Is South Carolina’s signature barbecue side about to have its moment?
I almost choked on my sweet tea.
This troubling news was delivered in a special report in theCharlestonPost & Courier.
At least 160 barbecue restaurants in South Carolina serve hash today.
It also offers a handy guide to finding barbecue joints in the Lowcountry that serve hash and rice .
for now at least.
If you believe thePost & Courier’s headline, the hash forecast is bleak.
A side of hash and rice at Buxton Hall Barbecue in Asheville, North Carolina.Credit: Robert Moss
Subsequent social media promotions cast it in even more dire terms, saying it’s “fading fast.”
But the more I studied it, the more I took issue with the story’s conclusions.
I wouldn’t have said this five years ago.
At the Firebox Festival in St. Simons, Georgia, in October 2019, Elliot Moss of Buxton Hall BBQ cooked South Carolina-style hash over a wood fires.Credit: Robert Moss
It was particularly bad in my native South Carolina.
Our signature yellow mustard-based sauce and that mysterious hash and rice remained virtually unknown outside the Palmetto State.
Increasingly customers were walking into South Carolina joints and demanding, “Where’s the brisket?”
They didn’t even know to ask for hash.
(For more of the backstory, see myshort history of hash and rice here.)
But the newspaper’s own data tells a different story.
Of these, 13almost halfinclude liver in the pot.
I had no idea that many liver-hash joints were left in the Lowcountry.
The numbers are even stronger when you look at the state as a whole.
Roller plotted out all the hash-sellers on an online map.
But that’s emphatically not the case.
Here in Charleston, where I live, plenty of new-school joints feature hash.
It’s on the menu at six locations of Home Team BBQ (founded 2006).
They’re really hashing things up.
“We order in pork livers,” Siegel says, “because we don’t use whole hog.
We used smoked pork shoulder along with the livers, then add an array of our barbecue sauces.”
When asked why they decided to include liver, Siegel says, “We wanted ours to be rich.
Indeed, at least one Charleston restaurant has reversed course and added liver back into its hash.
“My father didn’t do all that.”
That’s not an incorrect description, but it certainly lacks poetry.
Hash is heading north, too.
And he hasn’t stopped there.
The cauldron was empty by the end of the night.
Moss included his recipe in his restaurant’s cookbook, Buxton Hall Barbecue’s Book of Smoke.
But it’s possible for you to make whatever substitutions you like.
“There’s no wrong way to make a hash,” Moss writes.
Is hash now poised to break out of the Carolinas and finally go national?
A few recent reports from distant barbecue regions suggest that it may be.
Where it is starting to gain a foothold these days might surprise you.
I’ll cover that part of the story in the next installment, so keep your eyes peeled.
It’s warm, comforting, and very fillinga fitting dish for troubling times like these.
