Barbecue Techniques and Traditions

In Texas, they say if it ain't brisket, it ain't barbecue. And today, it's all about the brisket. There are a thousand different ways to cook it and a lot of ground to cover, so we better get going. An important part of cooking a brisket is getting a good bark. Bark is the slightly crispy exterior of the meat, where smoke, rendered fat, and seasonings combine for the most epic of bites. You know, if we're going to talk about brisket, there's a lot to talk about. There's different breeds of cows, there's different grading. Is it a left side? Is it a right side? What are you going to season it with? Salt and pepper? Maybe something more than that? Are you going to cook it hot and fast? You're going to cook it low and slow. But one thing's for sure, if you're going to figure out how you like to cook brisket, you can only change one thing at a time. If you change too many things, you'll never figure it out. So today, we're going to only change one thing. We're going to cook three briskets all the same way on the same cooker. One we're going to wrap in foil, also known as the Texas Crutch. The other one we're going to wrap in butcher paper, not known as the Texas Crutch. And the other one we're not going to wrap at all. So let's get started. So today we're cooking all briskets. This is what we use at the restaurant, so this is just the easiest thing for me to grab. The whole point of trimming is to make it more aerodynamic. You want to cut off the fat that's not good. You want to leave enough on there to keep it moist throughout the whole cooking process. But you're also trying to regulate how much fat how much bark there's gonna be when it's finished, how much rendered fat, because rendered fat's pretty delicious, but nasty, like white, gross fat that's not rendered, it's maybe not quite so delicious. And then you also wanna have a lot of meat. So you're really trimming everything just to make sure you have a good balance and every bite has exactly what you want out of it. So these briskets are looking pretty darn good. We're going to go ahead and rub them. It's just going to be half salt, half pepper. For this experiment, we're just going to keep it real simple, but you can put a lot of other things on there if you really want to. So, I'm going to kind of work around here. And even though it's called a rub, you're not really working it in there. Some people might. I really choose just to let the rub lay on top and just kind of pat it in there. You don't want to really get too carried away. And the higher you go, the better spread you'll get. If you get real close, it'll be real uneven. The coarseness of the pepper will actually help attract smoke. So this coarse pepper is going to help this thing really get a nice bark. That is a good looking piece of meat. Alrighty. For the first part of the cook, they'll all stay naked. But once the brisket starts to form a good bark, that's when we'll get to wrapping. So I like to start with a hot cooker. I've had this thing going for about 45 minutes so far, getting it up to about 275, 285. Top heat means that I put fat side up. It's an offset cooker, so I put the points towards the firebox because all that air flows... is gonna be coming this way and I don't want to burn the edges of this side so I want a little extra fat right here to kind of shield that stuff and I chose this spot because this is kind of the sweet spot air comes out of here starts to spin got a lot of convection got a lot of vorticity right here and then out the smoke that could go. So these briskets are good to go. No matter how big or small your cooker is, you're always trying to find the sweet spot and the perfect temperature. On a larger cooker, your meat could be farther from the fire, so you may need to cook a little bit hotter than 275. And on a smaller cooker, you might need to bring that heat down just a little bit, since your brisket could be pretty close to the fire. So if you hear it sizzle, back off a little bit. If it's not cooking, you probably need to build a bigger fire. But I'm gonna go wash up and start watching fire. So the majority of your time is going to be spent watching the old temperature gauge, probably for about 12 or so hours. You've just got to be patient. It just keeps going and going. When it dips down a little low, you have to get up, put a little bit more wood on. A lot of people tend to think that in order to make a long brisket cook, you have to lose a night's worth of sleep. But there's also a little thing I like to call a split cook. A split cook is a great way for a home cook to get a couple hours sleep and still get some great briskets. Start the briskets the day before, cook them up to about 165 degrees internal temperature, put a big log on there, make sure it's not going to get too hot, go sleep for a couple hours, come back in the morning and pick up right where you left off. So this is the brisket episode. Yes it is. You, just like me, have made an entire career based on one piece of meat. Yeah, writing about it, you cooking it, absolutely. I thought it'd be a cool thing to talk about how briskets kind of become... this huge, that is Texas barbecue. Back in the meat market days, they were getting in whole carcasses of beef and they had to sell it all. They would take the entire four quarter and they would cut it up into a dozen pieces and smoke the whole thing. And people would