How Pitmaster Kelly Nevarez Brought Mexican Spice to Texas Barbecue — Smoke Point

so this is my uh fr hood that my dad brought me one day once i stuck my head in like this my bun would touch the surface and scorch so now i can't cook without it and i even wear it during the summer when it's hot so i'm just grabbing my meats from the fridge that i keep all of my raw prepped meats and trimmed meats at i just bring it over here to the pit and put it on my table to season these are prime creekstone briskets i'm going to put mustard on them so that way the spice sticks better this is eight briskets here and this is pretty much typical for one of our lunch shifts i've been at lavaca barbecue as the full-time pit master for a little over a year and a half but i've been cooking barbecue my whole life i layer my spices a little differently so i put multiple layers on them of different things this is a salt and pepper based blend with a few extra secret ingredients that we don't want to share from our mexican influence now i'm putting our beef seasoning on and this is just the regular brisket seasoning and the other the last layer is a very light bominal layer that i put on just to kind of bring out our little mexican flair because you know we want it to be a little different than everybody else's i don't want to over season it so i still want to see a little bit of the fat poking through to make sure that it'll render and it'll get a nice color i'm loading all the meat on first before i start my fire because it gives me more dirty smoke at the beginning that's what usually sticks to the briskets and all the meats first to give like a better smoke ring like an initial layer i didn't want to waste it because i noticed every time i opened the doors it would all come out and by the time i put all of them on i was getting that clean blue smoke it was hard to get that ugly smoke back so that's why i start my wood after i put all my big meats on so we usually make pork butts to serve but i also cook them for our tamales and so on these i'll use lavaca beef spice just like the briskets so i'll put these right next to the fire so that way it gets a good crust on them after i smoke it and it's all said and done and cooked my mother takes the meat brisket and pulled pork mix it and season it for our smoked tamales so this is our wood shed this is our little wood storage we get it sourced out of gonzales it's post oak i like to use some of the uglier lighter pieces they burn a little hotter right at the beginning and i want all that dirty smoke to kind of cover all the meats that i have on evenly my wood has burned down a little bit i just added a few logs and they're burning i don't want to add any more heat but i do want a little more smoke i actually put a rounder piece of wood that has a little more bark or a little more surface area all the way around i put it right on the edge of the box so this is how i can get like a really thick smoke ring without adding extra heat or making the pit spike too much this is the smoke that comes out from the beginning once you start the fire and it has all that good dark smoke to it we only want this for maybe an hour or two and then after that the blue smoke the big clear smoke that comes through that gives you that even barbecue this is my mom christine she's the mastermind behind all of the mixing of the spices and the tamales this is maseka what it is it's a tamale i put some baking powder kelly smokes tallow for me and we use tallow for everything and this is just a different spice with a lot of chili powder in it to give it that color and chicken broth we always make tamales at home we were sitting there and we wanted something different something that we could add to the barbecue scene but at the same time bring our hispanic culture in i've always considered myself the barbecue instigators so the thought was nobody's done the smoke to molly so christine's our tamale maker i roll over the idea and i go hey what about a tamale in the smoker and let's shoot let's wrap that guy up in a butcher paper what can we do so we played with the recipe for a little while to make sure that instead of using the corn husk we were using butcher paper and instead of steaming them if we could put them directly on the pit so now i'm taking kelly's cooked brisket and her pulled pork and we need to make sure that all of it is shredded i add our spices and it's all different kinds of chili peppers in there that have been ground up i don't measure because i've been making it for so long i just know just by the color what it's going to taste like now it's going to be easy to stuff the tamale with this meat typically you see the tamales in a corn husk with the masa spread and steamed since this is barbecue we picked the butcher paper that way i could put it straight on the pit [Music] i hand them to kelly and she puts them on the smoker so now i put the tamales on straight on the smoker right in front of the fire so that way it can get a good crust on it i love that it's the same but different it might taste a little different because of the extra smoke that comes off the pit but it's still in at the heart of it it's still the same so it's been a couple hours that i've since i put the tamales on we're just kind of kind of try and check on them so what i do is i usually take one out i open it and if the masa has