did i ever tell you about the job i had between senior year and college? it was my third “real” job, the first being banquet hall waitress and the second working at a bank (where i embezzled money from my own college fund to secretly buy records. the more things change, the more they stay the same). anyway i don’t even remember how i got the job working at sears telemarketing in downers grove. no one i knew worked there although i eventually became friends with a couple geeky guys. we bonded over portillo’s italian beef and mocking the perspective sears credit card customers we were supposed to call (names to cross off the list: phuc vu, riddleburger).
around this same time i became obsessed with bbq ribs, triggered by the mike royko ribfest which started up in 1983. pork spareribs were always a big deal in chicago, although chicago doesn’t really have it’s “own” style of bbq. most of the bbq in chicago stems from the kansas city / memphis tradition, and i have to assume it came up with the black workers who migrated north from those areas… in addition to the gazillions of pigs which migrated and temporarily resided at the stockyards, before being turned into pork chops, sausages and spareribs.
the butt that made chicago famous
anyway, the first winner of royko’s ribfest was charlie robinson, who became instantly famous and started hawking his sauce everywhere. i doubt i ever ate there. i learned about bbq the same way i learned about most all cooking – i read, voraciously. then i cooked.
that summer of 1984 i was cooking up huge kettles of ribs every weekend, along with my special bbq sauce. i’d bring it in to work (we worked second shift) and we’d eat the leftovers for dinner. my coworkers were so enthralled by the ribs that on our last day pete and the other guy whose name i can’t remember offered to steal the giant winnie the pooh sitting in the lobby except we couldn’t figure out how to get it in the car because it was so big. we settled for the small one, which i took with me to college.
so in 1984, not knowing any better, i basically marinated the ribs overnight in soy sauce and worchestershire, and threw them on the weber with direct heat and white coals. i hovered over them for a couple hours, turning, moving coals, and generally making sure they didn’t get burned. the better method would have been slow indirect heat, but i was young and naive.
bbqing up spareribs at our old house circa 1987
i wish i could tell you what was in the sauce, but that delicious recipe is lost in the sands of time. i never actually measured anything, but i used to vaguely keep track of the ingredients. generally speaking i put in everything i could lay my hands on, but the operative items were onion, garlic, cayenne, tomato paste, vinegar, soy sauce and worchestershire, honey, and anything else which seemed like a good idea. what i was looking for was a tangy tomato sauce which was sweet, had depth, and then, at the very end, developed some (but not a lot) heat. i cooked it all day, adding and adjusting ingredients until i finally nailed the taste and effect i was after.
spareribs on dickens, summer of 1997
later, i got into regional bbq. what a fascinating world. if you know nothing about it, the current issue of saveur gives a really good overview. the interesting thing is that bbq is mostly ignored in regular cookbooks. there’s not a single bbq recipe in the 900+ pages of joy of cooking (which i personally think is better used as a doorstop than a cookbook). the new york times heritage cookbook has a few recipes, but barely grazes the surface and utterly ignores texas brisket, north carolina bbq, alabama white sauce, or santa maria style tri-tip. and one would think brisket would feature in the best of the best from texas cookbook, seeing as it’s culled from the “best” cookbooks. nothing. and nothing in the neiman marcus cookbook a taste of texas, either. most amusing is the reference to bbq in the cookbook put out by the junior league of brazosport, texas (coastal cuisine):
BACKYARD BARBECUE, TEXAS STYLE
Serves 2,000
23 beef briskets
800 pounds sausage
coleslaw (with recipe, using 250 pounds of cabbage)
the recipe instructions state: “Mix well, and feed the multitudes!”
thanks for nothing, methodist men’s barbecue, first united methodist church of lake jackson.
the book does include a recipe for brisket, but since it calls for putting the brisket in the oven. . . well, it goes without saying that if you put it in the oven, it ain’t bbq.
so getting back to my own personal bbq history, i did the whole marinade / sauce thing for years. it makes for a good rib, and chicken, but that’s where it ends. i knew nothing about pork butt or dry rub until probably 1995, when a pretty decent bbq joint opened up on southport, serving all manner of bbq styles. you would order whatever you wanted, and then get a selection of sauces on the side. i was astonished to have flavorful pulled pork with nothing more than a east north carolina vinegar / red pepper sauce. parenthetically, anyone who knows jack shit about bbq knows that north carolina is split east west by sauce. in the east they use a red pepper vinegar sauce, while in the west the transition is made to a sweeter, more tomato based sauce. if you encounter a mustard based sauce, you have crossed into south carolina.
the place on southport really piqued my interest into the regional variations. parenthetically, they also made a fabulous starter of southern fried chicken livers [with a lot of cayenne in the flour] which were absolutely delicious. very easy to make at home except be forewarned that liver tends to spit when put in hot fat due to the high moisture content. cover that pan or you’ll make a mess and risk being splattered with hot oil.
when i moved to california i got a big green egg and thus began my true education in bbq. oh how i love my big green egg! it can gun up to 800, or stay slow and stead at 180 for six hours. the egg and i have made innumerable ribs, dozens of tri tips, countless pork butts, and FINALLY a successful texas style brisket.
looks like a pork butt to me
i’d tried to make brisket the first time a couple years ago. it did not work out. the bullshit recipe i used called for wrapping said brisket in foil, which pretty much makes it like a smokey boiled beef. the next time around i didn’t wrap it in foil, and so it more closely resembled a charred lump of post oak, the traditional fuel used to make brisket. smothered in sauce it was somewhat edible, but not what i’d call good. this confused and frustrated me, as i’d been nailing pork butt for years. [you. you with the dirty mind. you know i mean i was bbq'ing a pork shoulder to delectable tenderness. jfc, is nothing sacred with you?]