come in and ask for... for lean or fatty beef, but they weren't asking for brisket. But I wonder when the trend started to actually figure out, like, oh, well, if you overcook it severely, it gets tender. Yeah, that's a good question. Like, when people actually started really paying attention to those individual cuts. And the thing that's curious to me is, so with all of those cuts that you could choose from the four-quarter, when the pitmasters of yore started to choose that one cut, they chose the brisket. I always wonder, was it price related? Or was that simply just after cooking all of those different cuts for so long, they realized this is the one I want to cook. What we're seeing today in Texas is the rise of fatty brisket. Yeah, because it's delicious. No longer are people afraid of the fat. No longer are people afraid of calling it fatty brisket. I prefer lean myself. A good moist slice of lean brisket. can not only be more pleasurable, but it's also harder to do. Yeah, yeah, it's way harder. It takes more skill from your standpoint, doesn't it? It's cool to see the evolution of brisket, you know, start off as maybe kind of a homely, utilitarian piece. cook it, and now it's like this artisanal, anti-barbecue barbecue kind of thing. It's the darling of Texas barbecue. It really is. And I like talking about it. I can't stop talking about it. Let's get out of here and go talk about brisket. Thanks for being on the show. Yeah, you bet. Brisket cooking could be an all-day or all-night affair. Whether you're cooking one brisket or 100 briskets, get ready to clear your schedule. So it's about 6.30 a.m. through the last log on about 1 o'clock a.m. Brisket's are looking super juicy, looking real nice. They're at a good point right now. And I'm getting a little lonely. I think I need some company for the second half of this cook. So, holler at my good friend. John Marcus. Good morning. Good morning. Cheersies. Cheersies early in the morning, but that's a good time to be doing this. I can smell that you're at some particular place in the cook. I bet you're dying to take a gander. Look at the gorgeous color on these things. May I touch? Oh, probe away. Ow. Oh, I like it when I touch your briskets, you go, ow. Yeah, it's so personal, you know? You are so connected to this meat, man. I really, what I was told was that you're going to attempt some different processes with each of these. We're going to wrap one of them in foil, one of them in butcher paper, and not wrap the other one. And see what that does for, you know, cook time, moistness, bark formation. I would say that while these things have momentum, let's... It's good to wrap it. All right. OK. I can watch you or help. It's early. You should drink your coffee. OK. That's your way of saying, I'm doing this. Back off. Back off. But I just do two pieces like. like this and then one solid piece sideways. That way you kind of cradle all those juices. You always want the shiny side in because you don't want to reflect the heat trying to penetrate the brisket while it's cooking. All right, and then the next one, paper. I always put my flats to the right side. You know, there are a lot of barbecue people of some repute that are so secretive about everything. And here you are, you're just opening up the doors to all the stuff that you know. Well, maybe not everything. See, that's the thing, because really, there's the key... thing no one will ever know, which you have to admire. But this is tight. This looks like almost tight in the way the aluminum core was. The tighter, the better. Let's put that over there. That's a great visual demonstration of the three different methods we're going to finish these off with. Our brisket that's naked for the rest of this cook, you have in the middle, and I would think that that middle would be the hottest spot in back. Ah! Am I right? And that's why I asked you to come hang out with me. I'm trying to offset the time that they're coming off by putting this in the cold spot, this in the hot spot, and this one in the second hot spot. You know, there is that little saying that I've heard once or twice. If you're looking, you ain't cooking. Well, let's put these back to bed then. Yeah. Let's get this party started again. So we've gotten the cook up to the point where we're doing the wrap test. I'm watching these three different briskets, but we have the rest of the cook now with them wrapped and sitting on a smoker. What do we do? Stare at fires. Absolutely nothing. Don't fuss with it. Don't open the lid. Don't look at it too much. Keep a good steady fire and just be cool, man. You know, I think it's neat that today's brisket cook is all about changing one variable. You know, there's so many variables in cooking a brisket. And today we're just wrapping one in foil, wrapping one in paper and not wrapping the other one. just to really kind of fine-tune what the actual effects are going to be. I think so many people change too many things at once, and then you never can pinpoint what happened or what went wrong or what went right. Right. What did I do this time that made it so good? Yeah. And I always keep a log. I mean... The captain's log. I do. I keep a log as to what elements go into each cook, so that when I change something, then I can go back. But I think because barbecue takes place over such... a long period of time, these variables come into play. Because the variables occur