Long before “nose to tail” became a common catchphrase, Black pitmasters like Ed Mitchell were cooking whole hogs in North Carolina’s tobacco country. The same oak used to cure each year’s harvest fueled the pits where pork slowly melted and crisped. Mitchell recalls that process in his new cookbook, memoir, and communal history, Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, which he coauthored with his son, Ryan Mitchell, and Wilson-born filmmaker and scholar Zella Palmer.

Mitchell traces the state’s barbecue traditions back to plantations where the eldest enslaved man was called upon to cook at pig killings — and was left with the less desirable parts of the hog. After Emancipation, Black communities cooked for themselves. Growing up in Wilson in the 1950s and ’60s, Mitchell joined the circle of Southern men who sang and drank and told stories as they cooked. Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque is that kind of gathering, too. In reflections tucked among recipes for souse meat and sweet potato soufflé, Mitchell tells his own story — how he was drafted and served in Vietnam, and how the hog he cooked to comfort his recently widowed mother, Doretha, launched the transformation of the family grocery store into one of the most celebrated barbecue businesses in the country.

His loved ones share their stories, too. Ryan recalls childhood memories, while Doretha advises readers on store-bought vegetables (second-best) and self respect (essential). Mitchell himself outlines how to honor the heritage of the pitmasters who came before. “I barbeque not because I love hoisting 150-pound hogs over my shoulders,” he writes, “but because I want to keep the tradition of my African American ancestors alive.” Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque invites everyone to join him in tending that fire.