Pitmasters
“That’s the tender stuff — fall right apart,” Garcia said.
There weren’t a lot of barbecue options on the west side before Eric’s Family BBQ opened in early 2020, mostly just chain restaurants like Texas Roadhouse, Gomez said. He learned the trade the same way Garcia did, hanging out in a backyard cooking with an offset smoker.
It was only after Eric’s Family BBQ opened that Garcia said he discovered the burgeoning community of barbecue aficionados in the southwest Valley.
“Arizona doesn’t have a reputation for barbecue, but people are definitely doing it — they just don’t have restaurants,” he said.
Eric Riojas, an enthusiast in Avondale, combines what he learned from his family from south Texas and from Arizona barbecue competitions.
Riojas has teamed up on occasion with Marcus Chavez in Laveen, who does a little of everything: catering, competitions and YouTube videos on pit barbecue.
Then there’s Jesus Diaz from The Barking Cow BBQ, who cooks low and slow Texas-inspired barbecue with Mexican-influenced side dishes for catering and pickup in Avondale.
“Being Mexican, I feel honored to be in that spot to represent where I come from in terms of American barbecue,” Diaz said. “All my buddies from Arizona, everybody is so welcoming, so open to help each other out. That’s what I’ve seen in the barbecue business. Everybody is here to help other people out.” it should can chicken to beef ribs to brisket. In the beginning a lot of it, he admitted, wasn’t good.
He didn’t see it as a potential income source until a buddy at his barbershop asked him to cater a wedding in 2020. Diaz and his wife borrowed a bigger smoker from a friend, hunkered down for about 14 hours and cooked enough brisket, macaroni and cheese and creamed corn to feed 150 people.
That was the start of his new catering and weekend takeout business, Barking Cow BBQ.
“Smoking, especially brisket, it’s a very long process and has techniques for every single thing,” Diaz said. “It’s a different ball game from carne asada, it’s something you have to have patience.”
Diaz takes barbecue orders via Instagram, for pickup on Sundays, his day off. Since he still works full time at a warehouse that makes boxes, cooking begins after he gets off work on Saturdays.
First, he trims the fat off the brisket, leaving about a quarter inch layer on the lean portion so it doesn’t dry out while
it’s smoked. He trims the fat in a way so that the meat is aerodynamic, which allows the smoke to flow over the brisket without burning the edges, Diaz explained. Once he’s done, he rubs the meat with salt and pepper. The simplicity of salt, pepper and smoke makes it Texas-style, he said.
Diaz starts a fire using pecan wood, which he described as having a subtle flavor that doesn’t overpower the taste of the beef. Once the fire dies down to embers, he throws the meat on the smoker. Next comes the hardest part for him: Staying awake all night to tend to the food.
He has to make sure the fire doesn’t die out, move logs and maintain a clean fire, as indicated by thin blue smoke rather than plumes of dark white smoke. A dirty fire makes the food bitter, he said. About four to five hours in, a crusty outer layer called the bark starts forming.
After the bark forms, he pulls the brisket out, wraps it in butcher paper and puts it back in the smoker. By the next day, he knows when it’s ready through a combination of temperature, visual appearance and physical touch, he said.
Diaz hopes to one day go into barbecue full time and is saving up for a food trailer, which he hopes will make catering gigs for The Barking Cow BBQ easier.
“Never in my life have I ever done
Garcia’s family has lived in Avondale for generations. His uncle’s 1965 letter jacket from Agua Fria High School hangs framed on the restaurant wall, a reminder of the restaurant owners’ ties to the southwest Valley.
Not far from the jacket hang photos from the business’s early days, when Garcia and the restaurant’s co-founder Eric Tanori, the restaurant’s namesake, hosted barbecues in Tanori’s backyard in Litchfield Park.
Garcia said his first taste of Texasstyle barbecue in Arizona was at Little Miss BBQ, pitmaster Scott Holmes’ restaurant in Phoenix. It was a mind-blowing experience that inspired he and Tanori to try and do something similar on the west side, he said.