over the entire time of your cook. You know, it's crazy at how microscopic one little thing could be and how magnified it becomes towards the end of a cook. Something as small as just like the size of the wood versus like the size of your cooker. Or if your temperatures spike up and down. I mean, you could be adding hours to that cook. You've got all these different things that can kind of stack up in a cook. You know, wood, fire. Actual animal breed, marbling, rub, I mean, all this stuff. Placement on the cooker. Placement on the cooker. Yeah. Air flow. I mean, tons of stuff going on. You know, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to cook a brisket. I think we figured that out. I was going to say, as I sit here with you, what I realize is it's endless. It is endless. When you're dealing with heat and smoke and the fibers of meat and weather. There's really no end in sight. Yeah. You have to be a weatherman. You have to be a butcher. You have to be a fire maker. Sometimes a welder. And I've found that the people that really are the best at it are the most relaxed when they do it. They have to actually have a command of all these various things, where they're just not worried about them at all times. Well, you can't worry about these things. Just let it go. It's just a piece of meat with fire. It's the oldest way to cook. I wish I'd been raised by parents where I could worry less. I think you'll be okay. You're in Texas now. Behind me is Kreutz Market here in Lockhart, Texas. These guys have been cooking brisket almost longer than anyone in the entire state of Texas. So if we're going to talk brisket, we've got to chat with Rick Schmidt. Well, Rick, thanks so much for talking to me. You're welcome. Glad of your interest. Well, of course. I'm very interested in barbecue. Start from the beginning. Okay, well, Charlie Kreutz bought an existing meat market here in Lockhart back in 1900. His father went to work for them around 1935. And he worked for them 13 years, and they offered to sell it to him. Wow. 1948's when my dad bought it, and the Schmitz ran the Kreutz Market. Most of your older barbecue places, especially in central Texas, have the name Market. They started as Meat Markets. The other thing that they all have in common is the way they spell barbecue. B-A-R-B-E-C-U-E. No initials, no jumping, and just a little quirk that we have. Our menu is a product of evolution. Cooking things instead of letting them spoil. Making sausage out of cheaper cuts. Before brisket got so popular, I saw a lot of brisket just go into sauces. Yeah. Cuz it was a tough piece of meat. And we cooked whatever the customer wanted, and they didn't want that brisket. Boxed beef started in the early 1950s, and most barbecue joints really took to ordering just the cuts they wanted, since they didn't have to break down whole four quarters. But Kreitz kept on butchering their own beef for a while. In fact, before we went to the boxed beef, we used to buy a square cut chicken. Chuck's. That was Chuck and shoulder. Yeah, that's the shoulder clod. Yeah, shoulder clod and a Chuck. And the presentation looked good, but it evolved into where it was 80% of our barbecues there. Really? When did you see that people were maybe ordering more brisket than clod? I think about 10 years ago that we noticed we were running out of brisket. So we started cooking more brisket and everything else. And now we put on more brisket. It's just about flip-flop. It does clod. That's crazy. People are not afraid of fat, I guess, so now the brisket is making a big comeback. It's about time people aren't afraid of fat. No, fat's where the flavor is. Yep. The shoulder clod is more forgiving. You can serve it a little rare and it's still tender. Can't do that with a brisket, as you well know. Brisket is trickier. First thing it does is it gets done. Okay, then you got to keep cooking until it gets tender. Yep. And then you got to know when that is so you can get it off. Yeah. You got to go a little further still. And if you have to go a little further and you go too far, in my mind, that's when the barbecue sauce comes out. Yeah. I'll be sitting here at the table and somebody will say, why don't you all have barbecue sauce? And my friend will say, they ain't got nothing to hide. It's true. Well, Rick, I sure appreciate you talking to me. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You ready? Yes. It's a huge knife. It makes me a little nervous. I gotta say. You good? Yes. You can go ahead and grab some. I'm kidding. This is the one that everybody wishes I could get. Wait for it. Wait. Okay, go. Oh, here it is. What's the name of the cow? Oh, Thelma. Her name was Thelma. It's kind of the moment of truth, isn't it, in a way? All these hours? Yeah, it really is. This feels really nice, by the way. You know when the briskets are done when the meat feels soft and tender? And I can feel it just kind of want to fall over. Yep. Oh, that's good. Look at it. It's almost breaking apart as you put it down. Yeah, it is. I sort of like things rest for a little bit and slice them up. That sounds good. I mean, I think we're going to have three different experiences here. Oh, I think so. Resting a big piece of meat is almost as important as actually cooking it. It lets the meat relax, reabsorb its juices, and cool down enough to eat. You know what I'm saying? Sorry to follow you everywhere, but there's brisket to