Burnt Legend: The Story of Burnt Ends

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Easily the most important documentary of the 21st century

👍︎︎ 16 👤︎︎ u/hanbro 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2018 🗫︎ replies

Mmmmmmmmmm

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/bortko76 📅︎︎ Feb 09 2018 🗫︎ replies
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- 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.
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Channel: Kansas City PBS
Views: 546,351
Rating: 4.7841306 out of 5
Keywords: Kansas City, News, KCPT, Politics, PBS
Id: AZgD2pn8CAQ
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 26min 42sec (1602 seconds)
Published: Thu Oct 27 2016
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