Regional RBs: Maryland’s Pit Beef

The US has a number of regional roast beef sandwiches, each with its own distinct characteristics. Buffalo’s Beef on Weck features a caraway-and-salt-topped kummelweck roll; Boston’s North Shore 3-way has a very specific combination of American cheese, mayonnaise, and James River BBQ sauce on an onion roll; Chicago’s Italian Beef is served in a long, dense “French roll” with sweet or hot peppers and in its ultimate form takes a bath in beef juices before being wrapped in foil and handed off to the customer. There are others–LA’s French Dip, New Orleans’ debris po’boy, the hot beef sandwiches served at diners across South Dakota (and just about everywhere else in the country, with different names–the Manhattan in Indiana, the Commercial in Western Minnesota)

The Baltimore area has its own roast beef specialty as well, a sandwich so beloved in Charm City that, during his plea deal negotiation in The Wire, Wee Bey Brice admitted to a few more murders in exchange for a beef sandwich, “medium rare, lotta horseradish.”

The beef sandwich in question was a Pit Beef sandwich from Wee Bey’s favorite spot–they never named the shop specifically other than saying they were going on a beef run for the good stuff on Pulaski, but that shop was played in the show by longtime Baltimore stand Chaps Pit Beef, which opened in 1987 as a shack selling pit beef sandwiches in the parking lot of a nightclub also called Chaps (now a strip club called the Gentlemen’s Gold Club) beside Pulaski Highway on the northeast side of Baltimore.

The History of Maryland BBQ and Pit Beef

The history of pit beef can’t be traced back to the early 20th Century like many of America’s signature sandwiches–rather it was in the 1970s along that same stretch of Pulaski Highway that pit beef came about. It was an industrial area, the “Pulaski Industrial Area” as it’s still called, situated north of the Port of Baltimore and the steel mills of Sparrows Point, miles from the inner harbor, Fell’s Point, downtown, the touristy areas of Baltimore I mainly saw on my one trip there in 2019.

But in the 1970s even those areas had not yet seen the investment they have now–the historical homes in Fell’s Point were in decay and the National Aquarium had yet to be built in the Inner Harbor. Pulaski Highway was built starting in the 1930s to connect Baltimore with nearby communities like Rosedale, Maryland, continuing northeast to the Delaware border. The stretch of that road on the outskirts of Baltimore was, by some accounts, dotted with shacks selling pit beef by the 70s end, but even with an origin so recent, within living memory, I have yet to find more details than Pulaski Highway, 1970s for Pit Beef’s beginnings.

The barrier for entry in making pit beef is relatively low. It is sometimes called Baltimore Barbecue, but unlike other forms of American barbecue–which involve “low and slow” cooking over long periods of time, good for rendering the connective tissues in tougher cuts of meat into gelatin and infusing them with smoky flavors and aromas–pit beef uses lean cuts like top and bottom round, cooking them quickly directly over charcoal, blackening the outside of the roast while leaving the insides rare-to-medium rare.

Or, as Allison Robicelli succinctly and delightfully put it in a 2019 Washington Post piece on the sandwich:

Barbecue tastes like smoke, pit beef tastes like fire.

Allison Robicelli, Here are 11 of the best places to enjoy pit beef — Maryland’s answer to barbecue. Washington Post, September 21, 2019

Some phrases are so perfect that I wish I’d thought of them.

On that previous trip to Baltimore I referenced earlier, Mindy and I did make the pilgrimage out Pulaski Highway to Chaps–it was on my radar thanks to both the aforementioned TV show The Wire and also a visit Anthony Bourdain made with Jay Landsman from The Wire in a 2009 episode of No Reservations. (An aside: the absolute best part of that episode though was when, over crabcake and oysters at Mo’s Seafood, Snoop Pearson mocked Bourdain’s crush on Pam Grier. “So back in the day you wanted to holler at Pam Grier?” “Oh, totally.” “You wouldn’t be able to handle that. That’s too much for you. (laughs) “

At Chaps, we ordered a medium rare pit beef sandwich and some gravy fries. The Chaps sandwich came on a simple but sturdy potato roll, beef sliced thin, piled high, and unadorned by condiments. At one end of the dining area was a condiment bar with onions, pickles, red pepper relish, prepared horseradish, barbecue sauce, mustard, and the Tiger sauce whose horseradish bite is a signature part of the pit beef sandwich’s flavor.