be. So I'm just going to be on your tail. I can't help it. Which one do you want to try first? That one came off first. Let's go in order then. All right. I want to make the first cut. I'm going to kind of get through there. And that's the end cut. I'm just going to save that for later. I like to cut on the pull stroke. Watching you slice brisket is like going to a baseball game and watching a pitcher pitch a no-hitter. See, that's a good-looking slice. Moist, good fat render, marbling cooked out of there well. Can I pop this in my mouth? I wish you would. Wow. So this is the fatty. If you'll notice it's a little thicker. On a quarter inch, if it'll hold up under its own weight with just the lightest tug break apart, that is a perfectly cooked brisket. Beautiful. I'm getting hints of the salt, which is very pleasing. But there's, first of all, beef flavor coming through. That's the most pronounced flavor to me is the beef, which is what I'm always looking for. This is the foiled one. Pretty moist, and the bark really held up a lot better than I thought it would. I thought it would get a little more pot roasty. You ready to cut the paper one? Let's do it. Let's do it. Slide that little guy over a little bit. This is a brisket that we felt breathed more than the one that was boiled. Yep. Again, a little end cut action. Oh. You know, just to see. It's more toward the firmness you want for like the real accurate brisket. Like it's on the money. It definitely has more integrity on the bite. I mean, that is such a good looking piece of brisket right there. Gorgeous. Good fat rendering there. The flat looks moist. The point looks moist. And again, a brisket under its own weight. Minimal pulling. Thank you. But that bark is there. You can tell when you look at something like this that it was hours and hours in the making. That's what's great about it. Yeah. When you look at it, you can't do this if you cook it for two hours, six hours. Uh-uh. It won't look like this. You just can't cook a brisket super hot and fast and expect it to form. this kind of bark or that well maybe the bark but it might be a little crunchier it might be kind of burned you know not like a well-formed like seasoning but inside you're not going to have this moistness no i don't think so this one tasted a lot beefier you could tell that the fat like really cooked back into it. Had a much stronger flavor, had a much stronger aroma too. And then ready for the one that I'm really curious about. Because I don't ever cook brisket without wrapping it. And this is kind of what a lot of people really think of as like central Texas brisket. I mean, it's heavy on the bark, it's heavy on the pepper. Let's see, that looks alright. And there's a lot of moisture there. There's a good bit of moisture, good bit of smoke room. Let's see, this one's going to be real crunchy. Alright, here's our naked brisket. Wow. It's crunchy. Like it's a party treat. At a party I want to stay at until they drag me off. It kind of makes you think of original Kansas City burnt ends. It does. I was going to say burnt ends, but it's not that part of the brisket. It's not even that part of the brisket. Definitely. It's a hair smoker than the other two. It's not as beefy. It has the least amount of beefiness. That's better than I thought it would be. When I look at this brisket and taste it, I think of LBJ. I'm thinking of being in a Cadillac with big fins on it, going 90 miles an hour out on the ranch. Right. hooping and hollering, that's just brisket right there. I'm thinking of picking up my beagle by the ears. I'm thinking of opening up a restaurant, selling brisket, saving up money, and starting an amphibious car collection. See, we're having different thoughts, you and me. LBJ had an amphibious car collection. I didn't know that. He did. See, I didn't know. I really like it. These have been really different experiences. You have here the unwrapped brisket, the robust brisket, one of the great presidents of the United States brisket. Right here. Over here, you've got like... like the brisket you want your whole family to have. It's honest, but very flavorful. It's not too aggressive. I really like that this was wrapped in the paper, and that's what I loved about it. Here, this is the brisket in the aluminum foil. It's almost like a lady who's putting on her high heels and her lipstick to go out. Those are the three briskets to me. They all have different qualities. Some are just a little bit more done up. So we cooked three briskets. We wrapped them all differently. The foil one's a little more pot-roasty. the one that's unwrapped is really crunchy, lots of super Texas-y, simple flavors, nothing overpowering, but a lot stronger. And then the paper one is just right in the middle. And let that be a reminder. When you're cooking brisket at home, you're trying to really figure out how you like to do it. Only change one thing at a time, and you'll get there. In the meantime... I'm going in for... You should get there. I want the president brisket. No, no, no, that's for me. You can take those two back to New York. I'm keeping this one. Man, I love the bark on this. Unbelievable. Yeah. You're turning French with this. We do. I actually cook unicorn briskets. Can y'all tie a string to my chair to pull me forward? Because then you can handle the meat with the unicorn horn. Well, how's it handle? Uh, yeah, let's... Let's hop up into it.

