- At least two
or three times a year, we get travel shows coming in, or we'll get an anchorman
from some other city that's playing either
the Chiefs or the Royals, and he'll come in and he'll
do a little stand-up, and then he'll pour some sauce
over our barbecue and then he'll look
in the camera, and he'll go, "And here in Kansas City,
it's all about the sauce." First of all,
I'd like to correct that. It's not all about the sauce. It's all about the meat,
and it always has been, and it always will be. [Nathaniel Rateliff
& The Night Sweats' "Shake"] - [singing]
Shake baby. I feel it when you
shake baby. I really want to
shake baby. Come on and just
shake baby. Never gonna stop. Feel it when it's hot,
oh, oh, oh. Curl your lips
gonna be while. [bluesy piano music] - Burnt ends are juicy,
and smoky, and aromatic. Tender.
It's so decadent. It's like the dark browning, and it's the spices
that concentrate, and it's the crispy bits. It's all of that.
It's the texture. It's the flavor.
It's the smoke. - That exterior that, you know,
with--where it's got the concentrated smoke flavors. And of course, it renders a lot
of fat during that process, and that fat mixes
with the smoke and the seasoning to caramelize. And then you've got
the texture of the crunch that comes from that
cooking time. But then on the inside
you've got you know, you've got this burst
of moisture and juice that's just--
I'm drooling talking about it. - It's succulent,
buttery goodness. And it's probably
one of the best things. Better than a prime steak,
I would say. There's something of this
legend or myth about this unique
secret to just Kansas City. - Burnt ends are
very historical for us, and this is the thing that
helps people really hone in on what our barbecue is about. It comes from
a tradition of beef. - We're really after
the beef brisket. We're not after the burnt ends. The burnt ends
just happened along. In fact, we used to use
burnt ends as scraps and throw them away. - That goes all the way back to the beginnings
of barbecue in Kansas City. That's kind of how it started,
with things in the stockyard that were being
thrown away like ribs and brisket was a product that was discarded a lot
in the old days. And you couldn't cook it.
It was tough. Kansas City found a way to cook
that brisket slow and smoke it and make it
something that was desirable. And that's kind of what
you're doing with burnt ends. - If they're done right, to get that combination
of the heavy char with the pink,
succulent interior, it's--it's just--
it's just indescribable, and I think
that this is no longer the waste product of the animal but this is
actually the caviar. - For me, burnt ends really is kind of
the embodiment of our tradition, because it's something
that--it's unique to us, that we did on our own,
and it's not served in Memphis. It's not served
in the Carolinas. It's not on the menu in Texas, and if it is, it's only
because somebody came here, liked it, went down there
and put it on their menu. It's not a part
of their tradition. It started in one
of our restaurants. - Burnt ends were founded here
in Kansas City. The pit masters down at Arthur
Bryant's used to cut the charred
tips of the briskets off and throw them up on the counter
for people to snack on in line. - And, you know, the countermen
didn't object to that. They were focused
on making their sandwiches, and--and it became kind
of a tradition over time. - What was originally thought
of as the scrap. This is, "Well, nobody's going
to want to eat this, "we'll just throw it up "and let people kind of chew
on it in line to get them hungry
for the real food." It's something
that's been embraced, and now it's become
what we're known for. - I think our identity stems
from the days when Arthur Bryant's was
giving out those little charred bits, and, you know, if Calvin
Trillin hadn't written
about them in the way that he did,
at the time that he did, it'd be hard pressed, I think, to say that burnt ends would be quite as popular
as they are today, but it's stuck in
our cultural imagination. It tasted good, and we're going
to carry it forward. - I know why they have that
sign that says "don't tip the cooks,"
because everyone used to do it, and everyone used to get
tons of extra meat. And we used to get enough meat
to eat for like two days. It's just so iconic. You know, the door's hard to
open, and it's just, this place has been
so successful, and they could've changed it,
and they haven't. It's interesting to be here
and just even realize that two generations ago, or three I guess,
would be the guy that brought Kansas City
barbecue, so it's-- it's--you know,
this is an important place. This is where it all started. Burnt ends is always
the first thing that we go to. You know, this is
so uniquely Kansas City. Just one of those
accidents that, you know, truly defines us. - But I think the person
who probably makes burnt ends into its own mythology
is Calvin Trillin. - One of his most famous
essays was when he wrote a line,
and I may be paraphrasing, but that Arthur Bryant's
is the single best restaurant. - And he says that
when he was a child, they would all stand in line, and approach the counter
just as we all do today, and as the counterman
was chopping brisket, burnt ends would accumulate, and pile up over the course
of a day. Customers would reach in
and grab those, and pop them in their mouth
while they were waiting for their sandwiches
to be assembled, and waiting to pay and get
their beers and go and sit down. - And the way that he would