like a nice golden color to it that's how i know they're ready the fats are rendered out and they get soaked into the paper just like on the brisket they're about a quarter pound to a third pound a piece and you get the rich flavor and we wanted to do something unique that nobody ever done before they're gonna go straight into the hot box and then they're ready to serve for lunch so these are our pork ribs that i'm gonna be prepping to put on at the end we're gonna put the big red glaze but i also spray them with big red throughout the smoke big red was honestly like that's what you had with barbecue when i was younger that was one of my father's favorite drinks and so in turn that was one of our family favorite drinks some of the other barbecue places will cut this off this little tail right here the reason why i do not do that is actually to protect the last rib i have a beef seasoning and a lavaca pork seasoning and i will actually put the lavaca beef on the bottom of the rib so that way when you bite into it you kind of get like a little bit of a different taste than the top so it just gives it a little more layering of flavor yeah so these will probably go on for about six to eight hours and then i'll wrap them before i take them off we're making our sauce that goes into our ribs this is the sauce we use to finish our ribs that has a big red in it the big red sauce came about during our competition days and we were all in the circuit together kelly was with us and we would do a rib that was really uh shiny and sweet and that was what was winning the thought came out is you know why not big red this is our sweet sauce and this is the base of it so we start with the equal amounts of our sauce so we're gonna pour that in this comes in a cardboard box you can buy this stuff at sam's but it's big red we're gonna pour that in here you can see the beautiful red color of it and that is solid soda syrup big red is a big staple with barbecue barbacoa and it's just a great thing that's behind a lot of the products that we're putting out so we're checking in on the ribs now and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to spritz them down with some of my big red to give them more of that flavor that we want to go with our glaze it's basically just a mix of big red and some other stuff that we have in a sprayer and then once we're ready we'll wrap them these are the beef cheeks this is what we use for our barbacoa what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut off some of this connecting tissue because this is kind of tough to eat we need to trim that off so that way we can get down to the meat itself traditionally what they used to do was smoke the whole head of the cow you know it was more cost efficient for hispanics at that time because that was mainly a cut that people didn't want to eat i'm going to season this barbacoa in this tin on both sides just the same as i would season my brisket and then we will put it on the smoker we only do barbecue on sundays that's traditionally how we would eat it after church or you know whenever you get family get-togethers it's a big deal to eat it they're gonna go right by the fire so they can get that good color to them then i'll put it in a tray after we smoke it typically what you make is tacos and we usually put it on our blue corn tortillas so today we're going to make the blue corn tortillas we take a blue corn flour and it is made from actual blue corn we use blue corn because it has no gluten and it has a lesser starch than the regular yellow corn we add water and in mexico they use blue corn a lot more than they do the yellow corn just because it's healthier and once we get the consistency that we want we'll then put them on the press so we have this pressed this tortilla press we put the masa in between two plastic sheets so that way it doesn't stick to the wood you flatten it once we finish pressing them what we do is we bring it over here to the cast iron griddle we call this a command i have two different flames going so what i do is i start it over here and i just lay it down it's a gray color right now but then once it starts changing color around the edges then you know it's time to flip them and put them to the higher heat so i'm pressing down on the edges so that it'll cook evenly and it will send the air bubbles to the middle and see so that one's starting to bubble we'll flip it back over and if you'll notice it starts getting that big air bubble right there in the middle and that tells you that that is ready to take off the coma so now that the barbacoa has a really nice color to it you want to see like a pretty red dark color to it but it's still pretty soft it's not too crunchy it's not too dry i'm gonna put some of our beef tallow in here that we rendered so i don't want to cover them completely in the tallow because i don't want the spices to wash off this kind of adds that smooth moisture to kind of help it break down a little bit more once it's ready and done we'll drain all of that out and so that way it's just the meat i'm gonna check in on the meats i'm just gonna come in and spritz a little like worcestershire and stuff on them so right now they're getting that good crust on them that good bark and the red that you see right here is part of that smoke ring that we like to see that i got from the beginning smoke typically you