When I saw that Evan LeRoy, one half of the famed LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in Austin, Texas, and Paula Forbes, the noted cookbook author and restaurant critic for Texas Monthly, were dropping a cookbook about the new school of Texas barbecue, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on New School Barbecue: Recipes for Next-Level Smoking and Grilling. LeRoy’s establishment was among the first barbecue places to earn a star during Michelin’s inaugural Texas ceremony in 2024. Frankly, the entire state is still trying to figure out what that means.
There are a few things that are unlike the rest in this cookbook, and its commitment to featuring the farmers and ranchers who raise the food used in it is at the top of the heap. LeRoy and Lewis sources its products locally, and, on opening, part of the mission was to figure out how to run a barbecue joint doing that. That mission led to learning how to butcher a whole animal, and the cookbook includes guides to do that, too. It sounds daunting, and it is (you don’t have to do it), but it’s also a way to showcase what the work of making a plate of barbecue really looks like.
I spoke to both about LeRoy's decade-plus career pushing the limits of barbecue, what Forbes had to do to test so many barbecue recipes, and why there are so many delectable beets in this book.