On Thursday, Mr. Vaughn became a walking milestone in the history of Texas barbecue when Texas Monthly announced that it had hired him to be its first barbecue editor, a position that exists at no other magazine in America. National barbecue experts said Mr. Vaughn would be the only full-time barbecue critic on the staff of a major newspaper or magazine. He will be part of Texas Monthly’s ever-expanding barbecue franchise — the magazine has its own dedicated barbecue Web site, a barbecue finder app for cellphones and a once-every-five-years behemoth issue that lists the state’s top 50 barbecue joints. It holds the annual BBQ Festival in Austin, which last year drew a crowd of 3,000.

“It speaks to the extraordinary explosion and interest in barbecue over the last five to eight years,” said Jim Shahin, a freelance journalist and associate professor of magazine journalism at Syracuse University who also writes about barbecue and grilling for The Washington Post. “Even in Texas, where you already had a major barbecue culture, it has only grown. It’s surprising that Texas Monthly hadn’t done something like this years ago.”

Mr. Shahin and other barbecue writers said Mr. Vaughn — a native of Ohio, resident of Dallas, husband of a woman who does not particularly care for barbecue and father of two toddlers — was the right man for the job. Mr. Vaughn estimates that, since he began keeping track in 2007, he has eaten at more than 600 barbecue joints in the country, with more than 500 of those being in Texas. In five days last week, he had eaten barbecue at six locations.