In 1919, Chattanooga’s Charlie Willingham was known as a man who understood barbecue on a grand scale.
To Willingham, pit barbecue was not a quick meal. It was an all-night undertaking that demanded constant attention, slow heat, steady turning, and basting every fifteen or twenty minutes until the meat was hot through and through.
For anyone ambitious enough to feed a thousand people, Willingham’s recipe was staggering: dozens of lambs, pounds of butter and pepper, gallons of vinegar and pickles, bushels of vegetables, hundreds of loaves of bread, and enough hickory wood and charcoal to keep the pits burning for hours.
His instructions offer a fascinating look at early 20th-century Southern barbecue.
Chattanooga’s Charlie Willingham “Barbecue Boss” Pit Barbecue Recipe
Barbecuing is an all night’s sport and requires one’s chief attention.
The success of a good barbecue, according to Mr. Willingham, is to always have the meat hot through and through before basting it.
The fire should be started in the pits about 8 o’clock the night before and the meat cooked for fifteen or sixteen hours slowly, with turning and basting every fifteen or twenty minutes.
In the event one wants to have a barbecue for a thousand people, here is Mr. Willingham’s recipe:
48 lambs, averaging 30 pounds each
48 pounds butter
48 pint-bottles Lee & Perrin sauce
20 pounds salt
1 pound red pepper
8 pounds black pepper
20 gallons vinegar
20 bunches celery
8 bushels tomatoes
1-1/2 bushels tomatoes
1-1/2 bushels onions
1 bushel green peppers
20 gallons pickles
400 loaves of bread
Four loads of hickory wood is used to heat the pit, together with 45 bushels of charcoal to cook same.
96 half-inch irons pointed at one end is needed for the pits.
Source: The Chattanooga News. Chattanooga, Tenn. August 30, 1919.