In Texas, they say if it ain't brisket, it ain't barbecue. And today, it's all about the brisket. There are a thousand different ways to cook it and a lot of ground to cover, so we better get going.

An important part of cooking a brisket is getting a good bark. Bark is the slightly crispy exterior of the meat, where smoke, rendered fat, and seasonings combine for the most epic of bites. You know, if we're going to talk about brisket, there's a lot to talk about. There's different breeds of cows, there's different grading. Is it a left side?

Is it a right side? What are you going to season it with? Salt and pepper?

Maybe something more than that? Are you going to cook it hot and fast? You're going to cook it low and slow. But one thing's for sure, if you're going to figure out how you like to cook brisket, you can only change one thing at a time.

If you change too many things, you'll never figure it out. So today, we're going to only change one thing. We're going to cook three briskets all the same way on the same cooker. One we're going to wrap in foil, also known as the Texas Crutch.

The other one we're going to wrap in butcher paper, not known as the Texas Crutch. And the other one we're not going to wrap at all. So let's get started. So today we're cooking all briskets.

This is what we use at the restaurant, so this is just the easiest thing for me to grab. The whole point of trimming is to make it more aerodynamic. You want to cut off the fat that's not good. You want to leave enough on there to keep it moist throughout the whole cooking process. But you're also trying to regulate how much fat how much bark there's gonna be when it's finished, how much rendered fat, because rendered fat's pretty delicious, but nasty, like white, gross fat that's not rendered, it's maybe not quite so delicious.

And then you also wanna have a lot of meat. So you're really trimming everything just to make sure you have a good balance and every bite has exactly what you want out of it. So these briskets are looking pretty darn good.

We're going to go ahead and rub them. It's just going to be half salt, half pepper. For this experiment, we're just going to keep it real simple, but you can put a lot of other things on there if you really want to. So, I'm going to kind of work around here. And even though it's called a rub, you're not really working it in there.

Some people might. I really choose just to let the rub lay on top and just kind of pat it in there. You don't want to really get too carried away. And the higher you go, the better spread you'll get. If you get real close, it'll be real uneven.

The coarseness of the pepper will actually help attract smoke. So this coarse pepper is going to help this thing really get a nice bark. That is a good looking piece of meat. Alrighty. For the first part of the cook, they'll all stay naked.

But once the brisket starts to form a good bark, that's when we'll get to wrapping. So I like to start with a hot cooker. I've had this thing going for about 45 minutes so far, getting it up to about 275, 285. Top heat means that I put fat side up.

It's an offset cooker, so I put the points towards the firebox because all that air flows... is gonna be coming this way and I don't want to burn the edges of this side so I want a little extra fat right here to kind of shield that stuff and I chose this spot because this is kind of the sweet spot air comes out of here starts to spin got a lot of convection got a lot of vorticity right here and then out the smoke that could go. So these briskets are good to go. No matter how big or small your cooker is, you're always trying to find the sweet spot and the perfect temperature.

On a larger cooker, your meat could be farther from the fire, so you may need to cook a little bit hotter than 275. And on a smaller cooker, you might need to bring that heat down just a little bit, since your brisket could be pretty close to the fire. So if you hear it sizzle, back off a little bit. If it's not cooking, you probably need to build a bigger fire.

But I'm gonna go wash up and start watching fire. So the majority of your time is going to be spent watching the old temperature gauge, probably for about 12 or so hours. You've just got to be patient.

It just keeps going and going. When it dips down a little low, you have to get up, put a little bit more wood on. A lot of people tend to think that in order to make a long brisket cook, you have to lose a night's worth of sleep.

But there's also a little thing I like to call a split cook. A split cook is a great way for a home cook to get a couple hours sleep and still get some great briskets. Start the briskets the day before, cook them up to about 165 degrees internal temperature, put a big log on there, make sure it's not going to get too hot, go sleep for a couple hours, come back in the morning and pick up right where you left off. So this is the brisket episode. Yes it is.

You, just like me, have made an entire career based on one piece of meat. Yeah, writing about it, you cooking it, absolutely. I thought it'd be a cool thing to talk about how briskets kind of become... this huge, that is Texas barbecue. Back in the meat market days, they were getting in whole carcasses of beef and they had to sell it all.

They would take the entire four quarter and they would cut it up into a dozen pieces and smoke the whole thing. And people would come in and ask for... for lean or fatty beef, but they weren't asking for brisket.

But I wonder when the trend started to actually figure out, like, oh, well, if you overcook it severely, it gets tender. Yeah, that's a good question. Like, when people actually started really paying attention to those individual cuts.

And the thing that's curious to me is, so with all of those cuts that you could choose from the four-quarter, when the pitmasters of yore started to choose that one cut, they chose the brisket. I always wonder, was it price related? Or was that simply just after cooking all of those different cuts for so long, they realized this is the one I want to cook.