speaking of, here’s the trick to pork butt, which is the easiest big piece of meat to do.
first you need to make a rub. you will see various recipes on the internets for rub. i have no secret recipe and again, i don’t remember what i put in it, exactly, except that more or less it includes:
paprika
salt
onion salt
garlic salt
little bit of brown sugar
powdered mustard (coleman’s – very hot. use sparingly.)
i taste it – you have to use a lot of paprika because that acts as a vehicle for the other flavorings, specifically the sugar and salt. you don’t want TOO much salt — you’re not salting the thing. and sugar is dangerous because it’ll burn right away if it gets direct heat.
some pork butts come with a big slab of fat and skin on them. you can leave that on, it makes no difference. rub a generous amount of rub on it, and refrigerate overnight. the next day start up your grill (um the kind that uses charcoal. you’ll never get any decent flavor out of a gas grill.) and let the heat get up to about 220. put the butt on, indirect (although pork butt is more forgiving than brisket. i did it for years over direct heat on the egg – you just have to watch out if you have that big piece of fat, because that WILL flare up.) for something like 4 – 6 hours. keep the heat between 180 – 220. let it rest for 15 minutes and pull it apart for pulled pork. depending on how hungry and the number of side dishes, will feed anywhere from 4 to 8.
so back to brisket.
deep in the heart of texas
in february i was lucky enough to head down to lockhart, texas, the bbq capital of texas, where we had lunch at smitty’s market. smitty’s was formerly kreuz’s, but in short someone has been making texas brisket at that location for over 100 years. and believe me, when you walk in, it sure as hell feels like it. the walls are black with decades of soot and the place just smells like smoke and meat. in other words, heaven.
the fires of smittys
they will shoot if you ask for sauce
smitty’s serves up its brisket (and some other things as well) with crackers or white bread. side dishes are de minimus – pickles, uninspired potato salad. i had those, a couple shiner bocks, and a blue bell ice cream. talk about good.
come to mama
anyway i came back hell bound and determined to make a brisket hopefully more or less like smitty’s. since i didn’t have anything like the set up they have, this would be difficult. at smitty’s, the brisket is cooked in what looks to me to be a big brick counter, with the wood being stoked at one end and the meat sitting at the other end, luxuriating in a bath of post oak smoke. direct flames never come within feet of the meat. it just cooks for hours and hours at a steady temperature with more smoke than a echo park stoner.
the egg, craddling a succulent brisket
the true key is indirect heat. which required me to buy something called a “plate holder” for my egg – basically a big ceramic thing separating the coals from the grill. i’m not sure when they developed the plate holder, but they sure as hell didn’t have it when i bought my egg, because i would have bought it and saved myself years of grief.
now, i read a crap ton of books on brisket and i can tell you one thing with certitude. they are all lying. all those pit masters who give their recipes in the books are lying. for one, i specifically bought a book on texas bbq and there was like one recipe for brisket (seriously) and that guy did a two day method. i’m pretty sure that in every recipe for bbq the famous pitmasters lie like a rug out of concern that someone will replicate their style. this is, of course, bs. bbq is more of a zen thing than anything else. it’s about maintaining the temperature, checking the meat, giving it some love now and then, and knowing when it’s done. and with a wood fired grill, maintaining consistent heat (300 – 350) over the 9 hours it takes to cook a brisket is a challenge.
so in short, here is my recipe:
brisket – rub with salt and pepper. you may also use a rub if you like. please don’t put on a rub which has weird flavors, like cloves.
get up EARLY — 9 am is TOO LATE. start fire. make sure you have plenty of charcoal. if you use any of that self starting charcoal or lighter fluid, you will go to hell. post oak is traditional, but if you can’t find that, use any hardwood. hard wood is good.
when the briquets / charcoal is white, add to grill. brisket MUST cook over indirect heat – not necessarily a water pan, but you cannot have the fuel directly under the brisket. if you do, you will end up with a lump of burnt meat in 2 hours. if you have a weber type grill, push the fuel to one side and put a pan under where your meat is going to go to catch fat drippings.
let the heat get up to about 350.
put the meat on, fat side up. leave it fat side up the entire time. if the bottom starts to burn, slide a piece of foil under it.
maintain temp at a steady 300 – 350 for EIGHT TO TEN HOURS. this is not a joke. it’s theoretically cooked at 2 hours, but it will be tougher than an ex even at 6 hours. baste with apple juice or beer. at about 6 you can wrap it in foil if you want, or if the bottom is getting blackened.
if you are one of these pussies who thinks it’s “the same” if you smoke it for an hour or two and then “finish it in the oven”, i want you to know you’re an asshole. it’s not the same and don’t call it bbq. call it “lazy slob’s half assed brisket” or such. in fact, just order it from a restaurant and then pretend you cooked it yourself, you bastard.
a properly cooked brisket can be served au natural, or with some [good] sauce. it can be had solo or as a sandwich. in my opinion, if you’re going to go to ten hours of effort to make brisket, please step up your game and put out some good potato salad or cole slaw, and if you’re having people over, a home made pie. there is nothing more pathetic than lame side dishes.
this weekend i did not make brisket; in fact, i did not bbq, i grilled, which is different. yesterday i made chicken jerk at ally’s for her party, and today i made a hamburger and some mango/lime/chile chicken on — yes — my gas grill. the gas grill was a huge concession to convenience on my part but the way i look at it, when i want to throw on a steak, or shrimp, veggies — something small and quick — i don’t want to spent 30 minutes trying to fire up the coals. i really just want to go out there and grill.
grilling jerk chicken on ally's grill
ed expressed his approval for the chicken
