Houston Barbecue Events

Announcing the 2025 BBQ Block Party: The New Houston ‘Q

June 23, 2025

The Houston Barbecue Festival, Goodstock by Nolan Ryan, and Saint Arnold Brewing Company announce the 2025 BBQ Block Party: The New Houston ‘Q celebrating a new generation of pitmasters that will continue greater Houston’s reign as the best and most creative city for barbecue in the state. Like the old saying goes, Houston is an hour away from Houston. It’s a big place to cover for barbecue fans searching for the latest and greatest smoked meats.

Fortunately, the team at HOUBBQ has put in the research and the miles to discover the next wave of Houston-area barbecue talent and will bring them together on July 20th for barbecue aficionados to taste their wares and meet these rising stars in person.

A brief history of brisket in Houston

April 24, 2025

A brief history of brisket in Houston. One of the few certainties of life in Texas is finding brisket on a barbecue menu. This was not always the case. Brisket only became a regular menu item in the 1960s, when Midwest meatpackers made them readily available by shipping them pre-butchered in boxes to restaurants across the country. “Boxed beef” helped brisket to overthrow beef shoulder (clod) as the quintessential Texas barbecue joint menu offering. But brisket as a cut of beef certainly existed before the 1960s. A history of commercially-available brisket in Houston, as documented in the pages of the Houston Chronicle, goes back to early 1900s, and often paralleled

Why Texas sheet cake is the unsung hero of barbecue desserts

April 9, 2025

Why Texas sheet cake is the unsung hero of barbecue desserts. Texas barbecue is, by and large, about tradition. One of its enduring and endearing characteristics is that it delivers comfort in both food and experience. Though many barbecue joints are branching out when it comes to new menu items, we’ll never get our Texas card revoked for ordering brisket, pork ribs, sausage, coleslaw and banana pudding. Still, lingering on the periphery of many menus are items that are either lesser-known or are a regional specialty. For instance, only in recent years have Central Texas joints acknowledged Southeast Texas as a legitimate barbecue region by accepting smoked boudin as a