The Only Place in America That Barbecues Sheep

There is exactly one place in America where barbecue means sheep, and it is Owensboro, Kentucky. Come here on a summer weekend and you will find it at a Catholic church picnic — long brick pits behind the parish hall, a haze of hickory smoke over the parking lot, kettles of stew the size of bathtubs being stirred with what look like boat oars, and hundreds of people lined up with paper plates. The meat is mutton, the stew is burgoo, and the whole thing is run by the same families who have run it for generations. It is the most communal barbecue in the country, and the only one built on a sheep.

Mutton is mature sheep, and it is a strong, rich, almost gamey meat — nothing like the mild lamb most Americans know. Left alone it would be tough and overpowering. So Western Kentucky does two things to it: smokes it low over hickory until it goes dark and tender, and then drowns it in a thin, sharp black dip that cuts the richness clean. The result is unlike any other barbecue in America, and the people who grew up on it will tell you nothing else even comes close.

01Why sheep?

The answer, like a lot of regional food, is an accident of geography and faith. In the 1800s, Western Kentucky raised sheep — for wool, mostly — and when the wool gave out, there was a lot of old mutton to be eaten. It was cheap and plentiful and far too strong to just roast, so the community did what communities did: they smoked it slow and seasoned it hard, and they did it at scale, for everyone at once. The region’s Catholic parishes adopted it for their fundraising picnics, and a humble solution to a surplus of tough meat became a tradition that has now lasted more than a century. Owensboro did not choose mutton because it was the best meat. It chose mutton because it was the meat they had, and then it made it the best.

02The black dip and the burgoo

Two things define Owensboro, and neither is the smoke. The first is the black dip — the local barbecue sauce, though calling it a sauce undersells how thin and sharp it is. It is Worcestershire, vinegar, water, brown sugar, black pepper, and allspice, simmered into a dark, tangy mop that gets brushed on the mutton at the pit and ladled over it on the plate. Its whole job is to cut the richness of the meat, and it does. The second is burgoo — a thick, long-simmered stew of mutton and vegetables, cooked in enormous kettles and stirred for hours, seasoned deep with bay and allspice and pepper. The dip is the flavor; the burgoo is the feast.

03Smoke it dark, season it heavy

This is the opposite of Texas restraint, and proudly so. Mutton is too strong to whisper at, so Owensboro shouts. You smoke a leg or shoulder low over hickory for the better part of a day, until it is dark and falling apart, and then you season it without apology — salt and a heavy hand of black pepper on the meat, and the vinegar-and-allspice dip over all of it. The sharpness is the point. Where a brisket man guards his beef from anything but salt and pepper, the mutton cook reaches for the whole shelf, because the meat can take it and needs it.

Then you eat it the church-picnic way: chopped mutton on soft white bread with the dip ladled over, a bowl of burgoo on the side, pickles and raw onion, and a paper plate balanced on your knee at a folding table full of strangers who feel like neighbors. The meat is unusual. The gathering is the whole point.