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A practical guide to using pork belly trimmings — render to lard, fry cracklins, blend into burger fat, build sausage, smoke mini burnt ends, and 4 more ways to use every last scrap of fat and trim.
Read More →Tested BBQ recipes for the smoker, grill and griddle — beef, pork, poultry, sides and desserts, with the temps and timings that actually work.
Best BBQ Rubs for Griddle Burgers: Sizzle in 20 Minutes Flat A burger rub is smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and a little brown sugar, patted onto loose balls before smashing. The order matters: rub the outside, not the mix. Season through the meat and you tighten it; season the surface and…
Best BBQ Rubs: Ratios, Storage and How to Apply Them A good BBQ rub is about half salt and coarse pepper, a quarter paprika, onion and garlic, and a small amount of sugar for the edge. Get that ratio right and the rest is detail. Most homemade bbq rubs fail for one of two reasons:…
Grill Smoked Brisket: Hickory Low-and-Slow Mastery Fat cap up on the grate with hickory smoke rising: a nine-hour cook on an ordinary grill. Grill smoked brisket on a kettle or gas grill works, and a two-zone setup at 275°F will take a 10 to 14 lb packer to 203°F in about nine hours, wrapped at…
Rubs for Smoked Brisket: Master Rubs Rubs for smoked brisket all come off one base: half a cup of salt and half a cup of coarse pepper. The five below are what you add to it. Everything else is the same in each case. Smoke at 225°F over hickory, wrap at 165°F, pull at 203°F….
Best Brisket Rub: Coffee-Chili Southern Recipe A coffee-chili brisket rub is 50/50 salt and coarse pepper, plus smoked paprika, garlic, onion, coffee and ancho chili. The coffee is doing bitterness and color, the ancho is doing warmth without sharp heat, and the salt and pepper are doing the actual work. If you want the best…
Brisket Dry Rub: The Science Behind That Snap-Worthy Bark A brisket dry rub is half salt, half coarse pepper, then paprika, garlic, onion and a little sugar. Apply it 12 to 24 hours ahead. That is the whole thing. What follows is why each part is there, because once you know that you can change…
The 14-hour smoked brisket recipe runs at 200°F overnight, wraps at 160°F through the stall, finishes at 203°F and rests two hours. The fourteen hours are the point rather than an inconvenience. At 200°F the collagen has time to convert before the outside dries, which is exactly what a hot-and-fast cook does not…
Sliced smoked brisket revealing the signature pink smoke ring—proof of a masterful low-and-slow cook. The smoke ring on brisket forms while the surface is still below about 140°F, so the way to get one is to start cold and stay low for the first three or four hours. That is the whole answer, and…
Discover these top fall BBQ recipes on Popular BBQ, where seasonal cravings become smoky masterpieces. As of October 5, 2025, searches for October recipes like pumpkin bread and apple pie are spiking—inspired by fall grilling trends. Below are six of them done over fire instead of in an oven: smoked pumpkin bread, apple pie…
Pumpkin spice is cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove and allspice. It works over fire because every one of those stands up to smoke. Six pumpkin spice BBQ recipes that marry fall’s warm spices with the primal thrill of fire. At PopularBBQ.com the range runs from a twenty-minute griddle breakfast to a three-hour rack of ribs, so…
BBQ Side Dish Recipes: The Unsung Heroes of Your Cookout The five classic BBQ sides are coleslaw, baked beans, potato salad, cornbread and macaroni cheese. Each one exists to cut or carry fat. That is not a sentimental point, it is a structural one. Ribs and brisket are rich, and a plate of…
Ten dishes for the Fourth, ordered by how much work they take: hot dogs and burgers first, ribs and brisket last, watermelon in between. The useful thing about planning a Fourth of July cookout is that most of it can be staged. The ribs want six hours, the sides want none, and if you start…
