Dozier’s menu upgrade started with the smokers
When Jim Buchanan took over as general manager and pitmaster at the venerable Dozier’s
BBQ in Fulshear in 2020, he inherited a motley collection of barbecue pits.
There was an old Oyler rotisserie-style smoker. In the back of the pit room stood a cabinetlike Alkarbrand automated sausage smoker that cooks and flavors the many varieties of house-made sausages for which Dozier’s is known.
And the pièces de resistance: four direct-heat barrel pits encrusted with layers of rust, ash and grease hand-made by original owner and pitmaster Ed Dozier over 50 years ago.
When Buchanan arrived, he was tasked by the new owners to update and transform the oldschool menu to a contemporary craft-barbecue menu. And to do that, he had to start with the hardware.
“The only way to upgrade the barbecue was to upgrade the pits,” Buchanan says.
With that strategic decision, Buchanan has collected an impressive and diverse array of pits, each with its own task.
First, he decided to keep the Oyler and Alkar pits. The Oyler allows Buchanan and his team to cook briskets for 18 hours with less intervention and fire-tending than a classic offset barrel smoker would require. For an operation as big as Dozier’s, being able to save time without sacrificing quality is critical.
Keeping the Alkar was a nobrainer, too, considering the amount of sausage they cook per week — as much as 800 pounds.
From there, Buchanan began the transformation. The original direct-heat barrel pits were replaced with two 500-gallon Moberg offset barrel pits. Buchanan is currently using these to cook smaller proteins — chicken, turkey and pork ribs.
He also acquired a David Klose-built direct-heat pit that he uses to cook pork steaks.
More recently he acquired a Bewley-brand cabinet-style pit to help with the increased volume of barbecue needed to keep up with a booming local clientele as well an increasing number of Houstonians making the drive down the Westpark Tollway to check out the developments at a barbecue joint many remember going to in the 1970s and ’80s.
Buchanan has recently implemented a Sunday brunch menu to take advantage of an expansive outdoor patio that owners Jim Cummins and Steve Baur recently added. Menu items include pork steak and eggs as well as brisket hash made with chopped brisket, eggs and potatoes.
Dozier’s also recently announced a partnership with kitchen-and-cooking retailer Williams Sonoma to ship barbecue nationwide (it’s fully cooked, refrigerated and vacuum-sealed).
Among the items available through the partnership will be “Presidential Bacon,” named after the bacon that was regularly shipped to the White House when President George H.W. Bush — a longtime fan of Dozier’s — was in office in the 1990s.
Certainly, Buchanan’s new arsenal of pits will serve him well. But what about the old direct-heat pits made by Ed Dozier?
Though Buchanan is tasked with bringing Dozier’s up to contemporary standards, reverence for tradition and the standards of quality established by Ed Dozier are still part of the culture.
With that in mind, Buchanan came up with a creative way to repurpose the old pits. He filled them with soil and turned them in to planters where he grows cilantro, jalapeños and bell peppers in the recipes for the extensive menu. It’s the barbecue-smoker version of “out with the old and in with the new.”