write about Bryant's, and the fact that indeed, the very best part of
the brisket was the burnt ends, and it was being
given away for free, and suddenly everyone
is really interested in what this is
and how it tastes. - And then they were realizing
that people were eating that a little more
than some of their ordered meat. - It struck me that if there
was this desire for that product, why am I giving it away? There's no reason
not to make it, and serve it, and sell it. - It's sort of hucksterism
in a way. It's like, why can't we make
something out of this? We'll just call it burnt ends. - You've got to love it. It's why I started
cooking to begin with. You know, start it, smoke it, and watch it,
and rub it correctly, and, you know,
flavor it correctly, and then it cooks for hours and hours and hours and hours,
and you can't fall asleep. You know, you can't ignore it.
You can't just walk away. And running the cookers are,
you know, it's feeding it fuel, and running the dampers,
and it's-- it's--it is.
It's a--it's a process, and then what you
get out of it I think-- I think blows people away,
people that don't cook, or know how to cook. To watch this process,
and then experience it, it's pretty awesome. I love it when there's a piece
that's got a little bit of meat, and then that--
that fat layer, and then the crust on the top. It's like the truffles
of the brisket, you know. The caviar of the brisket
is just on the outside, and I mean, I can't imagine
how much waste you would have if that was the only thing
you were going for. [upbeat bluesy music] - You can't really create a
menu item out of scraps like that. - They're so good
if they're done right. I mean, people just love them
and crave them. It's crazy.
- It only takes a few people telling their friends
that tell their friends that tell their friends
until you've got an epidemic going on of
running out of burnt ends in the Kansas City
metropolitan area. - They were the slightly
dried out, crunchy end pieces of a brisket. Now they've been transformed
into this magical, you know, crown jewel
of Kansas City barbecue. - Restauranteurs were faced
with a dilemma. You know, what do we do?
How do we meet the demand when we don't have much
of these to begin with? - How you make those
is kind of-- - It's different than it
used to be. - A little different
than it used to be, for sure. - It's not accidental anymore.
- Right. - I would love to go back
in time, just to see how they cooked
them at the very beginning. It's so different
than it is now. - Innovative,
and enterprising restauranteurs figured out a way
to re-create a product
that was an accident, but now is
an intentional product that we would call burnt ends. [twangy guitar music] - We ate a lot of bad
burnt ends in the beginning, because, you know,
we were trying all these different methods and trying to understand, like,
actually what a burnt end was. - You know, ultimately what
the pit masters have done is found a way
to manufacture the charry edges of the brisket, which used to be
what burnt ends were. - This is a whole brisket. We're actually going to take
the brisket point off, and then we will be left
with the brisket flat, and the point we'll use
for our burnt ends. - Ever noticed on a cow
that little part that jiggles down beneath between their front legs
when they're walking? That's actually
the big brisket right there. - Brisket has actually
two muscles on it. There's the flat,
where you get slices from, and then the point
where you get what we in Kansas City
call the burnt ends. - So what we're going to do,
we're just gonna flip this over, so I'm going to take my knife and just kind of
get started here. - Burnt ends come
from the point, and that's the only place
they should come from. The reason is all
the fat built up. - You know, a lot of people
don't want to eat fat in their barbecue, but I can tell you this, if the barbecue
doesn't have any fat in it, the barbecue is not any good. And burnt ends have
some fat in it. - We can already see
the flat kind of coming away from the point here. - Some people try to use
the flat and cut it in the cubes or the chunks, but it's just not the same, because it doesn't have
the fat content, and usually anybody
around Kansas City can pick that out pretty quick, that it's not a true burnt end. - That is your brisket point
that will become our burnt ends. So now we're just going
to trim them down. - For me, the right kind of fat
is the fat that's running in and out of the muscle fibers. You want intramuscular fat. The fat on the outside,
we trim down, because ultimately
that's where your smoke and that's where your rub
is going to be touching, so I want that directly
on the meat, and then your flavorful fat's
gonna render from the inside. - This is pretty well ready
to go, so there's just
a little bit of fat on here. It's all soft fat, so I know
that we're close to the meat. We are gonna season the point. - The combination
of the seasoning or the rub and the reaction the meat has to the smoke
will help you develop bark. - That's one of the things that
establishes a quality burnt end, is the bark,
which is the dark, outer layer outside
of the succulent meat. - Next, we're just going to
load it up, put it in the smoker. We're going to cook them low
and slow for about 16 hours. - You know, the big thing
with burnt ends is you have
to be patient with them. It is very important that you
cook it to the proper doneness. An undercooked burnt end is going to one
of the toughest meats-- - Piece of rubber.