What we're seeing today in Texas is the rise of fatty brisket. Yeah, because it's delicious. No longer are people afraid of the fat. No longer are people afraid of calling it fatty brisket.

I prefer lean myself. A good moist slice of lean brisket. can not only be more pleasurable, but it's also harder to do. Yeah, yeah, it's way harder. It takes more skill from your standpoint, doesn't it?

It's cool to see the evolution of brisket, you know, start off as maybe kind of a homely, utilitarian piece. cook it, and now it's like this artisanal, anti-barbecue barbecue kind of thing. It's the darling of Texas barbecue.

It really is. And I like talking about it. I can't stop talking about it. Let's get out of here and go talk about brisket.

Thanks for being on the show. Yeah, you bet. Brisket cooking could be an all-day or all-night affair.

Whether you're cooking one brisket or 100 briskets, get ready to clear your schedule. So it's about 6.30 a.m. through the last log on about 1 o'clock a.m.

Brisket's are looking super juicy, looking real nice. They're at a good point right now. And I'm getting a little lonely.

I think I need some company for the second half of this cook. So, holler at my good friend. John Marcus.

Good morning. Good morning. Cheersies. Cheersies early in the morning, but that's a good time to be doing this.

I can smell that you're at some particular place in the cook. I bet you're dying to take a gander. Look at the gorgeous color on these things.

May I touch? Oh, probe away. Ow.

Oh, I like it when I touch your briskets, you go, ow. Yeah, it's so personal, you know? You are so connected to this meat, man.

I really, what I was told was that you're going to attempt some different processes with each of these. We're going to wrap one of them in foil, one of them in butcher paper, and not wrap the other one. And see what that does for, you know, cook time, moistness, bark formation. I would say that while these things have momentum, let's... It's good to wrap it.

All right. OK. I can watch you or help. It's early. You should drink your coffee.

OK. That's your way of saying, I'm doing this. Back off.

Back off. But I just do two pieces like. like this and then one solid piece sideways. That way you kind of cradle all those juices. You always want the shiny side in because you don't want to reflect the heat trying to penetrate the brisket while it's cooking.

All right, and then the next one, paper. I always put my flats to the right side. You know, there are a lot of barbecue people of some repute that are so secretive about everything. And here you are, you're just opening up the doors to all the stuff that you know.

Well, maybe not everything. See, that's the thing, because really, there's the key... thing no one will ever know, which you have to admire. But this is tight.

This looks like almost tight in the way the aluminum core was. The tighter, the better. Let's put that over there.

That's a great visual demonstration of the three different methods we're going to finish these off with. Our brisket that's naked for the rest of this cook, you have in the middle, and I would think that that middle would be the hottest spot in back. Ah! Am I right?

And that's why I asked you to come hang out with me. I'm trying to offset the time that they're coming off by putting this in the cold spot, this in the hot spot, and this one in the second hot spot. You know, there is that little saying that I've heard once or twice. If you're looking, you ain't cooking.

Well, let's put these back to bed then. Yeah. Let's get this party started again. So we've gotten the cook up to the point where we're doing the wrap test.

I'm watching these three different briskets, but we have the rest of the cook now with them wrapped and sitting on a smoker. What do we do? Stare at fires. Absolutely nothing.

Don't fuss with it. Don't open the lid. Don't look at it too much. Keep a good steady fire and just be cool, man.

You know, I think it's neat that today's brisket cook is all about changing one variable. You know, there's so many variables in cooking a brisket. And today we're just wrapping one in foil, wrapping one in paper and not wrapping the other one.

just to really kind of fine-tune what the actual effects are going to be. I think so many people change too many things at once, and then you never can pinpoint what happened or what went wrong or what went right. Right.

What did I do this time that made it so good? Yeah. And I always keep a log.

I mean... The captain's log. I do. I keep a log as to what elements go into each cook, so that when I change something, then I can go back. But I think because barbecue takes place over such...

a long period of time, these variables come into play. Because the variables occur over the entire time of your cook. You know, it's crazy at how microscopic one little thing could be and how magnified it becomes towards the end of a cook. Something as small as just like the size of the wood versus like the size of your cooker.

Or if your temperatures spike up and down. I mean, you could be adding hours to that cook. You've got all these different things that can kind of stack up in a cook. You know, wood, fire. Actual animal breed, marbling, rub, I mean, all this stuff.

Placement on the cooker. Placement on the cooker. Yeah. Air flow.

