Pat Martin & the Students of BBQ

The Beginning

Pitmaster Pat Martin has a history of success moving in directions most people wouldn’t expect. After graduating from Freed-Hardeman University, he moved to the bond trading desk at financial firms in Chicago and New York City. You’d think his trajectory would lead him up the corporate ladder to a life of wearing suits and wingtip shoes and earning big bank. Instead, Martin decided to dedicate his life to another important skill he learned while in college in West Tennessee, cooking whole hog barbecue. Whole hog being the key words there. And now he’s taking steps to pass on his knowledge to a new generation of apprentice pitmasters at his locations of Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint.

“When I was in college, there were eleven joints in Lexington, TN that cooked whole hogs. (Most BBQ joints …do what…? ) Now it’s down to four. It hit me a few years ago, that if I was going to continue to grow, these skills need to go on.” As Martin’s has continued to expand with four locations in two states (and at least two more on the drawing board), Martin knows he can’t do it all himself. “I wanted (needed?) some apprentices to expand our bench. We’ve missed out on some opportunities in the past to grow because we didn’t have employees who could cook a hog. I go to great extremes to do it the right way.”

Those extremes include moving away from the modern gas-fired rotisserie smokers that are stashed in back of some barbecue joints that allow meat (parts?) to be cooked low and slow with very little human interaction. Martin’s uses these “barbecuebots” as well, but Pat Martin is consciously moving back to the days of low-tech live fire cooking. Every Martin’s location is built around an open brick pit which brings diners closer to the experience of a whole hog cooking over smoldering wood and smoke.

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