I've written before about my interest in preserving regional culinary traditions [0]. And here in the South, there's no better tradition than barbecue. Now Atlanta isn't necessarily known for its ‘cue like, say, Kansas City or North Carolina. But native Atlantans like nothing better than tucking into a mess of meat that's been cooked all day long in a pit or a smoker.

So in the spirit of our adopted homeland south of the Mason Dixon line, my husband and I decided to try it for ourselves. This early in the year, the produce pickings at the Morningside Farmer's Market [1] were slim, but the coolers at Riverview Farms' [2] stand were full of frozen cuts of beef and pork, all organically raised in the North Georgia Mountains. We bought a 2 1/2 pound shoulder roast and headed home to look up some recipes, stopping on the way for some charcoal and hickory chips.

The day of our barbecue was overcast and threatening rain, but we'd already invited all of the non-vegetarians in our family to dinner, so there was no turning back. My husband Chip's the grillmaster in our family, so he stoked our Weber [3] grill with coals, scattered some soaked hickory chips on top, and rubbed the pork with a spice blend made of sweet paprika, brown sugar, salt, pepper, mustard, garlic powder and ground New Mexican chiles.

The recipe, incidentally, is one we adapted from Steven Raichlen's excellent book BBQ USA [4] (Workman Publishing, 2003), and is for a North Carolina-style pulled pork.

An hour or so into cooking, just as Chip was lighting the chimney starter [5] to add another batch of hot coals, it started pouring. Lightning, thunder, the works. And here's Chip, standing next to our metal grill, under our big old oak tree. But we refused to finish the cooking in the oven — after all, wouldn't that be cheating?

Donning a raincoat and baseball cap, and scurrying in and out of the house, Chip bravely finished the job. Our roast took about 4 hours and emerged blackened and fragrant with woodsmoke and spices. Since my knife skills are better than Chip's, I was assigned the task of "pulling" it — literally shredding the meat into tiny pieces. As I pulled away the fat and bone, we were dismayed to see that we were left with a tiny pile of actual meat. Maybe that's why Raichlen's original recipe called for a 5- to 7-pound roast.

But what we did end up with was pure heaven. Chip mixed up a barbecue sauce from cider vinegar, ketchup, brown sugar, hot sauce and seasonings, based on Raichlen's recipe for Lexington Vinegar Sauce. Raichlen writes that when it comes to barbecue sauce in North Carolina, "Folks in the eastern part of the state like a sauce that's based on vinegar, while in the west they prefer a sauce that's slightly sweeter and tinted red with ketchup." The sauce we made fell into the latter category. And, as is done at Lexington Barbecue, the restaurant that inspired the recipes we were using, we mixed up some of the sauce with shredded cabbage to make a slaw, and served our pulled pork in sandwich form, piling cheap white hamburger buns with pork and slaw. The sauce was sour and spicy, the perfect counterpoint for the rich, sweet pork, and the crisp slaw added a nice crunch.

Next time, we'll definitely make enough for seconds.