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Traveling through Maryland’s Eastern Shore used to feel like a trip back in time to me. I’d leave Washington, D.C., heading east on Route 50, and once I’d crossed the majestic Bay Bridge, I was suddenly in another world. This was a world of family-owned restaurants, general stores with wooden front porches, and billboards standing in cornfields. Here were hardworking farmers, seafood packers, and watermen.
On summer weekends, firemen’s associations and church groups used to set up makeshift grills on the side of the road and sell barbecued chicken to neighbors and to weekend travelers. When driving down Route 50, I always watched ahead for one of those telltale columns of smoke billowing skyward from the flat corn country. A column of this smoke meant one thing: a roadside barbecue grill was ahead!
Hand-lettered signs announced these grilling operations. These signs were always on white placards mounted on wooden stakes, the stakes driven into the dirt at the shoulder of the road. The lettering was always red, and often the placard would be decorated with red flame marks. I’d spy a sign reading B-B-Q Chicken, one mile ahead, then a sign reading a half mile, and so on, until finally the grill itself came into view. Tourists and locals would be gathered round the grill, where hundreds of half-chickens cooked at once. People sat in the grass, eating chicken from tinfoil packets.
My favorite of these grills was hosted by the Stevenson United Methodist Church of Berlin, Maryland, a stand just a few miles from Ocean City and the Atlantic Ocean. I stopped there for the first time on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. My companion and I already had keen salt air appetites.
I parked in the dirt-and-gravel lot, and as soon as I got out of the car, I was immediately overwhelmed by the sights and aromas that greeted me. Smoke wafted skyward, filling the air with a pungent, peppery smell. The grill itself was constructed of stacked cinder blocks with iron grillworks atop them, waist-high, maybe ten yards long, and it looked like there were about 500 half-chickens sizzling away. The church folk were going happily about their work, turning the birds and basting them. The sauce they were using was almost clear, yet it had an ever so slightly reddish hue. This was not the thick, red, gooey stuff that is often associated with barbecue. Locals and tourists in colorful Bermuda shorts and sunglasses mingled hungrily about the grills.
One of the pitmasters looked up at me, smiling as he swung his basting brush. “Hello, my friend,” he said. “Got your chicken right here. Just pick the one you like, and we’ll wrap it up for you.” When I told him I wanted one that was very thoroughly done, he used his basting brush to point to the other end of the grill, where there was a huge stack of chickens, low smoke drifting up through them. “Those have been on the longest,” he told me. He was clearly a man who loved his work and believed in what he was doing.
At the other end of the grill, another pitmaster basted the stack of chickens. He was glad to tell me about his church and all about their barbecue operation—but when it came to sauce, he became secretive, as most pitmasters are. Secret sauces are very much a part of the barbecue mystique. When I asked him what was in the sauce he was using, he just said, “I don’t know. The fellow who makes it lives somewhere back out in the woods. I can only find him about once a month.” It’s a pretty safe bet that this was pure fiction, but I loved it nonetheless.
The pitmaster packed up our chickens in aluminum foil bags, tossing in slices of square white bread. Piles of napkins were on hand.
This was to become one of the most memorable dining experiences of my life. My companion and I sat over in a field of grass, eating with our hands only, marveling at how delicious this dish was. It tasted strongly of vinegar and pepper, just spicy enough.
Years ago, before the Bay Bridge was built, vacationers traveling to Ocean City had to cross the Chesapeake Bay by ferry boat, and the roads on the Eastern Shore were simple two- lane affairs meandering through farming country, cows grazing lazily in the fields. For these travelers, reaching the Atlantic was an experience in itself, a long and pleasant day trip, not a nuisance. If it was Sunday afternoon, they would stop and have dinner at a restaurant where food was served family style, bowls passed around the table.
These restaurants were often located in large houses, and after dinner, adults would relax on the front porch and talk with other travelers. Children would play in the front yard, maybe swinging in a tire swing. Some of the men might enjoy a cigar, hooking one thumb in a vest pocket. Needless to say, these restaurants had no drive-thru windows.
As I sat there in the grass, watching the traffic out on Route 50, the tourists’ cars brimming over with colorful beach toys, I felt as if I’d been transported back to that bygone era. I was eating authentic Eastern Shore food, and I was doing so at the leisurely pace of another time.
During the next few summers, I visited many of these roadside barbecue stands. All of them used a sauce that was similar to the one used by the Stevenson United folks. Clearly, this chicken was a regional delicacy in its own right. As time went on, I wanted to be able to prepare this dish at home. Naturally, this meant that I had to do some research on the secret sauce. I knew I’d never find the mythical fellow who lived “somewhere back out in the woods,” so I began scouring old cookbooks and experimenting. I often came close to duplicating the real thing—but not quite.
Finally, I went straight to the source. I wrote to the people of Stevenson United Methodist Church, asking for the recipe for their barbecue sauce. Lo and behold, a kind woman named Carole Davis wrote back and sent me their church cookbook. She told me that the sauce I was curious about was the same one they used at their annual Sunday School picnic, and in fact, she even invited me to the next picnic. The cookbook contained the sauce recipe that had been created by a man named Bob Murray. I’d found the fellow who lived somewhere back out in the woods! The recipe appears below.
Sadly, these barbecue stands have gradually disappeared from the Eastern Shore. When I asked around about this, most people seemed to think that various health departments were responsible for the demise of the roadside grills. This is a likely theory, but I somehow feel as if there might be more to the story. Perhaps when we’re on our way to one of the Atlantic resorts, we don’t want to take the time for a leisurely weekend meal. We want to reach our destination as soon as possible so we can check into our motel or rented house and relax. We just want to make “good time.” This is a sad commentary on modern life: we are in too much of a hurry to stop and enjoy some authentic Chesapeake dining.
Perhaps it’s time we slowed down once in a while. Maybe we can rejuvenate ourselves by simply enjoying an unhurried meal and some conversation afterward. Let’s take time for an old-fashioned Sunday dinner. It might do wonders for our souls. pl
Here’s the Recipe
Mr. Murray’s Sunday School sauce was based on oil, vinegar, pepper, and poultry seasoning. This still didn’t explain the faint reddish color of the sauce I’d seen the roadside pitmasters using. Thus, I began to experiment and eventually discovered I could duplicate this sauce by adding a bit of ketchup, some Old Bay seasoning, and some Tabasco or a few hints of chili powder. At long last, I was able to cook the same dish I’d enjoyed on the side of Route 50. Below is my version of the Stevenson United Methodist Church sauce. This dish requires long, slow grilling, at least two hours.
Mix 1 pint of vinegar with 1/2 pint of cooking oil. Add salt, black pepper, and poultry seasoning to taste. Stir well. At most of the roadside stands, I detected a distinctly salty taste, so you might want to come down heavy on this ingredient. I also noticed quite a bit of poultry seasoning. As you cook your chicken, you should shake additional pepper over it. This is all fairly standard. After this, you are on your own. As mentioned, I like to add dashes of Tabasco, ketchup, and chili powder, and, of course, Old Bay, a staple of Chesapeake cooking. These seasonings are a matter of personal preference. Experiment and create a sauce that is yours only. Become the fellow who lives somewhere back in the woods!
I hope you’ll experiment with this chicken dish. If you do, I believe your efforts will be well rewarded, and you’ll be cooking genuine Chesapeake cuisine. The Bay’s fields and waters provide us with a treasure trove of good food that we can use to prepare time-honored dishes that have been handed down for generations. Let’s enjoy this great bounty.
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