- Yeah, you ever eat. And it's this chewy, rubbery-- it's like you're chewing
on a couple rubber bands, and there's nothing
you can do about it. You have to let it cook. - When we open up the smoker, there are some things
that we look for. The texture, the color of the
points, you know, the bark. Like this one back here, I know that it's pretty close
to being done just by feeling it, you know? It's not hard,
but it's not super soft. At that point, I'll pull it out
and then temp it. - The meat itself is cooked-- and safety
from the USDA standpoint-- around 165 degrees,
but it's really tough. Most of the time, you hear
somebody complain about a dry, tough piece of meat,
they've overcooked it. Well, they've actually
undercooked it. They haven't cooked
the meat long enough. We have--in order to get
that flavorful, juicy meat, you have to turn all that
connective tissue into gelatin, and that just takes time. - This is right around
the temperature that we're looking for. So she's good to go.
Next, you need to let them rest. You need to let all the juices
kind of come together, solidify to the middle, the marbling is going
to settle down a little bit. And it just makes
for a great burnt end when you let them rest. - In a burnt end you get
everything kind of amped up. - You get some bark
on the outside, juicy, meaty inside, and it's just like
barbecue gold. - It definitely is one of
the most difficult challenges, perfecting burnt ends. That's what makes them
very special. - Burnt ends are just,
you're lucky when you get a beauty, right? It's like everything
with wood and smoke-- so variable,
that you just never know if you're going to get
that piece of gold again. What makes burnt ends great, I would look very carefully
at the way the meat is cubed, see if I can see
any smoke rings, see a layer of fat, and then look very hard
at the crust. And then ultimately, there may be some trails
of grease on your plate. Little orange grease spots,
that's probably not a bad thing. But the ultimate is pop it
in your mouth, chew it. You don't want it stringy.
You don't want it dry. You don't want it overly fatty, so it all has to come together
in kind of just one lovely bite
where you say, "Ah, that is meat,
and I love it." - You're going to have some fire
and some smoke, and some bark,
or burnt portions. LC's, to me, his are heavenly. The old style
barbecue guys are resourceful. When they want some barbecue
meat they'll figure out how to take what's available and convert it
into the barbecue pit. LC is one of them. - That first slice burning
in your mouth still, you know, at 205 degrees off the smoker-- - Borderline too hot to eat.
- Borderline too hot to eat is, you know, it's my happy place. It goes to a place
where, you know, I only experience for about
35 seconds in the morning when I'm at the restaurant,
so it's just-- it's just the best in the
world. - The mythology of burnt ends
is really interesting. It's so variable. How do we even get something
good out of this piece of meat? - Time, temperature, wood,
weather, the pit you're using, those are all factors into how
the burnt end will come out, and then you've also got to be
able to pull that piece of meat out of the pit
at the exact moment that it is perfect, so it has to be this harmony
of all pieces coming together at just the right moment
in order to get that magical piece. - Some people refer
to it as "beef butter." When they're done,
and done right, they're so tender it
just melts in your mouth. - We've taken local wood,
you know, hickory or oak, a tough cut of meat that maybe other people
overlook, and you just give it some time,
you give it your skill, and then--then you've got
something fabulous. - It's an art, really.
