the Iraq War, my father was decorated with a Purple Heart and a Navy Commendation Medal with Valor.
After he returned from that harrowing experience, I could see that the place that helped center him the most was in front of his Weber kettle grill. There, he could monitor the temperature of a slow-cooking brisket with military precision, and try out new techniques or technology in pursuit of the flavors he had left behind in Texas.
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As I got older, he taught me to do the same. In countless lessons over fire and ash, I learned the care and attentiveness necessary to keep a smoker hovering low and slow for hours on end, moving the coals to ensure a steady warmth and narrowing the dampers for optimal airflow. I learned how to trust a pair of tongs over a thermometer to check the doneness of a rack of ribs. Most important, he taught me that the crucial ingredient for truly great barbecue is patience.
It wasn’t until last fall, when I brought my two young sons to Lockhart for the first time, that I realized my dad was never just teaching me about barbecue — he was showing me what it takes to be a good father. To learn how to cook barbecue is to learn how to accept failure as an opportunity for growth. And it goes without saying that the most essential ingredient for raising kids is patience.
My father, now a colonel stationed in New Orleans, is nearing 40 years as an active-duty Marine. Back in Lockhart, much has changed. Barbs-B-Q, run by three young women (two of them former vegans), opened last year to accolades from around the country. The original Kreuz smokehouse, where my father worked, is now called Smitty’s Market; the Kreuz name lives on at a newer market less than a mile away.
During my fall visit to Smitty’s, as I adjusted the rubber bib around the neck of my son Félix, his eyes scanned a dining room filled with laughter and conversation. In this smokehouse I had known my whole life, I suddenly took note of something that hadn’t been apparent to me: the many generations of families seated around us, connecting with one another over flavors of the past.
I thought about my father as an infant in this same room, and his father as a baby here many years before him. I tore a small nibble of brisket and passed it to my son’s tiny hands for his first taste of where he comes from.
Recipe: Smoked Prime Rib
Dennis Sanchez prepares Texas-style prime rib at his home in New Orleans, May 11, 2024. Five generations of Gabriel H. Sanchez’s family have called Lockhart, Texas, home, and many of them have tended the fires at a smokehouse that has served Texans for more than a century. (Bryan Tarnowski, The New York Times)
Recipe from Dennis Sanchez
Adapted by Gabriel H. Sanchez
Smoked prime rib is a staple in barbecue joints across Texas and is one of the premium cuts of beef you’ll find at the legendary Kreuz Market restaurant in Lockhart. Cooked low and slow for several hours then finished with a scorching sear, the result is a tender and juicy cut of beef, rich with a sweet, peppery taste signature to Texas Hill Country. This variation was developed by Dennis Sanchez, a former employee of Kreuz Market (and my father), and makes use of molasses to trap in moisture during the smoking processes. A liberal coating of coarse salt and cracked pepper is used to season the molasses, which caramelizes with the rendered collagen to form a thick, smoky bark not unlike a barbecue brisket. Because this cut of the beef is naturally tender, smoking a prime rib requires only a fraction of the time to cook than tougher cuts like brisket. One single prime rib bone will typically yield enough meat for two people, but you’ll find that these portions are far more than enough for additional plates at your cookout.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Total time: About 16 hours
Ingredients
1/2 cup kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), plus more for serving
6 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1 bone-in, 2-rib roast (5 pounds), trimmed (preferably Frenched) and tied (see Tip)
1 to 1 1/2 cups molasses (preferably Grandma’s Original Unsulphured Molasses)
Horseradish sauce (optional), for serving
Preparation
1. The evening before your cookout, mix together the salt and pepper. Set your meat on a rimmed baking sheet with a wire rack and season it all over using about half the salt mixture. Let it dry brine, uncovered, in a fridge for at least 12 hours (and up to 24 hours).
2. One hour prior to smoking the rib steak, remove the meat from the fridge and let it come to room temperature while you prepare your grill: Mix together a mound of wood chips with charcoal — you’ll want to cover about half of your grill with the mixture; 4 pounds of charcoal and 2 pounds of wood chips should suffice for a standard charcoal grill — and offset the coal mixture to one half of your grill. Light the charcoal with the grill vents barely open and gradually adjust the vents to allow for more airflow until the pit thermometer reaches 225 degrees.
3. Twenty minutes prior to placing the rib roast on the grill, slather the meat all over with a thick coat of molasses then sprinkle all over with the remaining salt mixture.
4. Place the rib roast with the fat side up on the area of the grill with no coals underneath, allowing the meat to slowly cook until the internal temperature reaches 120 degrees, ranging from 2 3/4 to 3 1/2 hours.
5. Once the meat’s internal temperature has reached the target, remove the meat from the grill and reignite the coals into a steady fire. Using a set of metal tongs or heat-resistant gloves, sear each side of the meat over direct flame until the molasses coating has caramelized into a dark shade of mahogany, about 1 minute per side.
6. Pull the roast from the grill and wrap in brown butcher paper. Allow the meat to rest in an insulated container, such as a cooler, for at least 30 minutes. This will allow the natural juices to settle throughout the meat for a more robust flavor and prevent any loss of heat during this resting period.
7. Using a carving knife, remove the string and detach the large rib bones from the roast by standing the meat on a cutting board with the bones pointing upward. With one hand firmly gripping the ribs, cut downward along the length of the bone to remove it from the rest of the meat. With the ribs now removed, rest the roast on its flat side and cut horizontally into 4 even steaks.
8. Salt to taste and serve with a side of horseradish sauce to counterbalance the richness of the flavor.
Tip
Your local butcher will be able to trim and tie a rib roast at request, which will help the meat cook more evenly and maintain its shape throughout the smoking process.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.