Viewers like you make this
program possible. Support your local PBS station. - Oooo hoo-hoo-hoo! (funky guitar sound) (fire crackling) You know, at
the restaurant, we only use
post oak. So on this episode,
we're going to head around the great state of Texas and see what some
other people are doing with different woods. First stop is Buffalo Gap,
at Tom Perini's place. (fiddle sawing) (mellow, relaxing guitar) - Welcome to Buffalo Gap, Texas, home of Perini Ranch Steakhouse. Tom Perini is a
super old-school guy. He's been cookin' on direct
heat mesquite for years, started with chuck wagons, and I can't think
of a better guy to teach me how to
cook a steak than Tom. So we're gonna do it. - Hey Tom.
- Hi, Aaron. - How you doin'? - Welcome to
the ranch. - Thanks for havin' me. - I'm glad you're
here, it's a pleasure. It is a pleasure. - Yeah it's a
pleasure, for me! Well, what are you workin' on? - These are our roasting pits. And when I say a roasting pit, this method is like if you
had a hole in the ground. In the old days, where
they'd dig a hole, and they'd build a big fire and
they'd stretch wire across it. We get mesquite wood, cook it down, and make good coals, and then we shovel 'em in, and all your heat
goes straight up. So it's not like a
traditional smoker, that has a fire, a
live fire on the end and pulls it through. Behind you, I wanna show
you some mesquite wood. As you can see, look
at the color of that. And that's just as
hard as it can be. - Yeah. Unmistakable. And this is reaaaaally
lightweight! I mean, this has been around
for a long, long time. - It has, it has. When we burn it
down and make coals, it makes a good hot coal. You know and people
laugh and say, 'why do you use mesquite?' 'cause there's oak and hickory, and I'm goin'-- - Well look around! - Yeah, we're
right in the middle of mesquite country. (mellow guitar) - You know, the cool
thing about cookin' like this is everything
drips on the coals, and it comes back up, and it's such a
distinctive smell. - The nice thing about
these kind of pits, and this is empty right now, Aaron, you can look, those
are pretty good sized pits. - Oh yeah. - Your air control on
the top and the bottom. - That's it. - (laughs) You're
cheating, you're cheating! We're gonna go over,
I wanna show you, we have a chuck wagon, and kinda give
you a little story about how that was used. The chuck wagon was created about 1866, by Charles Goodnight. After the War
Between the States, or the Civil War, the guys came back, they
didn't have any money, their ranches had gone to pot, and some very creative guys said "If we can get cattle "up to the North and Northeast, "we can make money." But what came up was, they've got 12 or 15 cowboys, how do they feed 'em? Two meals a day, so this is a rolling kitchen. You know what you've
gotta remember on a chuck wagon, this was a home away from home. These guys, you know, if you were gonna shave, or if you got cut, or if you needed some salve, or if you needed whatever, - [Aaron] It's on this. - This is where you got it. It's an era, lasted
20 some odd years, started the Texas beef
industry as we know it, and then when the
trains came in closer, and trucking developed, it all... - See you later, chuck wagon. - But then the big
ranches used to use 'em, on cattle drives, and they'd go out and gather all the cattle
and then move 'em around. And then at one point
they dropped out of favor, and in the 70s we were very instrumental
in bringin' 'em back. - You're gonna kinda
school me up on grillin' some steaks, right? - Oh, I'd love to, and you know with a good steak, if you're using good beef and you're cooking it over wood you have three layers of flavor, that you can't
achieve in an oven. I take that back, you know, I know some big
steak houses do that, so I'm not knocking them. - You can't get this flavor out of an oven. - This is what I like. - What's going on in your head when you're lookin'
at this fire like "I need to wait a few minutes." "I need to cook that one over." - Yeah, well, let's
talk about that, 'cause we're doin' this in this
Number Three washtub because of the wind. We've got a good bed
of mesquite coals, we also have some flame, which I think is very important. You know, people