I mean, it's a craft, but it's also an art. - You know, Joe and I have
one thing that we're good at, and that's cooking barbecue,
you know, We have a couple
more things, but we're really-- we're good at cooking barbecue
in the restaurant, and we're good at giving people
the best food on the plate, and so we wanted to commit
to doing that every day
and it makes a difference. People--people,
I think, taste it. - And I think of burnt ends
is our-- sort of our umami, I guess. You know, it's that-- that flavor you can't
really describe, but you know it
when you taste it. - It came in the blood. And it was, like, in my veins, and it's just like,
"Man, what is--what is this?" And it's the barbecue. The smoke is inside you, and then it just
developed into pride, not only in doing
barbecue for BB's, but also doing barbecue
for Kansas City. - Kansas City is barbecue.
Yeah, it's very committed. My last count was that we had
about 140 barbecue restaurants. You may not have 140 barbecue
restaurants in all of Texas. [bluesy rock music] - I went to Bryant's
in the first week that I was here in Kansas City, and I just fell in love
with the stories. And they were interesting, and
fun, and colorful, and unique, and full of personality
and tradition, and history. - Barbecue is all about
the whole culture, so, you know, walking into
LC's. LC is going to be sitting in the booth over there
watching what you're doing. You know, and
you're standing in line, and you've got this massive
sandwich that you're looking forward to,
and they-- they've always done
burnt ends really, really well. - LC's, I love their burnt
ends. You can kind of see them
open both doors and you see that pot
of beans in their pit and you see all the meat. - Part of it is just
the romance of barbecue. It doesn't have to be fancy
to be really good. - You know, the magic doesn't
happen without experience and putting the time
in to figure out how to do it. That labor of love,
all the steps that it took to get to that final process is definitely not just done, you know, like cooking a steak. - The brisket's
a tough piece of meat. It takes that, you know,
attention to detail and that cooking process
to get it right. For every good burnt end
there's even a better pit master behind that burnt end. - I think that what makes
Kansas City barbecue so fascinating and wonderful is that there's an attitude
of anything can go. If it tastes really good,
if you can make it taste good, then how you get
to that end product, I think it matters
less to people. - Burnt ends have evolved. Today burnt ends
come in all forms. Brisket, pork, ribs,
about anything you want. So, what is a burnt end? It's whatever you want to name
it. - But I don't know where you'd
get burnt end on the chicken, but... [laughs] To answer your question. - If anybody serves you
a burnt end that's not beef, they don't know
what they're doing. Because burnt ends
come from a cow. - When I look at burnt ends, I definitely revere
what the purists have done, and I get it,
and I need to understand it, and if I'm judging it, I would judge it the proper way, but I think there's also a lot
of room for experimentation. I would not yell someone down for being liberal
in their interpretation. - No, you cannot
have pork burnt ends, and you cannot have ham
burnt ends, and there are folks
in Kansas City who say that they have ham and pork burnt ends
on their menu for you, and those ain't burnt ends. - I almost look at burnt ends
as more of a technique. I mean, think of the words
"burnt ends." - I guess you could call bacon
burnt ends if you overcook it and want to chop it up
and put it into something. A bacon burnt end, I don't
know. - I suppose you could say that
once we took that half step back from their original form,
that anything goes. But I don't think
anything goes at that point. I think you've got
to say as true as you can to the
origin of the item, which is that they were
the end pieces of a brisket. To me, you can't just chop up
a piece of meat that has an exterior edge to it
and call it a burnt end. That's not a burnt end. - And that's where you start
getting, oh, what interesting things
can we do as we see more chef and competitive barbecuers get into the restaurant
business? It's not just doing, you know,
the old style anymore, it's now talking about
what's next, what's new. - A burnt end pot sticker.
A burnt end eggroll. Bacon-wrapped burnt ends.
I could go on and on. Burnt end nachos.
A burnt end soup. I just gave my grandma
a bowl last week. God, she loved it.
