The following is a sneak peek from the BBQ Roundup in our July issue, on newsstands now.
Texas Monthly Barbecue Editor Daniel Vaughan (Photo by Denny Culbert)
At Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor, Texas, on a Saturday morning — Aug. 19, 2006, to be exact — Daniel Vaughn’s brisket virginity was taken. It was life-changing.
“I liken it to the first hit of heroin,” Vaughn says. “You seek that high over and over, and you can never find it. … You’ll never have that experience again, but you still wonder, ‘When can I have that next surprisingly great bite of barbecue?’ ”
As Texas Monthly’s full-time barbecue editor, the first and only in the country, Vaughn has the perfect job to feed his addiction, sometimes frequenting five or six different barbecue spots in a single day.
Despite his travels, he admits he’s never eaten ’cue from Virginia (but ZZQ has put the commonwealth on his radar). And he also embarrassingly remembers how he labeled himself a “grill master” as he threw ribs drenched in a sweet sauce on a gas grill.
He’s come a long way.
It was a move to Texas in 2001, followed by that life-changing bite of smoked brisket in 2006, that led to Vaughn hopping in his car and driving through central Texas to discover what the heart of Texas ’cue was all about. He began a blog called BBQ Snob, dedicated to his journey across the Lone Star state — and later the country — as a way to catalog his trips.
His passion for the pit eventually became his profession, and he left his job as an architect on the back burner after Texas Monthly scooped him up five years ago — again, he knows the exact date, April 15, 2013.
One thing Vaughn has learned is that the more barbecue he eats, the wider his definition of the oldest form of cooking around the world becomes. “If we pile everything together that people say isn’t barbecue, we wouldn’t have any barbecue left,” he says.
A typical day for Vaughn is undefinable, but it’s not uncommon for him to be on the road trying new places and investigating the way various barbecue styles have transformed, such as Baltimore pit beef, so he can be well-versed in his subject of choice.
“I never get sick of eating good barbecue,” Vaughn says. “It’s the truth. Trying a new place that’s good is always exciting.”
Vaughn’s new book about East Carolina barbecue will come out in 2019, and he’s hosting a new show, “Smokelandia,” on the Cooking Channel. The pilot episode is set to debut June 27.