What started as a friends-and-family events evolved into strangers lining up to purchase plates of smoked meat at Tanori’s house.
In early 2020, the friends opened Eric’s Family Barbecue in Avondale. And though Tanori no longer has an operational role in the restaurant and has pursued non-food related work, he’s still part-owner.
Gomez, the weekend pitmaster, said his parents are originally from Kansas City, another barbecue mecca where more emphasis is put on the sauce, he said. In Texas Hill Country, where brisket is king, sauce is served on the side and the focus is on the flavor of the meat, which is rubbed with few ingredients, sometimes just salt and pepper.
Even within the Lone Star State, Central Texas’ restrained version of brisket differs from barbecue in other regions, like East Texas where Black pitmasters favor bolder sauces, as well as fall-offthe-bone pork ribs and beef links smoked over hickory wood. One of the most iconic dishes of South Texas is barbacoa, where cabeza de res is cooked for hours in a hole in the ground.
Gomez said that at Eric’s Family Barbecue they draw inspiration from Austin barbecue, but the rubs are less salty than what they’ve tried in the Texas capital. And, while Little Miss BBQ uses oak and pecan wood, Eric’s uses 100% wild mesquite imported from Mexico.
The wood gives their meats a Southwestern flavor and brings back memories of backyard family parties and the smell of carne asada grilled over mesquite.
Eric’s Family Barbecue also serves elote, corn on the cob slathered with mayonnaise, seasoned with chili powder and fresh lime juice, and sprinkled with Cotija, as a nod to their MexicanAmerican heritage.
From family barbecues to competitions
Eric Riojas’ family also have roots in Texas. The barbecue enthusiast in Avondale, said his earliest memories of barbecue come from his father’s father, his tata Marcos.
Riojas, who goes by an old family name Eduardo, said his father was born in Taft, Texas, a small city just north of Corpus Christi. His family lived there for generations before his tata Marcos moved the family to Avondale in the 1950s when Riojas’ dad was young.
Riojas remembers Sundays after church when his grandpa and uncle would take turns tending to the barrel smoker in the backyard where they cooked beef, chicken, kielbasa sausages and tripas. The barbecue seasoning were rustic, just salt, pepper and maybe a dash of garlic and onion powder, Riojas described.
The Cowboys game would be on (though they did start switching teams when the Arizona Cardinals arrived in 1988) and his nana would make Spanish rice and pinto beans for sides. She also purchased corn and flour tortillas from Garcia’s Market on Main Street, made by West Valley company Red Eagle Tortilla Factory, Riojas remembered.
When Riojas got older, he wanted to expand on what he learned from his family, so he volunteered to help competitors at barbecue competitions around Arizona. Just a small taste of competition and he was hooked.
“It was almost overwhelming, and it was exciting at the same time,” Riojas said. “It’s not like backyard barbecue. It’s a whole ‘nother world. After that, I needed to get different equipment. The bug bit me.”
Arizona’s growing barbecue competition community
Barbecue contests range from small local fairs to nationally sanctioned competitions that draw hundreds of competitors. Competitors are typically given a time limit to cook depending on the type of barbecue and certified judges will sample a bite from each competitor. Winners often take home a cash prize.
Riojas said one of the first competitions he attended was the annual Rib Throwdown in Springerville, Arizona, where he went to support Marcus Chavez, a competitor from Laveen. Since then he’s teamed up with Chavez a few more times, most recently at the Showdown on Main Pitmaster Challenge in Florence.
Competition barbecue is different from restaurant barbecue, said Chavez, who shares his cooking tips on YouTube under the name Burnt Nz BBQ.
Judges grade on three criteria: Appearance, texture and taste — and when it comes to taste, a judge usually only gets one piece, he explained. That means it’s all about making the meat pop in that one bite.
Competitors will inject the meats with flavor enhancers, such as beef broth to emphasize beef or apple juice to give pork a fruity flavor. They also inject their meat with phosphates, which help retain moisture and swell up the muscle fibers. Since competitors don’t know when the judge will sample their entry, it’s vital to keep meat from drying out. Some even add popcorn salt on the backside of the meat so it hits a judge’s tongue first and amplifies the savoriness, which would be too salty for a whole platter of brisket served at a restaurant, he said.
