Juneteenth

This recipe is excerpted from Cooked by Michael Pollan. Read more about the origin of this recipe in our interview with Michael Pollan.

This fresh seasonal sauce—so good you'll be glad to have leftovers—features less sugar than traditional barbecue sauces. Serve the moist, flavorful chicken on warmed burger buns. Wear rubber gloves when mincing the jalapeño so you don't burn your hands. When prepping the fresh cherries, wear a dark shirt, use a good cherry pitter, and work over two bowls: one for the pits and stems and the other for the usable flesh. Feel into the center of each cherry after pitting and de-stemming to make sure that no pit remains.

This classic potato salad is from the grandmother of Epicurious member Beatlebailey: “The flavor of this potato salad always brings back the wonderful memories of all the times we spent together.”

This spicy standout nails the difficult balance of sweet and fiery that characterizes the best jerk, cutting the heat of the Scotch bonnet chiles with a mixture of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar. The soy sauce adds a sticky-salty-caramel note when the meat is grilled. Because jerk seasoning can burn easily, make sure to use indirect heat when grilling the meat. Serve with rice, beans, and plenty of ice-cold beer. (And be sure to use gloves when handling the peppers.)

Barbacoa de Cabrito This goat barbecue typifies a style where the meat absorbs an adobo, a fragrant, spicy marinade of dried chiles and other seasonings. I watched Zoyla Mendoza make this dish in her village, Teotitlán del Valle. Though she and her family can well afford to eat meat, they usually save it for special occasions, so they rejoiced when I asked them to teach me their favorite barbacoa. It was beautiful, breathing the scent of fresh avocado leaves and other herbs. The meat becomes unbelievably tender without drying out or getting mushy. When I came back to my New York kitchen, I set to work to find other methods close to the tender savor of a true pit barbecue. For the type that Zoyla showed me, I feel the best results come from packing the marinated meat in a tightly covered pan just large enough to hold the ingredients and baking it for a long time in a moderate oven. A turkey roaster is good. If you don't have a big enough pan with a tight-fitting lid, wrap several layers of aluminum foil very snugly around the pan to seal in the steam. I make the barbacoa as Zoyla made it, with young goat (kid). Goat is available in some Greek, halal Muslim, and West Indian butcher shops and can sometimes be ordered from other butchers. Ask the butcher to cut it into quarters. Oaxacans always include and specially value the head, which has some extra-tender nuggets of meat. (This is optional for the doubting.) If goat is not available, lamb is the best substitute. At my restaurant, we use lamb shoulder. The dish can also be made with a whole fresh ham or a pot-roasting cut of beef such as round, though you may have to reduce the amount of marinade slightly and experiment with a shorter cooking time. Of course true pre-Hispanic barbacoa was made with turkey—not used as frequently nowadays, but still a notably authentic choice. When the meat is cooked in an authentic pit it yields a lot of rich juices that never develop using the oven method. At my restaurant in New York we approximate this as follows: When the adobo (chile paste) is made, set aside 1 1/4 cup of the mixture and rub the meat with the rest. Cook as described below. When the meat is done, skim the fat from the pan juices and deglaze the roasting pan with 2 cups homemade chicken broth over medium-high heat, scraping up the browned bits. Stir in one 28- to 32-ounce can tomatoes, breaking them up with a spoon. Add the reserved adobo and simmer, stirring frequently, for about 30 minutes, or until reduced to about 4 cups. Let cool slightly and purée in a blender (working in batches as necessary) until smooth. Serve with the carved meat.

Of all the ways to prepare shrimp, the grill delivers the best flavor. Although unadorned "shrimp on the barbie" are great, an easily assembled gingery barbecue sauce makes them that much better. You can save time by buying already shelled and deveined shrimp, but our recipe developer, Alexis Touchet, who grew up in shrimp country in southwest Louisiana, thinks shell-on shrimp are better quality. Depending on where you live and what's in your market, you may not have much choice. Freshness trumps all, so don't hesitate to use your nose in deciding which shrimp to buy.

Panzanella is a staple of Tuscan cooking that is traditionally made with leftover stale bread; the dressing moistens the bread, which soaks in all the flavors and juices from the vegetables. I like panzanella but I love cornbread. When I found myself with lots of leftover cornbread one Thanksgiving, I was inspired to give it an Italian spin, and this salad was born. It’s best to use stale cornbread, but if you have only fresh cornbread, toast the cubes in the oven at 300°F for 8 to 10 minutes to dry them out; that way they won’t fall apart in the salad and become mushy.

Because it doesn’t contain mayonnaise, this slaw is a good picnic dish. It keeps well in the refrigerator for several days, so you can make it in advance.

As a grilled-food guy, R. B. loves red Zinfandel and Côtes du Rhone. Mixed with fresh fruit and carbonation, these barbecue-friendly reds really come to life. Sweeten with sugar if you like.

