The ArnieTex cookbook is out and making us hungry

At the McAllen home of Arnie Segovia, there is always something cooking. The championship BBQ pitmaster has been grilling and smoking meat for decades.

But it’s only in the last few years that Segovia’s been able to share his secrets to barbecuing with folks all over the world as ArnieTex, winning over millions of followers across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Segovia’s next venture is his cookbook “ArnieTex: Over 100 Recipes for Mexican-American Cooking and Texas-Style BBQ.” Kicking off a book tour from mid July to early August, Segovia stopped by the Texas Standard studios to talk about the book, his success and what it means to share his cooking with the world.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: You have a new book out today, “ArnieTex: Over 100 Recipes for Mexican-American Cooking and Texas-Style BBQ.” More than 100 recipes. Where do you find the time to come up with these recipes? 

Arnie Segovia: You know, there’s always inspiration, right? Honestly, we started with just the food that I grew up with, that my mom, my grandma, my grandpa used to cook. My grandpa was a chef.

Of course, my dad liked to barbecue a lot, like every other Mexican dad. And so a lot of that came from there. I’ve always, always, always enjoyed cooking, and I love to cook.

You’ve had quite a career trajectory. You were telling me a little bit earlier – you were in the car business before you were doing this?

Yes, sir. I was a car salesman, service advisor, and a used car manager, and then a used-car dealer for a very long time. 

» MORE: What’s the secret ingredient to ArnieTex’s success? Easy – it’s family.

What was the path from working in cars to now being one of the biggest content creators out there? 

Well, I was very fortunate when I lived in Weslaco many years back. I worked for a dealer, Expressway Motors, and I was very fortunate with my boss, Duane Looka – shout out to Duane Looka, my ex-boss – he was a super cool dude, and he allowed us to barbecue every day.

I had 12 salespeople, and we all liked to hunt, fish and barbecue. And so if I wasn’t cooking, somebody else would be cooking, right? This is literally every day, six days a week for years. So we never went to lunch. We always just cooked at work.

And I would also, on Sundays, I had friends that wanted me to cook brisket for them, so I might cook 10, 15, 20 briskets over Saturday night and people would come pick them up or I’d deliver them on Sundays. And that’s the passion, I guess, that drives everything at the end of the day. 

I mean, in a way you are now living the dream. You’re working with your family. You’re getting to cook, which is clearly a passion for you.

You’re bringing back some of these recipes from your grandparents’ generation. Tell us a little bit about some of the recipes you’re sharing that have been handed down.

Well, like I said, my background is mainly barbecue, right? I mean, that’s what I did. I competed. I was one of the winningest Texas competition barbecue cooks, was one of the two first guys that got inducted into the International Barbeque Cookers Association hall of fame back in 2017, I believe it was. And so that was a huge honor, too.

But when we started our YouTube, you know, we did a lot of barbecue stuff and a little bit of grilling. And then actually the rice and the bean videos, the charro bean videos are what catapulted us and got us kind of going into the other direction as well. We were recording some charro beans just for fun, to have something different.

And so I kind of took one of the cameras off the tripod, I asked mom to make me some rice because we always love to eat rice with beans, right? And so, I just kind of handheld recorded her and asked her some questions and lo and behold, that became our first million-view video. And I’m like, rice, really?

I think it was like 4 million views now. That’s crazy.

Yeah, it’s definitely way up there for sure. I think it’s our highest performing video still today.

What do you think it is that – I mean, you mentioned earlier, you said, “Look, there are a lot of barbecue videos out there.” And you’ve also spiced things up, I got to say something about some of your habanero sauces.

But I want to ask you about what it is that you think makes yours stand out, because it does seem like people are responding. You mentioned, you know, like folks are seeing you in your backyard; it’s your own kitchen there. There’s something about the authenticity that people seem to be responding to here.

Yeah, I think it’s that more than anything, I mean, I don’t know how to be anything else other than myself. I try to just be myself and have fun while I’m doing it. I think cooking should be fun for everybody.

And we make mistakes – thank god for editing, right? Sometimes we recook certain recipes three, four times before we get it just right.

I’ll share a little story with you guys. I have a chicharrón recipe in my cookbook, and it turned out great, you know. But now we’re recording a video, and I said I want to show people how to do it three different ways So I told Dan and Terry, my team, I said look we’ll do all three of them in one day. It took me six days.

The one that’s in the cookbook was the hardest. I had such a challenge to get it to puff up …

It’s not enough just the way it tastes, it’s gotta look right.

It’s got to look good and be good, yeah. And the biggest thrill, and I think what helps us a lot too, is a lot of people will comment in the comment section of all of our platforms and say, “oh, I made this recipe. It’s spot on. It’s great. It’s super good.”

So people read that, right? I think that adds a little bit of authenticity and a little more credibility, that the recipes we’re putting out there are really good to make at home.

Are they 100% authentic, original? I don’t know that anything really is when it comes to cooking, but they’re good. They’re actually super delicious. So that’s the bottom line.

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

Well, a big part of it is the iteration. I mean, you just keep on working on it and improving. And that doesn’t make it less authentic as such. I mean you know, it’s part of the way recipes live.

But there is one specific dish I’m told is unique to the Rio Grande Valley. You can get it at virtually any Mexican restaurant down there, but outside of the area, pretty impossible to find. It’s called the botana. And you have a recipe in your book. Can you explain what that is?

Basically a botana, I call it nachos on steroids, right? Because in general in the Valley, when you order a botana, it’s either for two, three, or six people – those are the three most common ones. And it’s just a big old platter of nachos with beans and onions and jalapenos, and sometimes there’ll be pico on the side; they’ll have quesadillas.

It’s a big ol’ platter. It’s kind of like a party platter, you know, like a charcuterie board, if you want to call it that, right, now that we have that term in our modern times. And so everybody around the table just basically gets a spoon or a fork or uses their fingers and pulls out as many nacho chips, put it on their plate.

They usually serve it with tortillas too, so you can actually roll some of that up into a tortilla if you want, you know, with guacamole and stuff. That’s really all you need. I mean, that’s a full meal for everybody.

Arnie, you do this punch at the end of your videos. Where did that come from?

I didn’t really invent it. Dan [my son] followed a guy online that sold, Parker Walbeck, their courses for camera and videography and stuff. And so I watched some of those, too, and he would always close his video with a pshh, but he didn’t say boom, he would just say pshhh and he’d throw a punch out like that right? And, you know, credit where credit’s due, that’s where I got that idea from.

And the little dance, I’ll share this with you guys: When I was a manager in the car business, I had one salesman – shout out to Ruben Gonzalez – whenever he would make a big sale and had a good commission man, he would be “whoop, whoop” and he would dance and stuff.

And that kind of stayed with me too, you know? So when something’s really cool, really good and the recipe’s fantastic, I do a little dance sometimes, you know, just cause it’s like so good.

Listen to an extended interview with Arnie Segovia in the audio player at the top of this story.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.