Chavez noted that there’s a growing barbecue competition community in Arizona. People will meet up on the weekend, camp or sleep in their trucks and cook dinner together before a competition.
The barbecue competitions can get intense and since they involve prize money, not everyone wants to share their knowledge, Riojas said. But Chavez was an open book who took him under his wing.
Riojas said he typically brings a barrel smoker, which is less bulky and easier to travel with than an offset smoker. For one competition he cooked pork butt over hickory wood and charcoal. The instagram.com/eduarado_bbq. instagram.com/burnt_nz_bbq, also Burnt Nz BBQ on YouTube.
hickory gives the pork an attractive mahogany color, which is important because people eat with their eyes first, he said.
For the pork butt he starts preparations at 12:30 a.m. and usually finishes between 11 a.m. and 12 pm. But any changes in the weather, from rain to wind to humidity, can change the cook time, he explained.
Riojas shares his experiences on his Instagram page @eduarado_bbq where he chronicles his barbecue journey from home cooking to small catering gigs to competitions.
Riojas said he’s proud of representing Arizona at out-of-state barbecue competitions, where some of his fiercest competition has come from women. He said he’d like to see more female pitmasters in the Arizona barbecue scene.
“To be honest, if you really look and examine these teams, typically a woman is behind them, reminding the time, building the burn box, building sauces. There are a lot of women in the background.”
It’s been fascinating to see how much barbecue culture has grown, he added.
Defining Arizona’s barbecue identity
Arizona is a melting pot of different regional styles and doesn’t have the barbecue reputation of other places, Chavez said. When it comes to Arizonastyle barbecue, he thinks more of grilling, such as carne asada over mesquite wood, though he personally prefers Arizona white oak.
Mexican American cooks are throwing pulled pork into tortillas and fry bread, Chavez said, adding that he thinks if Arizona barbecue has a direction, it would trend toward Mexicanstyle barbecue. Around Laveen where he lives, he knows people who are burying whole pigs in the ground and cooking them barbacoa-style.
Even Little Miss BBQ started making burritos, Chavez pointed out. The restaurant’s leftover brisket is bathed in red chile, wrapped in local Mama Lola’s flour tortillas, then blanketed in mole poblano.
Diaz, whose family is from Zamora, Mexico, said he wants to blend more of his Mexican heritage into Barking Cow BBQ’s offerings.
“It’s pretty hard to say what Arizonastyle is because we’re all basically doing Texas-style barbecue,” Diaz said. “That’s where I want to be different, I want to incorporate my roots, do brisket tamales. Pulled pork tortas, brisket tortas, something different, something that catches.”
He could add pico de gallo to the pulled pork, he mused aloud. He could swap out barbecue beans for frijoles charros, pinto beans stewed with onion, garlic and bacon. There are a lot of possibilities, he said.
“My mom’s a great cook. I’m a good cook,” Diaz said. “So why not use my heritage and my Mexican background and switch it up a little?”
Chavez’s family goes back generations to Saint Johns, a small city in Apache County, Arizona. He remembers camping with his cousins on the Verde
River. To grill steaks, they would put two rocks together and a old refrigerator grate, then start a fire underneath with charcoal and mesquite twigs they collected. They thought it was the best chuck steak they’d ever had, Chavez recalled.
Chavez, who went to butchery school, had a custom barbecue pit made for himself six years ago from what used to be a 250-gallon underground propane tank. It’s far cry from the more primitive equipment he used to cook on.
He explained that his mother raised 10 children, so she learned to how to take a little — such as hamburger meat and grated potatoes for tacos or arrachera, one of the cheaper beef cuts — to feed a lot.
“Cooking a crap piece of meat low and slow with wood found in the desert, making that piece of meat fall and apart and make you say ‘wow’, that to me is true barbecue,” Chavez said. “Everything is good, don’t get me wrong, but to me true barbecue is also to gather around family. When you grill, you’re making memories.”