ask me all the time, how you check your
temperatures and everything. In this case you don't
have a temp gauge, you gotta do it by your hand. And if I were to hold my hand at your grate level... - Uh-huh. - You can't hold it
there a long time, might be one second. - Yeah. - And I think that would be considered hot. But if you're cooking a steak and you can hold it
there for three seconds, that's cold. All right, hopefully
I can drag this and we'll see how this works - Well you've done this before! - I wanna get this
as hot as I can, because first of all it'll
make good char marks, but also a cold
grill will stick, the meat will stick. And so, let's get
this as hot as we can, and then if you want to, let's go
talk about the steaks. - Hey, let's talk about steaks! I mean, I guess that's
kinda why we're here. - That's right,
that's why we're here. We have three
steaks on the plate, my favorite is ribeye. And it's got more
marbling in it. Now this is a dry rub. It is sea salt and garlic and onion. It has a little
beef stock in it. And you know, it's important that
you don't season to the point that
you lose the identity of your product. You're not trying to
cover up the beef flavor. If you were in a
perfect situation, I'd take it out and let
it sit for an hour or two. Anything that you can do to raise the temperature will make your
cooking time shorter. Let's see, I'm movin' it at two. - Yeah. Yeeeaaah, I could go with three, but I may have burned off
most of my nerve endings at this point. - I'm gonna put it
right over the flame. (steak sizzles) Looks good to me, looks
like a steak cookin'. - Heck, yeah. - When cooking steak,
you're gonna wanna know how you like your steak done. (siren wailing) - Warning! Consuming
raw or undercooked foods such as meat, poultry,
fish, shellfish and eggs may increase your risk
of foodborne illness, especially if you have
a medical condition. Black and blue, or
Pittsburgh style: This is rarer than rare. Seared on the outside, still red and cool
in the middle. Mmm, rare! You're looking at about
75% red in the center, and if you gotta good steak, this is definitely
the way to go. Medium-rare. When you're here, you're
down to 50% redness. You're startin' to lose
a little bit of juice, and juuuuust startin'
to dry out the steak. Medium. This is it. Your steak is mostly
pink in the middle, if you pull it off now, you might have a
little juice left. So medium-well. If you get it to this point, you've cooked out
most of the juiciness, it's not pink, it's not red. It's getting leathery. Yooouuuu've gone too far. Well done. I don't even know what
to say about this. I, I, ugh. You're just wasting
steak at this point. I bet we gotta flip this thing. - Yep. (steak sizzles) - Well I think, you know, one thing
you just can't get, if you're cookin' on propane, or cookin' in a skillet, is the way the fat on the sides - Look at it!
- of these ribeyes and other cuts gets all crunchy and you know, that's the
great thing about flame. - With a steak, you'll
let it rest just a minute. But just because it's a
thinner piece of meat, you don't have to wait
five or ten minutes. - But what you're really
lookin' for, is that you kind of gotta think
of it like a locomotive, like it's got all this momentum, you're cookin' it,
cookin' it, cookin' it, so just 'cause you pull it off, doesn't mean it stops cookin', it keeps going, so you
gotta think about-- - It keeps going, if you've got a big
knife and you went and cut it in half, it
would completely evacuate. - And everyone's like, 'Oh
look at that steak! Oh!' 'Yeah, it was kind of dry.' Wellll, that's 'cause
you didn't let it rest. - All right, how tough are you? You think we need to take it-- - I think it's ready. But I'm not the pro. - I know, here it comes. My reputation is truly at stake! And that's what you're looking
for, you're looking for that, it's pushin' it out. - Yeah. Good grill marks. - Let's let that
rest for a minute. (mellow guitar music) - Thank you, sir. Mmm. That's the way a steak
is supposed to taste. Well, thank you Tom. Sure appreciate it. Well you're welcome, and you're welcome any time. It's been fun and I've
really enjoyed this. - