Brits Meet TEXAS BBQ GOD | Aaron Franklin | From Franklin BBQ | In Texas

this is this is really a Richard we're going to name it Richard greetings we are back we are in Austin Texas and we are at Franklin we're here to talk to the main man himself on all things barbecue and Franklin and we are so excited to get this opportunity we're going to talk Franklin back Pit Barbecue we're going to talk about his past how he became the man he is today and a lot about food so without further for you let's meet Aaron [Music] well welcome to Texas y'all yeah thank you so much for taking a bit of time out to see us really really appreciate it uh I did watch the video of you guys unleashing the pit I'm glad you didn't break the [Applause] window yeah I was like yeah I've been there before yeah that's probably my favorite part that really connected with me as a human right we are here I can't believe it this is really really surreal Aaron Franklin from Franklin at barbecue thank you so much for taking see us ABS it's really sweet that you guys are like oh this is so surreal this is our break table um so emplo yet yeah like we' sit out here eat breakfast tacos and I do my emails and stuff but yeah I guess it is kind of kind of a cool little spot it's we're up in the nether regions it's awesome and we bought um your book uh go check it out if we put some links in the description the first thing that struck me when I started reading this is you've come from humble beginnings so you and and probably some pretty humble endings too nothing's been given to you you've worked really hard heck yeah yeah and you your first smoker $99 smoker Hondo oh it was a new Bron folds I don't know what I think it was the size bigger than a Honda I think the Honda was maybe the little one but I don't know I don't think they're even making them anymore and I know for sure that one doesn't exist anymore wow I'm sure it rusted out years ago like our first one we might use it as like a plant decorator you put some plants well so what I did with with my first one after we we opened up Franklin Barbecue the the trailer in 09 a couple people that were into barbecue I like gifted it to them I was like okay on one condition you can't ever get rid of it you can give it to someone else that wants to cook on it or you can give it back to me and it's just been kind of making the rounds I think now it's like in Ohio somewhere or something like that yeah I've Loosely kept up with it your second smoker was the same model but it was free on Craigslist is that right the second oh yeah yeah yeah that's true yeah I found it on uh Craigslist I think man I want to say like July 4th we had a little Barb I was like ah I need another cooker and of course always looking on Craigslist it was you know on still on dialup you know modem I was like man I would really love to cook four briskets yeah uh but of course I was always looking for for free stuff he was like what old bathtub can I make a cooker out of this an old refrigerator this is weird so always trying to get you know figure out some way to to build something fantastic and the other thing was you saved up a $20 knife from a smart yep now they're about $55 same ones we we still use up there wow and still at the restaurant you kept it well no no no not that one I mean we we go through like probably 20 knives a year here uh but we use the same model as that first one okay CLE other things I was trying to find some sort of common ground and you were a drummer that's true drummer oh very cool 24in space drum a 24 in Kick Drum 26 26 yeah everything's bigger than Texas it's true um although I've always played 24s I do have a 24 also but yeah what uh what kind of kit do you play it was um back then it was a DW okay drum workshop and now I've got an Orange County drum percussion nice yeah nice yeah I play a CNT kit so yeah yeah yeah yeah really really nice so drummer we are the same age 104 yes you don't look a day over 50 now as you know we bought the smoker and it's our second baby our don't say that too loud so you guys like it that's great amazing we were telling the guys it just smells phenomenal already we've already done a few cooks but just I know it's going to get better and better isn't it we sometimes we sit outside and have like a coffee in the morning yeah stare just look at it just like oh yeah well so it's funny that you mentioned that that's how I came up with the espresso barbecue sauce that we sered here yeah yeah yeah that's right here we don't bottle it cuz it's just too volatile you know it doesn't work quite right but uh yeah I was uh cooking barbecue out on the back porch on that little new Bron Fall's cooker and had a little espresso machine you know there was all tubes everywhere it was totally rigged up I was like ah I need some been thinking about some kind of sauce like some kind of unique something for for this before we open the trailer of course and I was like had the back door open having an espresso like 2: in the morning was like that's it espresso barbecue sauce oh good have to Sor that when we go so yeah we've got the smoker the first smoke we've done we've not got much experience the first smoke we did on the Franklin P we learned so much yeah well and that's the cool thing about those is there like since there aren't any dampers there's like nothing to like fuss around with like it's just basic it's like a little hot rod that's built for Speed I think that's the cool thing about those that's what I really love about it and that's why I designed it that way is that you know every time you do it you learn something so it stays interactive you know you can never really walk away from it so it keeps you engaged in your Cooks keeps you engaged in all the details that are going on and you just get better at it and then one day you're like oh my God this is the best this the best thing ever I think it brings me back to the Neanderthal in you you know starting a fire M fire fire yes and then you know cooking meat smoke and heat and stuff it's it really cord yeah so it's so primitive it's just so like it's kind of what we are and not only that you can have a beer as well yeah not too too many no we're really really Ling it and there something we didn't think we'd ever get into and want to do but I think we just got the bug cuz we came to Texas last October we were like we need to get one of those we need to try and our hand at smoking it's weird we can hear the line out there it's busy uh it's pretty it's kind of rainy today I blame you guys for the weather um we came from Florida so you can't blame us we just bring it with I'll just Florida I was going to ask what's your favorite smoker to use well the Franklin pit great answer so my favorite cooker it's actually a good bit bigger than the backyard pits than the Franklin pits but it's a lever and Shirley and they're on trailers and that was the not the first one that I made the diameter of a 250 but the length of a uh 500-gallon tank but I rolled it and made it up pipe so it doesn't have the heads on it but it's all like different so it actually adds three briskets to the capacity on each side but lle was the first one that I did like out of a thin wall and then we pressed the heads and did everything from scratch and that is my favorite favorite cooker to cook on I only cook on about once or twice a year but I really really love it a lot and that is the big version of the Franklin pits so like the way that the heads are pressed and the way that we cut everything and roll everything that was kind of like the practice run uh but of course it fits 30 briskets so it's it's a little bigger than a backyard usually get to that you never know I never thought I would either well okay there could be a Mr and Mrs H barbecue shop somewhere in the UK yeah watch this space we bought one of your pre smoked briskets yesterday oh fun it was yeah yeah Alan's birthday so we brisket very cool and we had a go at it that's the first brisket you've ever handled cooked and really you've never done a brisket cook before no back in the UK we don't get brisket like you get over here I know I've cooked over there before and had some interesting Meats yeah it's hard that's actually has a lot to do with why I don't cook over there because it's so hard to get that cut of meat like a pack of cut like we use euec here but I'm taking all of them there's no euec briskets that I use that get over to Europe at all cuz they're all coming through here but uh yeah yeah I I smell what you're stepping in for sure I like that one stepped in something with that yeah we did we're working our way up to cookie one point we tried to mle crew fanz uh you know not a huge Bley crew fan but you're right one of the cookers is named Nikki 6 I started building so many thousand gon cookers for the smok house which you know we show you guys all that stuff later it was like well number two was Rusty Shaker number one was muchacho number three was I don't know whatever it was you know I was like better start naming these the numbers uh in chronological order so Nikki 6 was one of the first ones I could come up with we still haven't name do have we we haven't few our subscribers of wonderful suggestions but we've not CH well you know what it'll rear its own personality one day and you'll be cooking on it this is this is really a Richard we're going to name it Richard so when we had the Frankton pit delivered obviously we don't have the big backyards like you do and the houses are quite built up and do you have the term curtain twitchers no so curtain twitchers are like like a nosy neighbor and the curtains are oh okay yeah yeah when it came off the lurine it's great big thing and it's like massive what G out over there yeah yeah so we've had a couple just you what's this big jimy coming up from the back of you we got a smoker and so we're going to say like when we get good at it we're going to try and have like a street party heck yeah yeah yeah you totally should and that's the enjoyment of food and we both we both love food we do and the channel is all about American food and sharing that love with you know people that you love is it's really I mean that is the same way that Franklin Barbecue started just having little back haired barbecues and just more and more people got excited about it like oh you just I mean like hosting parties that's what we do here every day we just host a big party a that's a good way to look at it isn't it yeah wonderful you you were the barbecue guy in your street weren't you the barbecue guy uh yeah yeah yeah still am like amongst other now everybody is like ah it's the barbecue guy so you obviously are quite a few d as well cuz you've got multiple restaurants as well up here what is your favorite thing to eat other than barbecue oh that is a that's a really easy answer for me uh vegetables and seafood okay uh preferably cold and raw right total opposite of barbecue and this one hates Seafood so I think we on your recommendation where should I take him to eat to get those kind of things to see if he likes it I think you guys should go to our other restaurant Uptown Sports Club yep okay because there's a raw bar you can get some good oysters totally different oysters than you guys get over there they don't taste at all the same there's like a beef tartar there's steak freets on the menu at night there's pooy there's gumbo there's tuna Crudo there's all kinds of stuff so yeah definitely have to try that I mean I don't hate Seafood I just you just haven't had the right Seafood yet exactly yeah I think that's what it is well and seafood's different over there too yeah so you guys have similar Waters but other s side so it's kind of you guys get like like different stuff it's like here in Texas we have the gulf so we we get most of our Seafood from further north that's why yeah yeah if you haven't checked this book out please and the new one also which is Franklin smoke I don't do you guys have that one the steak one the steak one was the second one and that's really nerdy on everything's steak the steaks were high for that one um but you know smoking's a filthy habit so we did the third book uh called Frank book hang on a second I think I probably got one in my office a bless you so this one flipped through that thing oh wow um so the first one was kind of geared towards like running a restaurant it was kind of like you know a day in the life of Frank La Barbecue like in the first one my friend Jordan and coauthor recorded on a little voice recorder like me cooking ribs and doing the stuff and he would just Trail me every day we cut lunch and you know at the end of the day be like hey you mentioned this hey you mentioned this so he recorded all this stuff and kind of organized the transcriptions and that was the first book but the second one we wrote during Co and towards the tail end of Co when we started cooking on the Franklin pit in the backyard started kind of reconnected with cooking on fire pits and stuff like that because it wasn't working all the time so this book is more geared towards homecooks and it's actually got a lot more recipe stuff going on but it's also got a more in-depth brisket recipe which is crazy cuz the first one had an 11 page recipe I think this one's like a 20 something page brisket recipe but it's also kind of Recaps like all the stuff I've learned over the last 10 years because I don't cook the same now that I cooked 10 years ago at all which is kind of funny you know I noticed this a couple years ago and it was like oh when the master class you said this oh on the You Know PBS show you said this in that first book you said this I'm like you know I guess I don't do that anymore you know like but that's it's evolved a lot um so the most current iteration is Franklin smoke and that might change in a couple years who knows you always learn stuff and I've read that Stace does a is it the Green Goddess dip yeah yeah yeah is that featuring them uh no but I can give you the recipe we have it at the other restaurant I'd love to try it cuz my red is good with vegetables and things get L on it as well she likes to dip oh yeah well we have a crud at the other place like pickle things and fresh veggies with Green Goddess dressing perfect have to go we had our first case oh God where'd you go um elderado CF yeah best TMX in Austin ate there two nights ago oh did you did we we did we we were there on yeah maybe it was two nights ago Tuesday we were a Wednesday yeah yeah that's a great spot it was we really really enjoyed it for us we get many Mexican places back home or at least close to us so trying to pronounce some of the things off of the menu we're glad we had Alan there but the food was phenomenal hey y'all we joke now don't we cuz obviously went to Texas last year unfortunately we didn't make it to Franklin but obviously we're here now yeah here you are but we went to Texas me joke you know went to Texas love barbecue and came back with a Frankin pip darn I feel so bad for you guys it's a lifelong investment for us you know we want to look after it we want to season it do lots of cooks and something eventually hand down to a lana when she's old well and that's really you know and I know it's in the literature for this thing but that's really kind of how I designed it it's like you know I want this thing to last forever we were trying to figure out how to honor a 100-year warranty cuz I thought that would be really cool turns out that is very much not feasible um cuz you who's going to repair it we don't know but that thing should last 100 years I mean it's like Grandma's cast ir and skillet you know you keep it keep it lubed up keep it clean that thing will last forever the only part that might wear out is the gr on the bottom and that's why it's Bolton okay it's all kinds of details no little flames on the castle yeah yeah yeah there are saw that like the attention to detail on the pit there's a there's some cool details like if you look on the underside of the the deflector plate where you put the water pan it's uh welded so we bevel the inside of that and then we fill it with Weld and grind it smooth so the air can scoop up and then we round off the inside of the Smoke Stack like little things that you would never never know exist I just want to say I'm really thankful for the fact that you didn't make the lid too heavy because I out a few and I can open half of them and that one and the rotating oh yeah boy the spinning handle is a huge thing the ones up there I started donated about halfway through those and man it makes such a big difference what a what a nice little detail I've always really had a weird aesthetic problem with the big counter weights that people put on things it's like just make the door lighter it's not that big of a deal and I just think they're just so clunky and just kind of like not really pleasing to look at it looks like a Transformer or something like that did you ever think you'd be making your own smokers to sell cuz I know you've always tinkered with them and made like you said earlier made things out of random things but not fridges but yeah no maybe well during the first book we kind of was like you know it' be nice to get these out in the world and help people start but then that was like 10 years ago is when we wrote that first book I was like oh I think I can sell this cuz I want to be super cheap for every man's cooker you know like lay away play like figure out any way to get him in the hands of anybody that wanted one and then by the time we started making them Co had happened supply chain issues the cost of Steel like tripled or quadrupled and hasn't really come down that much so we quickly learned that it's not possible to build the best St cooker in the world without a hefty price tag yeah at the end of the day you get what you pay for exactly you know and it costs real money and real labor we bought a cheap one from a garden center mhm but it's a great way to start I mean if you can make it hot you can cook on it in theory do get nicer yes no we've we've enjoyed and I think it's so much easier for us to manage isn't it it just chugs away at sort of 275 mhm and now kind of got a sweet spot w't you find it and I'm sorry Britain I'm cooking in Fahrenheit now I no longer doing Celsius yeah all your metric stuff you know just fell off the plane when you crossed the pond I was just going to ask you touched on the US passing our smoker on down to a l less than lifetime are your family very involved I KN obviously Stacy's involved uh Stacy for sure Stacy's parents have helped out a lot over the years so Steve my father-in-law back in the day he'd go to events with me and like help me watch the fire overnight and stuff like that and they don't really do too much these days but yeah they've helped a ton over the years and my parents don't really actively do anything well my dad's no longer with us but um but in the early days they helped out a whole lot with like you know just helping with money and the initial money that we got to open our trailer uh was $12,000 that I got from my parents um and then paid back later um but you know so that was a big help and stuff and they really enabled us to to be able to make this Cy Dream Work the dream we talked about Co how did that affect the business and and are you back to where you were um yeah yeah yeah we're totally back we were situated already pretty well with just our Logistics and everything to be able to Pivot pretty easily so we actually closed the restaurant before it was mandatory by like a day or two we're like oh man this isn't going to be good let's switch to like curbside stuff and I was like what are you doing that's dumb and we turned the restaurant around and one day on a Monday when we were closed anyway so on Tuesday we reopened with a completely different model but it worked out pretty good because we already had our online ordering figured out so we had to tweak that that was complicated but we could pull it off and then we just cleared out the dining room and just built stations in there for everybody to stay separated and all that stuff which sounds so ridiculous now and hind like God that was you know but nobody knew you know we didn't we didn't have any data you know but so we were able to do the parking lot so you know here in Texas we got plenty of room and and we were already well well situated for it so it was it was fine once we figured it out it took us about a week to figure out the Cadence of everything like how many orders we can do how big the orders can be how I think the biggest problem was traffic control in the parking lot um and we had people out there with radios and doing stuff I at some point I was out on I35 directing traffic on the first day because we blocked both sides of I35 um and traffic was stopped going this way too cuz so many people were trying to get in here to get their order were're like oh my gosh I was like are going to frankly barbecue okay go that way hey okay you go that way on an interstate wow the pre-orders was that something of Co or was that before Co we did that before Co we started doing that a long long time ago would do pre-orders up front and I would cook ribs and then at 10:15 with all the ribs were off I would run upstairs and start getting through briskets and stuff for 40 minutes and then a 5-minute reset and then I would cut lunch so we could only get like you know five orders in or something like that like hey how's it going all right and they we would let that happen up front and then eventually we built a trailer gosh quite a few years ago now maybe I don't know uh my timeline's a little off and then we started doing the pre-orders out of this not this trailer but the one on the other side and then yeah so now about half of our food goes through that trailer every day and how involved are you on a day-to-day basis still with cooking uh well I don't really cook much anymore we've got such talented Cooks up there we've got about 12 people that cook and they're awesome they've been here a super long time you know we're celebrating a lot of 10-year work anniversaries right now which is really cool for a restaurant I think about six or seven people have been here a decade now everybody's so good I don't cook much anymore I guide them every day and like hey this fire is a little like this think we need to bump up 10 3° on this cooker between hours 5 and 6 and A2 um back off a little bit before wrap push a little harder on here 350 on this you know but we have a text thread so we talk about it every day we look at pictures of briskets and we map everything um and we record our times and temps and we just so much data collection and then I can look at a slice like okay send more off of number three you guys are too low uh post RP bump 5 so you could tell just by looking all this SP gotten really good at it actually so that's my job but I'm here pretty much every day I'm just in and out every day if I'm not here I Rely more on the pictures if I am here I just kind of look at the stuff on tray like hey good job on ribs and then just kind of give feedback accordingly cuz if you got any tips for us like obviously we haven't smoked a breast yet what to look out for when we're cooking one or feeling one like how would oh my gosh that could take us days to talk through a while I'll tell you though in this book right here there on page 179 this is a stream of Consciousness that goes through the entire cook so all the stuff is kind of in there in pretty heavy detail and then also you know you can ask anytime about specifics oh bless it would take me way too long thank you I watched a YouTube video with you doing like a tour behind the scenes and you were talking about and I may be way off Bas here but you were talking about the the cutting boards and they can speed up and slow down the line L I was like were you looking at that like a smoker it's like so the line is like smoke coming through and it's like that's that's an interesting take I've never thought of it that way um off but that's that's pretty intuitive though no not really I think you know we're cutting stuff and of course you want to be as fast as you can like all right no I would always kind of time something like okay I'm down to 30 seconds per guest all right like and cut but then we would run out of seats and like if more people are taking it to go which isn't the case anymore because we have the trailer now so we used to do everything and be like I need 25 lbs of this and You' sit there and cut so then you talk to the people behind them you'd get them snacks get this person to step over while you're cutting it and like do this do this you're seeing people get up you're like all right hey you guys go over there so I used to cut off the line from The Cutting Board and be like uh hey you purple sweater guy what going to get all right you're the last guy for that and then I would like start to make everything line up so that was the last guy uh but that's really where that timing came in so when I stopped cutting and I stopped cutting about I don't know8 years 7 eight years ago something like that when I just real we had a kid you know and was like oh man this isn't going to work I can't work from Midnight to 10:00 p.m. every day and it's was like well for quality of life and just like sustainability I had to back out a little bit and we're better for it in the long run but when I started training other people to cut it was like okay we think about the timing you know if you've got like a host at a restaurant or something like that like you got to got to paste the kitchen a little bit and make all the you got to check all the boxes yeah so I just I was listening to it I was just like and I know on the Frank comp you can't dampen things down but we just was the way you can't go wrong keep it clean man keep it clean yeah exactly we have to had quite a few comments don't we you just need to do the dump we're like we don't have a dump yeah yeah yeah but when you learned how to control your fire you really don't need one I agree it's handy when it's really cold outside or it's windy tin foil comes in real Handy okay Insider tip but really I mean if you have a good solid coal bed you could slow down you could speed up you can make it hotter cooler you can make it hotter on the backside hotter by the stack I mean you can control every aspect of that thing yeah because really a damper I think over the whole cook really kind of negatively affects the cook anyway because a brisket which is what we do here of course really has different fire needs throughout that entire cook you know like different f render different temperatures and different times and damage control on the flat but get the keep the point juicy but render this but get the collagen to break down different like air speeds all that stuff different things out of the wood that collect at different times during the cook like you can't really if you had a damper then you just kind of like set it and you're not paying attention to all that stuff that's excessively detailed for a home cook I I definitely admit that but you know now we'd love to know all the detail wouldn't we and hopefully get to a point where we can talk about like rendering these spats with confidence and like everything you just said I would love to one day be able to talk a like that not tell you make it just people would be able to tell I give them something they like what the hell is this it's too salty yes it is we got a tough food critic over here as well she breaks our foods and everythings are two out of 10 really so she's she's going to go far in life you got to get higher than a two today right I hope so you did get a yummy the brisket yesterday good good good yes well then we'll be sure we get her an end cut so without further Ado let's meet Alan Alan oh [Music]

Channel: Mr H and Friends

Views: 15,759

Keywords: British, America, Reactions, British Family, Reaction, Reaction Video, Reaction Channel, Mr H and friends, The US, US Food, USA Foods, Fast Food, Travel, Brits, Try, Eat, Fast Foods, Vacation, Family, Tries, Best, Worst, Food, Taste Test, Cooking with H, Brits Try American food, franklin, franklins, franklin's, franklin bbq, franklins bbq, franklin's bbq, austin, foodie, foodie adventures, bbq adventures, collaboration, barbeque, austin bbq, aaron franklin, aaron franklin bbq

Id: W5w-mU_4ggQ

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 20 2024