Cookbook Club

Cookbook Review: Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque

By: Amber Chase
Ed Mitchell's Barbeque cover by Ed and Ryan Mitchell
Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque © 2023 by Ed Mitchell and Ryan Mitchell.

Known as ‘The Pitmaster’ in barbecue circles, Ed Mitchell has been cooking traditional whole-hog barbecue since he was a teenager in North Carolina. Grounded in his rich heritage and generationally propelled, Ed Mitchell and his son, Ryan, collaborate with Zella Palmer in Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque: Celebrating the Eastern North Carolina Whole Hog Barbeque of My African American Ancestors to produce a cultural, communal snapshot of North Carolina whole hog barbecue.

There’s a sort of submission to the elements that all pit masters must sign on for: an acceptance and reverence for meat, fire, and food being simmered down to its elemental bones in the most natural of processes. This humility was imparted to me early on in my trek through the Mitchell’s cookbook. Perhaps pit masters have also bested the art of taming weather conditions, but I have yet to gain such a skill.

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Date Published: 07.13.23

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