Burnt end spaghetti. Burnt end loaded baked potato. - I want a burnt end
ice cream, personally. - I know at Q39 you can get
really good brisket burgers. - Today, we're going to go ahead
and make a burnt end brisket burger, but we want to show you that at
Q39 we make everything fresh. So what we do
is we start off with 50% chuck meat, 50% brisket. They're both CAB,
and they're aged for 30 days. We grind this meat daily,
and then we go ahead and fire it up
on our wood-fired grill. Now, when we make
our brisket burgers, the reason why we use
half brisket and half chuck meat,
brisket adds a completely different flavor
to the hamburger. Well, a lot of people
use short ribs, which is good, it contains
a lot of fat content, which makes it nice and moist,
but when you use brisket, it changes the flavor
with the enzymes in the brisket, so that's why we choose to use
that for our hamburger. What we're going to do,
is we go ahead and weigh out our hamburgers
to 8 ounces. We lightly pat it.
That's it. Anything more than
that makes it chewy. We put it right here
in a hamburger press. Put it down real light,
so it's not overworked, it's not tough,
it's ready to go on the grill. You'll see there's
beautiful marbling in there. That is not only
from the brisket, but also using the point
of the burnt ends that helps it out
with that flavoring. Now we're going to take
that beautiful hamburger we just made,
we're going to season it with some of our
Q39 steak seasoning. So salt, cracked black pepper,
a little garlic, a little onion powder in it,
nice and simple. But really, all you want to do
is enhance the meat with a little bit
of salt flavoring. Put that right on the grill.
We're going to let that cook. So what's going to happen is
that fat's going to render down, and it's going to go
into a wood oak grill. It's going to hit
that oak flavor and shoot up. It's going to take that
hamburger and make it perfect. Nice flavor, delicious, and it's going to
match everything else we build that burger on. So what we do
is we take the brisket, we're going to separate
the brisket flat, which is on the bottom,
to the point that's on top. Now, at Q39, what we do
is not only smoke our briskets until they're nice
and smoky and tender, but then what we do is
when we do burnt ends, we use an infusion of using
the oak grill at the same time. So we're going to take this
and grill the other side, so it's going to give you
a beautiful char flavor, and also embark some smoke
on the other side. Without putting it back in the
smoker for a couple hours, it keeps it nice and moist,
and it doesn't get dry. A little seasoning salt,
take that, put it right on the grill. Get some nice char flavors. Just like a steak,
you want to let it sit there. If you start moving it early,
what's going to happen? It's going to stick
to the grill. So you'll never get
those good char marks. It's okay to get it
nice and charred. It's a deep,
rich flavor you get from it. Oh, man, I'm hungry. What we do with our burnt ends, is we'll use this portion
to serve burnt ends, and this portion to go
on our brisket burger. Take some of those
beautiful burnt ends, and we're going
to slice them now. Take a little bit of au jus.
Look at that. Look at what
you're eating today. Put a little bit
of that rub on there. A little bit of classic sauce. Whoo-ee. I'm getting hungry. Then we're going to take
our spicy pickle slaw. There we go. How's that
for a burnt end burger? So what can you do
with burnt ends? It's endless. [bluesy guitar music] I think burnt ends is
a trademark in Kansas City, and collectively we have some of
the best barbecue restaurants, and I'm very proud
to be a citizen here. - That's what people
in this city want. They want beef, and more specifically,
burnt ends. It's become the Kansas City
tradition of barbecue. It's what we're known for. It's Kansas City's contribution
to the barbecue world, and this city has embraced it. - But I think it's like,
yeah this is us, this is us. You know, that together
with our own sauce, you know it's like, yeah,
we've got our own thing. Yeah, we didn't invent
barbecue, but we made it better,
and this is how. - I think it's very important
to continue this legacy that we have known
as Kansas City barbecue. - We're the standard here
in Kansas City but through the competition
network and through-- at the restaurants, seeing
the popularity of burnt ends, it's spreading
all over the country. - You know, we might
see them in Texas. We might see it pop up
in Memphis. More and more places
will kind of discover those. - I think it's a perfect little
morsel of Kansas City history. - Burnt ends typifies
who we are. Will we look back
a 100 years and still say burnt ends
is part of our history? I would think so,
but we might not recognize them as being the very same cut, or the very same process. People are going to come,
and they're going to try it. And here they are
40 years later. They're still eating burnt ends
at Arthur Bryant's and other places.
Easily the most important documentary of the 21st century
Mmmmmmmmmm