Long before barbecue had hashtags, it had a mailing list. The original BBQ Porch began in the mid‑1990s as a place for cooks, eaters and the occasional contrarian to argue — politely, mostly — about smoke, salt, time and wood. When the original site went dark, the conversations didn't. They lived on in inboxes, printouts pinned above smokers, and the muscle memory of a few thousand pitmasters.
This archive is a reconstruction. It is not the original site, and it does not pretend to be. It is what we could rebuild from old mailing‑list digests, Wayback snapshots, screenshots emailed by readers, and the kind of recipes that get handed down on grease‑stained index cards.
What you'll find here
The archive is organized around the same hubs the original community kept returning to: the FAQ for first questions, the recipes for second courses, brining and science for the people who couldn't stop asking why, and restaurant reviews for the road.
How it was rebuilt
Every page here was cross‑checked against at least two sources where possible — a mailing‑list post and a reader's memory, or a screenshot and a recipe card. Where sources disagreed, we kept both and noted the difference. Where they agreed, we trusted the porch.
"The fire teaches patience, and the smoke teaches honesty." — from a 1998 list post, author unknown.
What's missing
Plenty. Whole threads, photo galleries, the regional sauce wars of '02. If you used the old porch, your bookmarks and screenshots are probably more complete than ours. We'd love to see them.
Contribute
If you have old emails, photos, recipes or memories, send them along. Every contribution gets credited, and nothing gets posted without permission.
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