The gravy fries were a simple order of hand-cut fries doused in a brown beef gravy and are a staple of Baltimore-area diners and greasy spoons. They were fine, not terribly exciting but tasty enough, good fries swimming in a gravy that could have been a touch thicker, quickly getting soggy. The pit beef sandwich was good enough that we went back and ordered another (and had them slice it cleanly in half this time). The rare beef was tender, sliced very thin and tasting of the same burning charcoal smell that filled the air at Chaps. The bun was sturdy and soft, but the bun was not the point–the beef was, and the various condiments available for dressing it. At the time, I liked the combination of a thin, vinegary local barbecue sauce with the sharp and creamy Tiger sauce–sort of an Arby Sauce / Horsey Sauce analog I thought, but on much better quality beef.

I did not on that trip get to stop at any of the other pit beef purveyors whose names are often mentioned when discussing the best beef in (and around) Baltimore–west suburban Pioneer is often in the conversation, though far from the Pulaski Highway origin of the sandwich; a tavern called Baker’s is often mentioned, another place called Charcoal Style, a stand in the Baltimore Farmer’s Market, etc. I thought that when I finally got around to writing about the sandwich that I’d get myself back out to Baltimore and really hit all these far-flung stands.

Instead, this time around I’ve made it myself. Pit beef doesn’t take much–a big hunk of bottom round with a nice fat cap, seasoned simply with salt and pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, maybe some paprika; and a cheap charcoal grill.

I used lump charcoal, and following some advice I found online, I built a 2-stage fire, with charcoal on one side and an empty space on the other, to allow for indirect heating. I think that you could probably do this particular roast over direct heat with results at least as good, if not better, though you would need to constantly watch and move the roast. As it is, I not only used the indirect method, I also added a few chunks of cherry wood, belying the Allison Robicelli quote above–my pit beef tasted of both smoke and fire, and I liked it that way.

The meat roasted fat-side down over direct heat for a time, then fat-side up, then over indirect heat until the temperature was close to 115° F internal, at which point I sliced off the fat cap and moved the now-exposed meat back directly over the fire to char some more.

This resulted in a nicely charred roast with a good, rare interior–but there is also some well-cooked meat outside the rare interior. Keeping the meat over direct heat and moving it more frequently might allow the beef to remain a consistent pink-to-rare throughout the interior while keeping the charred exterior. When I’m roasting a 12 lb. bottom round and I get one shot at it, I’ll use the tried-and-true method, but next time, maybe I’ll give that a shot. After a 20 minute rest, I sliced the meat as thinly as I could on my deli slicer while the roast still warm and made sandwiches immediately.

To accompany the meat, I made Baltimore-style Tiger sauce, using mayonnaise, sour cream, hot prepared horseradish, Colman’s English mustard powder, salt and pepper.

My sandwich: a Kaiser roll that I reheated in the oven for a few minutes to get a nice crust, pit beef with plenty of good reddish rare bits, a couple spoonfuls of Tiger sauce, and a few rings of white onion.

This is a terrific take on the roast beef sandwich. Pit beef’s combination of a charred exterior with a crimson-rare center, tasting of charcoal fire and a bit of the sweet fruit smoke I added, piled high, succulent and savory, punctuated by the pungent crispness of onion and the sinus-singeing horseradish sting, little softened by the creamy sauce that carried it, well-enveloped by a bread roll that was just sturdy enough to hold this ensemble together but not notable enough to draw attention away from the interplay of savory beef and piquant condimentation.

It was so good I ate another just like it. And in fact I have had several of these sandwiches over the past week. A 12 pound beef bottom round goes a long way, sliced thin and piled into buns in 6 or 8 ounce increments.

It’s a lot of beef to eat, and we’ve had to get creative using it up–Italian pit beef, pit beef stroganoff, etc. As you can imagine, it’s been a rewarding week as a result. And while I do hope one day to get back to Baltimore and try those other pit beef stands, I’m already looking forward to making my own pit beef again.