I mean, tons of stuff going on. You know, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to cook a brisket. I think we figured that out. I was going to say, as I sit here with you, what I realize is it's endless. It is endless.

When you're dealing with heat and smoke and the fibers of meat and weather. There's really no end in sight. Yeah. You have to be a weatherman.

You have to be a butcher. You have to be a fire maker. Sometimes a welder.

And I've found that the people that really are the best at it are the most relaxed when they do it. They have to actually have a command of all these various things, where they're just not worried about them at all times. Well, you can't worry about these things. Just let it go.

It's just a piece of meat with fire. It's the oldest way to cook. I wish I'd been raised by parents where I could worry less. I think you'll be okay.

You're in Texas now. Behind me is Kreutz Market here in Lockhart, Texas. These guys have been cooking brisket almost longer than anyone in the entire state of Texas.

So if we're going to talk brisket, we've got to chat with Rick Schmidt. Well, Rick, thanks so much for talking to me. You're welcome.

Glad of your interest. Well, of course. I'm very interested in barbecue.

Start from the beginning. Okay, well, Charlie Kreutz bought an existing meat market here in Lockhart back in 1900. His father went to work for them around 1935. And he worked for them 13 years, and they offered to sell it to him. Wow.

1948's when my dad bought it, and the Schmitz ran the Kreutz Market. Most of your older barbecue places, especially in central Texas, have the name Market. They started as Meat Markets. The other thing that they all have in common is the way they spell barbecue.

B-A-R-B-E-C-U-E. No initials, no jumping, and just a little quirk that we have. Our menu is a product of evolution.

Cooking things instead of letting them spoil. Making sausage out of cheaper cuts. Before brisket got so popular, I saw a lot of brisket just go into sauces.

Yeah. Cuz it was a tough piece of meat. And we cooked whatever the customer wanted, and they didn't want that brisket.

Boxed beef started in the early 1950s, and most barbecue joints really took to ordering just the cuts they wanted, since they didn't have to break down whole four quarters. But Kreitz kept on butchering their own beef for a while. In fact, before we went to the boxed beef, we used to buy a square cut chicken.

Chuck's. That was Chuck and shoulder. Yeah, that's the shoulder clod.

Yeah, shoulder clod and a Chuck. And the presentation looked good, but it evolved into where it was 80% of our barbecues there. Really? When did you see that people were maybe ordering more brisket than clod?

I think about 10 years ago that we noticed we were running out of brisket. So we started cooking more brisket and everything else. And now we put on more brisket. It's just about flip-flop.

It does clod. That's crazy. People are not afraid of fat, I guess, so now the brisket is making a big comeback. It's about time people aren't afraid of fat. No, fat's where the flavor is.

Yep. The shoulder clod is more forgiving. You can serve it a little rare and it's still tender. Can't do that with a brisket, as you well know.

Brisket is trickier. First thing it does is it gets done. Okay, then you got to keep cooking until it gets tender. Yep.

And then you got to know when that is so you can get it off. Yeah. You got to go a little further still.

And if you have to go a little further and you go too far, in my mind, that's when the barbecue sauce comes out. Yeah. I'll be sitting here at the table and somebody will say, why don't you all have barbecue sauce? And my friend will say, they ain't got nothing to hide. It's true.

Well, Rick, I sure appreciate you talking to me. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I appreciate it. I appreciate it. You ready?

Yes. It's a huge knife. It makes me a little nervous.

I gotta say. You good? Yes.

You can go ahead and grab some. I'm kidding. This is the one that everybody wishes I could get. Wait for it.

Wait. Okay, go. Oh, here it is.

What's the name of the cow? Oh, Thelma. Her name was Thelma.

It's kind of the moment of truth, isn't it, in a way? All these hours? Yeah, it really is.

This feels really nice, by the way. You know when the briskets are done when the meat feels soft and tender? And I can feel it just kind of want to fall over. Yep. Oh, that's good.

Look at it. It's almost breaking apart as you put it down. Yeah, it is.

I sort of like things rest for a little bit and slice them up. That sounds good. I mean, I think we're going to have three different experiences here. Oh, I think so.

Resting a big piece of meat is almost as important as actually cooking it. It lets the meat relax, reabsorb its juices, and cool down enough to eat. You know what I'm saying? Sorry to follow you everywhere, but there's brisket to be. So I'm just going to be on your tail.

I can't help it. Which one do you want to try first? That one came off first.

Let's go in order then. All right. I want to make the first cut.

I'm going to kind of get through there. And that's the end cut. I'm just going to save that for later. I like to cut on the pull stroke.