Loaded Cornbread is the cornbread for a crowd and essential for a big barbecue. Dense and moist with Cheddar cheese, cream-style corn, and buttermilk, it can be baked in advance and cut into neat squares. Unlike traditional skillet cornbread that’s best eaten hot out of the oven, Loaded Cornbread travels well and tastes fine at room temperature. The jalapeños are up to you. Substitute a chopped fresh mild green chile or even a can of them. The other substitution is yogurt for buttermilk. Again, if the batter seems too thick, add a little water.

Next to firing up the smoker, having a catfish fry in the party pot (our name for the turkey fryer) is our preferred all-day patio workout. Then, after hours of fun over the hot cauldron, we’re done with frying for months. Except maybe for an occasional batch of corn tortilla chips. The thing about catfish is that its soft, almost mushy flesh demands a rigid cornmeal exoskeleton forged in hot peanut oil. An oven and a seasoned panko/cornmeal crust mimic the deep-fried crust with a fraction of the mess and without oil recycling in the morning. R. B. confirms that leftover Catfish Sticks reheat like a dream in a toaster oven. He makes a mean cheater po’boy with reheated catfish sticks piled on a hamburger bun slathered with tartar sauce and topped with iceberg lettuce excavated from the crisper drawer.

About fifteen years ago R. B. thought his next-door neighbor, who was out grilling some chicken, called him a jerk. Back then, R. B. hadn’t heard of jerk seasoning, and his neighbor seemed like a nice, quiet fellow who pretty much kept to himself. When R. B. turned down the Bob Marley, everything got straightened out, and the chicken was delicious. A jerk dry rub requires allspice, thyme, and some heat. The Scotch bonnet pepper is the traditional choice, but that’s too many Scoville heat units for us. We keep the heat out of the rub, then sprinkle on cayenne to customize the chicken to suit everyone.

Every year, we celebrate the heart of summer with a Sunday barbecue feast at Lucques. This annual tradition always includes at least four different barbecued meats, baked beans, long-cooked greens, grilled cornbread, and former Lucques chef Rob Chalmers’s infamous coleslaw. The first year he made it, he miscalculated “slightly” and made enough for about six hundred people! It became a running joke to tease Rob about his coleslaw, and for about a year after the barbecue, the servers and busboys used to greet every staff meal with the predictable, “What, no coleslaw?” Here is a manageable-sized recipe for Rob’s light, crunchy, and always satisfying slaw.

Crushed pineapple is the standout ingredient in this pleasant slaw. It provides a good balance to spicy or bold dishes. I like it with Southwestern fare like Tortilla Casserole (page 104), but my favorite dish to serve it with is Pasta Jambalaya (page 123).

I’ve always wanted a luscious, reliable (and, of course, easy) jerk seitan recipe, like the one served by my family’s favorite Hudson Valley restaurant, Luna 61 in Tivoli, New York. But all the recipes I’ve found rely on lengthy lists of spices, Scotch bonnet peppers, and substantial time for marinating the seitan. After a couple of attempts to follow authentic recipes, with so-so results, I decided to throw authenticity to the wind and go for the flavors that I craved. This recipe may not be the genuine article, but its bold flavors never disappoint.

Crunchy coconut biscuits are a Jamaican specialty and are crispest the day they’re baked. To toast coconut, preheat the oven to 325°F. Spread the coconut in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and toast, stirring occasionally, until light golden and fragrant, about 10 minutes.

Here’s an interesting technique. We cut (counter to logic) the pork tenderloins into long steaks along the grain of the meat, forming steaks approximately 10 inches long by 2 inches wide. Whip up the jerk paste the night before or that morning, and get the tenderloins marinating early. That way you can grill and eat in minutes after getting jerked around at work all day.

Jerk seasoning is a fiery spice rub that originated on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. You can marinate the chicken overnight. Assemble the cucumber and watermelon salad while the chicken is grilling.

This is great served with grilled flank steak and ice-cold beer or lemonade. Stuck indoors? A grill pan for the corn yields an equally delicious summer salad.

Whenever you’re deep-frying, remember this: A vessel with deep sides will reduce spattering. A broader vessel will allow you to fry more pieces at once but will require considerably more oil; a narrower vessel will conserve oil but will mean you must cook in batches. The choice is yours. Coconut Rice (page 516) or Plantains in Coconut Milk (page 472) would be sensational here, but as you know, fried chicken goes well with anything.

This dish is usually made with pickled or salted fish, but it’s simpler (and, in my opinion, better) when made with lightly salted fresh fish. To be truly authentic, the chile should be a Scotch bonnet (habanero), which has a distinctive though fiery flavor, but any chile will do in a pinch. Serve this with Coconut Rice (page 516) or, even better, Coconut Rice and Beans (page 516).

Everybody in the South has their own potato-salad recipe, and our version, using red potatoes and the coarse-ground, zippy Creole mustard, makes this a winner. Be sure to drain your potatoes thoroughly, because additional water will dilute the fantastic ingredients in the salad. It’s best to dress the potatoes while they’re still warm, so they can fully absorb the flavors.

This is it: the famous sweet and spicy slaw from the restaurant that people come and buy by the bucketful. Make extra; trust us, you’ll need it!