Pit beef

Pit beef is a dish of roast beef prepared over a charcoal fire, commonly from top round cuts. The cooked roast is sliced thinly and often served on a Kaiser roll, topped with horseradish or tiger sauce, a mix of horseradish and mayonnaise, and sliced raw onion. Unlike barbecue, the meat is cooked quickly at high temperature, served rare and given only a light smoke flavor. It is a local specialty of the area around Baltimore, Maryland, and historically it was sold at roadside stands. The specific name pit beef dates to the 1970s on Baltimore east side along Pulaski Highway and the dish became popular in the 1980s. It is associated with the working-class neighborhoods around the Bethlehem Sparrows Point shipyard and owes much to the German and Jewish food cultures of the city: the Kaiser roll was popularized by German immigrants and tiger sauce was first produced by the kosher horseradish maker Tulkoff Foods. The HBO series The Wire and the film Pecker gave it national attention.