know you don't see a lot of short young hispanic females doing this being a woman in barbecue the only issues i've run in with are some of our customers or people who have tried my food who don't realize who i am yes ma'am oh miss waitress can you come over here and you know where we were just wondering where the owner was where's the pit master and i tell him you know i'm sorry i am the pit master and they like look at me and they're like no no you know like we want to meet the real pit master you know i have this handle here that my dad put in special for me because i'm not tall enough to reach the door all the way he put the amount of weight i actually needed on the door to actually pull it up and everything so this whole pit has been like really customized to me and my mom i don't consider myself special you know why wouldn't i be able to do it i just happen to be a woman who cooks barbecue we've got here we've got our beef fajitas fajita is basically the brisket of mexican food these are a prime fajita they're some of the best fajitas that we can get here locally in fact we're the only ones getting them within 100 miles from this point what we're going to do is season them and then they go into the smoker got a little salt pepper garlic so they're going to go on the smoker for probably about 45 minutes and then we finish them off as we sear them in our pk grill right now we're going to go ahead and put them in [Music] and then we're going to come back and spritz them with our spray this is the spray that we use just for fajitas we're going to start we always use a mexican beer and here's i just freshly squeezed some some limes put our big red in there we're going to go ahead and spray the fajitas and then we're going to reach over and there you go we're going to reveal those beautiful grill marks as they're starting to develop they've got a pretty color to them now we're going to pull them out we've got our old pk grill here oh i shoveled post oak coals into here instead of using charcoal we want that same flavor the grill's giving you a quick char to to the finish it's creating it's caramelizing it's taking a lot of that big red that we put in it with a little bit of that sugar and uh sort of burning it a little bit so fajita really doesn't have to be charred a lot of times you'll go to a hispanic restaurant mexican restaurant and they bring them out on a hot cast iron skillet but if you got to think that skillet's going to be way over 200 degrees so when they bring your fajita out and yes it's good to see it steaming but in reality uh that fajita it's over cooking so we've got that tray about full as you can already tell look at the juice that's already coming out of them so they're starting to rest we'll take them into our warmer they'll be ready for service and we'll be serving them and just like we would a brisket the ribs have been on for about eight hours so now we're gonna check them and see if they're ready so i have a nice little fold here that means they're super tender and i have some juice popping out they're about ready so what i'm going to do is i'm going to put them on a tray after i let them rest for about 30 minutes and then once we're ready to serve we put our big red glaze on them father-son holy spirit amen lord god heavenly king almighty god and father we worship you we thank you for everything that you have bestowed upon us this week we pray before every service i think it kind of reminds all of us and the workers like no matter what kind of chaos is going on that morning kind of just calms us a little bit to make sure that we're all on the same page before we open in jesus name we pray amen welcome back i got extras today [Music] a lot of our recipes a lot of our influence has been our family our traditions our culture i think we've been super friendly with people as a family having these people come in and enjoy the food and then having them as regulars and remembering all their orders it just it feels like you're just kind of growing your family and we want them to have that feeling that they can come here be comfortable like be open and enjoy the food while they're at it [Music] we want people to be happy and feel like family to us um and not just customers who were like okay what do you want you know like next person please that's why our cutting board is very like personable you're right there you're talking to the cutter you're talking to the person making your food and plating it and so you get to see and interact and build your own plate and see it happening and have a part in that we want them to walk away thinking i i just had a quality product with great customer service uh for us we want our customer service to actually be better than our food and we think our food's pretty good you

Channel: Eater

Views: 492,103

Keywords: Barbecue, brisket, barbecue brisket, bbq, texas bbq, texas barbecue, tex mex bbq, tex mex barbecue, best bbq in texas, pitmaster, pitmasters, smoke point, eater, eater.com, food, restaurant, dining, foodie, chef, food show, tacos, bbq tacos, smoked brisket tacos, mexican bbq, LaVaca BBQ, Kelli Navarez, Pitmaster Kelli Navarez, tamales, bbq tamales, brisket tamales, mexican food, mexican cuisine, mexican barbecue, female pitmaster, women pitmastmers, eater smoke point, port lavaca

Id: D6kslrezs3g

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2022