Watching you slice brisket is like going to a baseball game and watching a pitcher pitch a no-hitter. See, that's a good-looking slice. Moist, good fat render, marbling cooked out of there well.

Can I pop this in my mouth? I wish you would. Wow. So this is the fatty. If you'll notice it's a little thicker.

On a quarter inch, if it'll hold up under its own weight with just the lightest tug break apart, that is a perfectly cooked brisket. Beautiful. I'm getting hints of the salt, which is very pleasing. But there's, first of all, beef flavor coming through. That's the most pronounced flavor to me is the beef, which is what I'm always looking for.

This is the foiled one. Pretty moist, and the bark really held up a lot better than I thought it would. I thought it would get a little more pot roasty.

You ready to cut the paper one? Let's do it. Let's do it.

Slide that little guy over a little bit. This is a brisket that we felt breathed more than the one that was boiled. Yep. Again, a little end cut action.

Oh. You know, just to see. It's more toward the firmness you want for like the real accurate brisket.

Like it's on the money. It definitely has more integrity on the bite. I mean, that is such a good looking piece of brisket right there. Gorgeous.

Good fat rendering there. The flat looks moist. The point looks moist.

And again, a brisket under its own weight. Minimal pulling. Thank you.

But that bark is there. You can tell when you look at something like this that it was hours and hours in the making. That's what's great about it.

Yeah. When you look at it, you can't do this if you cook it for two hours, six hours. Uh-uh.

It won't look like this. You just can't cook a brisket super hot and fast and expect it to form. this kind of bark or that well maybe the bark but it might be a little crunchier it might be kind of burned you know not like a well-formed like seasoning but inside you're not going to have this moistness no i don't think so this one tasted a lot beefier you could tell that the fat like really cooked back into it. Had a much stronger flavor, had a much stronger aroma too. And then ready for the one that I'm really curious about.

Because I don't ever cook brisket without wrapping it. And this is kind of what a lot of people really think of as like central Texas brisket. I mean, it's heavy on the bark, it's heavy on the pepper.

Let's see, that looks alright. And there's a lot of moisture there. There's a good bit of moisture, good bit of smoke room. Let's see, this one's going to be real crunchy. Alright, here's our naked brisket.

Wow. It's crunchy. Like it's a party treat.

At a party I want to stay at until they drag me off. It kind of makes you think of original Kansas City burnt ends. It does.

I was going to say burnt ends, but it's not that part of the brisket. It's not even that part of the brisket. Definitely. It's a hair smoker than the other two.

It's not as beefy. It has the least amount of beefiness. That's better than I thought it would be. When I look at this brisket and taste it, I think of LBJ. I'm thinking of being in a Cadillac with big fins on it, going 90 miles an hour out on the ranch.

Right. hooping and hollering, that's just brisket right there. I'm thinking of picking up my beagle by the ears.

I'm thinking of opening up a restaurant, selling brisket, saving up money, and starting an amphibious car collection. See, we're having different thoughts, you and me. LBJ had an amphibious car collection. I didn't know that.

He did. See, I didn't know. I really like it. These have been really different experiences.

You have here the unwrapped brisket, the robust brisket, one of the great presidents of the United States brisket. Right here. Over here, you've got like... like the brisket you want your whole family to have.

It's honest, but very flavorful. It's not too aggressive. I really like that this was wrapped in the paper, and that's what I loved about it. Here, this is the brisket in the aluminum foil. It's almost like a lady who's putting on her high heels and her lipstick to go out.

Those are the three briskets to me. They all have different qualities. Some are just a little bit more done up.

So we cooked three briskets. We wrapped them all differently. The foil one's a little more pot-roasty.

the one that's unwrapped is really crunchy, lots of super Texas-y, simple flavors, nothing overpowering, but a lot stronger. And then the paper one is just right in the middle. And let that be a reminder. When you're cooking brisket at home, you're trying to really figure out how you like to do it.

Only change one thing at a time, and you'll get there. In the meantime... I'm going in for...

You should get there. I want the president brisket. No, no, no, that's for me. You can take those two back to New York. I'm keeping this one.

Man, I love the bark on this. Unbelievable. Yeah.

You're turning French with this. We do. I actually cook unicorn briskets. Can y'all tie a string to my chair to pull me forward? Because then you can handle the meat with the unicorn horn.

Well, how's it handle? Uh, yeah, let's... Let's hop up into it.

Transcript for:Barbecue Techniques and Traditions

Transcript for:
Barbecue Techniques and Traditions