🍖 Austin\u2019s Best BBQ Trucks: Hill Country Smoke on Wheels

Austin BBQ is dead serious about the basics. Brisket is rubbed with salt and coarse black pepper — nothing else — and smoked low and slow over post oak for 12 to 18 hours. The bark comes out black, the fat renders into the meat, and a clean slice should fall apart when you pinch it. Sauce is on the side, if at all. The bread is white, the pickles are tangy, and the onions are raw.

The Austin trucks doing it right source whole packers from local ranchers, run vertical offset smokers built by hand, and treat the cook like a craft. Beyond brisket, you’ll find sausage — jalapeño cheddar, garlic, original-recipe hot links — made in-house and snapped fresh. Pork ribs come heavy on the smoke ring, beef ribs come big enough to share, and the sides (potato salad, beans cooked in burnt ends, slaw, banana pudding) are taken just as seriously as the meat.

BBQ is the most quintessentially Austin catering choice you can make. Wedding receptions in the Hill Country, corporate offsites at ranches in Dripping Springs, family reunions in Round Rock, fundraisers in Hyde Park — a brisket truck rolling up with smoke pouring off the cooker is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Most Austin BBQ trucks can build a buffet around your headcount, or do plated service for sit-down events.

Tell us your venue, headcount, and date — we’ll match you with the Austin BBQ trucks that can show up on time, feed everybody, and leave the parking lot cleaner than they found it. Late-night brisket sandwiches at a SXSW party? Whole-hog spread at a Driftwood wedding? We’ve got the trucks that handle it.