Across the Meataverse
As I was crafting the 2026 Meatwave calendar, I noticed a few of my meat-pun names aligned well with musical themes and decided to expand on that and give each cookout this year a genre-specific playlist along with my usual themed menus—the two mostly will have no relation to each other. Some of the Meatwave names are very directly taken from song titles, while others are more of a stretch, like Across the Meataverse, which was originally named when thinking about the Across the Spider-verse movie, but then shifted to The Beatles' track Across the Universe. Building from that, I made a playlist of all Beatles covers, which was super fun to craft and discover a lot of great renditions I had never heard before. Since music is integral to the The Meatwave this year, I'm embedding the playlist at the top of each post so y'all can get a sampling of the tunes that were enjoyed along with the food.
The food menu revolved around regional barbecue sauces, with the first being the ubiquitous sweet tomato style from Kansas City. I finally visited that smoked meat mecca last spring and crammed four stops into a 36 hour period, with my favorite bite being a burnt end Z-man at Joe's. So I knew I needed to share that with my friends here in NC and smoked up a couple brisket points which I then cubed and piled onto kaiser rolls with melted provolone, barbecue sauce, and onion rings. This brought me right back to Joe's and I was pretty damn proud of my rendition.
I couldn't leave half of my guests without a Z-man, so I also did a vegetarian version that used my tried-and-true barbecue tofu method. Each round of these that I put out seemed to disappeared instantly, so it's safe to say the veggie Z-man was as big of a hit as the meaty one.
The next sauce I wanted to make was the thinner, Texas-style mustard sauce which have been some of favorites from sauce reviews lately, like the excellent sauce from Goldee's. I think I did a pretty good job with the recipe and made a big batch that I spread across three different dishes. The first were these Texas-style spare ribs that were given a simple salt and pepper rub, then finished with just a thin layer of the tangy mustard sauce.
Then the sauce also adorned these potato skins that were stuffed with pastrami I still had on hand from the closing Meatwave of 2025. That salty, peppery beef was matched up with pickles, Swiss cheese, the mustard sauce, and chives to create an incredibly hearty and flavor packed spud.
Lastly, I gave some grilled cabbage a dressing of mustard sauce along with a sprinkling of both bacon and chives. I hadn't done grilled cabbage in a while, but it's so simple and delicious, I made it a late addition once I realized ingredients I already had on hand would probably make a great incarnation of this dish, and it did.
The final dish in the photo line-up was actually the first I had finished and put out for guests when they arrived—spring vegetable salad with Alabama white barbecue sauce. I often recommend white sauces a possible dressings in my sauce reviews, but rarely use them for that purpose myself, so wanted to do a recipe that did just that. This salad consisted of grilled asparagus, broccolini, and sugar snap peas combined with spring mix, mozzarella, pistachio, and radish plus the white sauce to make a fresh, but also pretty filling seasonal salad.
The kick off of the Meatwave season tends to get a good crowd, and that was true once again despite a rather chilly March weather. We start the partial roll call off here with Kristin, Kellyn, Sue, Chris, and Juliana. Juliana brought along an amazingly light and fluffy lemon cake that I personally loved.
Here we have Ryan and Ian striking a pose.
Jenny and Lindsey are keeping warm as the sun starts to set and the real chill begins setting in.
I was able to catch a snap of Kim and John as they were on their way out.
And we have the last group standing here with Meredith, Bryan, Annie, Kris, Benji, Myself, and Evan.
And now to the more important canine line-up with a short appearance by Tay-tay.
And a new Meatwaver this season, Dotty, who we hope to see more of as I look forward to another year of great cookouts enjoyed with good music and amazing people.
