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Feature article
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Boby’s Boogie Pig: barbecue and blues
By Fred Sauceman
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| Boby Prater |
Here’s the scene. It’s late January. The temperature doesn’t break the freezing mark all day. The lunchtime reading is 28 degrees. The wind is blowing at 12 miles per hour. Snow is flurrying. And Boby Prater is barbecuing.
On this raw, blustery day, Boby’s feeding hickory logs into his barbecue rig, struggling to get it up to rib-cooking temperature, between 220 and 250 degrees. He’s just a few feet off Highway 126 in Blountville, crouched, coatless, in his parking lot. You can’t miss Boby’s Boogie Pig Bar-B-Q. It’s the yellowest and reddest thing in downtown Blountville. McDonald’s colors gone wild.
Boby Prater is used to barbecuing on the side of the road. I first got introduced to his cooking when he was encamped on the roadside just outside Jonesborough, with no permanent structure at all. Now Boby has a building, the former location of the Tomato Shack in Blountville, and, having an indoor kitchen, he’s begun to experiment with deep-fried twinkies and Oreos; deep-fried sweet potato rounds covered with butter, brown and powdered sugars and cinnamon; and various appetizer plates.
“I serve the largest rack of ribs in the Tri-Cities,” says Boby, of the Flintstone-sized slab.
Boby’s proud of the fact that no frozen meat is ever served at his restaurant. All the meat — the Boston butts, chickens, ribs — is brought to the table freshly smoked.
Boby’s sauce underwent a gestation period of five years. He says it’s a combination of different ingredients from all over the United States. “But the ketchup, vinegar, sugar, molasses and mustard don’t overwhelm each other,” he adds. The sauce has a slight back-of-the-throat bite.
While he was juggling sauce ingredients, Boby developed his own coating for fried dill pickles. He uses long, thin strips of dills and a dredge of cornmeal and hot red pepper flakes. He calls it his “secret batter.” He has applied his touch to deep-fried green tomatoes as well.
Boby’s new restaurant honors two elements of working-class Southern culture that have always been tied together: barbecue and blues music.
“You can’t have barbecue without the blues,” says Boby. “Years ago, when I was growing up in Kingsport, about 11 o’clock in the evening, you could pick up radio station WLAC in Nashville, and I’ve been a fan of the blues ever since.”
The walls of the restaurant are decorated with concert posters and photographs of blues legends like Buddy Guy and B.B. King.
I’ve written in the past about barbecuers who cook indoors, whose rigs are powered by gas and electricity. Like it or not, those methods are commonplace and here to stay, and the people who employ them often turn out surprisingly respectable products.
Thankfully, though, there are still pitmasters left who insist only on hardwood and smoke, and Boby Prater’s one of them. I propose a sweet tea toast to his artistry and patience.
Boby’s Boogie Pig Bar-B-Q
LOCATION: 3172 Highway 126, Blountville, Tennessee
PHONE: 423-323-1497
HOURS: Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.;
closed Sunday and Monday
--------GoTriCities--------
Food writer Fred Sauceman, author of the book “The Place Setting: Timeless Taastes of the Mountain South — from Bright Hope to Frog Level,” is senior writer and executive assistant to the president for public affairs at East Tennessee State University. E-mail him at sauceman@etsu.edu.
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