No one likes to really talk about it, and several of them will make excuses and offer explanations. But talk to enough barbecue experts long enough, and a sad truth starts to emerge. The number of people who want to smoke a brisket, who can smoke a brisket, seems to be suffering a serious decline.
“A lot of people just don’t seem to know how to do it,” says Gary Burks, who has done a little catering, a little restaurant smoking, and a little backyard barbecue for as long as he can remember. “They just don’t know brisket and what to do it with it.”
Granted, it may be difficult to believe that the brisket — the staple of
Or blame it on the increasing difficulties of running a neighborhood restaurant in a world dominated by Chili’s and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. Says 28-year veteran Frank Hart of Back Country Barbecue on upper
What he is, though — along with more than a few others throughout the neighborhood — is a person who still believes in the power of the smoke. They may be restaurateurs or caterers, professionals or amateurs, but they still have the same goal — to make the best barbecue they can.
“When you get a bunch of people together, they’re still going to want a brisket,” says Abe M. Burton, who once smoked 47 briskets for a barbecue at
Taking their time
Smoking a brisket into tenderness is not cooking as much as it is patience. Leave it there. And leave it there. And then leave it there some more. Says Hart: “If it doesn’t cook long enough, it will taste fine, but it won’t be tender. And what’s the point of that?”
In fact, ask a barbecue master for the secret to their success, and it comes down to time every time. At least 12 hours, and even longer, if possible. Most professionals start the meat in the late afternoon, let it smoke over night, and don’t really worry about it until the next morning. It’s not unusual, they say, to let a brisket cook for 16 or 18 or even 24 hours.
This, it seems, makes more of a difference than the wood used to smoke the meat. Much has been made over the years about the merits of mesquite vs. hickory vs. pecan (or whatever wood seems to be popular at the moment), but what’s more important is controlling the heat so that the brisket is neither under- nor over-cooked. If there is a rule of thumb for these things, it’s an hour a pound at somewhere around 200 degrees (hence 12 to 15 hours for a 12- to 15-pound brisket, a typical restaurant cut). There is also a fair amount of food science involved, dealing with effect of heat on proteins and the boiling point of water.
But, as any barbecue master will point out, this is as much art as science, and any guideline is just a place to start. Oliver Rhein, whose barbecue experience goes back 24 years, even has a technique that involves smoking the meat and then letting it rest in foil in the refrigerator for four or five hours before warming it up again.
In this, brisket is probably the most difficult piece of barbecue to perfect. In the long and quarrelsome (and, by now, a bit tiresome) debate about which makes the best barbecue, something that is usually overlooked is that Memphis-style or Carolina-style barbecue starts with a significant advantage. It’s pork ribs or pork shoulder, and neither represents the challenges of the brisket. Ribs have bones, which add flavor to the meat. Pork shoulder is fattier, and that adds flavor to the meat.
Georgia author Joe Dabney, who knows as much about pork barbecue as anyone has a right to know, notes that every great pork pit master he has ever talked to cites that fat as one key to success, since it keeps the pork moist throughout the long cooking process. A brisket, on the other hand, is a tough, leaner piece of beef that, as Julia Child once put it, “is never tender like steak, but should be pleasantly chewable and have a real beefy flavor.” So anyone who can produce a smoked brisket that doesn’t taste like a man’s belt that has been sprayed with hickory room freshener has truly accomplished something.
And, in our neighborhood, they’re doing that. The numbers are amazing — 3,500 pounds a week at one restaurant, 3,000 pounds at another, 2,100 pounds at a third. And that doesn’t include the smoked turkey and the smoked pork and the ribs and the sausage. Even caterers, who don’t smoke every day, can do 200 to 400 pounds of brisket during a busy month.
“It’s just an all-American dish,” says Hart. “It lends itself to different flavors, to different ways of cooking it. It’s just so
On the side
This raises the touchy question of sauce. Traditional
There seems to be a consensus, though, that a bit of sauce served on the side, a sauce that’s a little thick, a little sweet and a little spicy, is acceptable. What no one should do is baste with any kind of sugary sauce during cooking, since the sugar could burn and char the meat. Says Burks: “The thing to remember is that brisket is not about the sauce, it’s about the meat.”
Surprisingly, there is less uncertainty about side dishes. We may live in a modern, all is possible culinary world, where anyone can get organic arugula or vanilla beans at a moment’s notice, but when it comes to barbecue, tradition rules. Mustard potato salad. Cole slaw. Baked beans. Pinto beans. Macaroni and cheese. And even grocery store white bread. Says
Because, in the end, barbecue is about that kind of tradition and about time, whether it’s the time to prepare it or the time to appreciate it or the time it has been around. By some accounts, that has been hundreds of years, when the first Anglo settlers were forced to figure out a way to make a tough cut of beef edible.
“Why do I like to do it?” asks Burks. “Well, because I know brisket and I can make a good one. But also because I’m happy to sit down and serve someone else and watch them enjoy it.”
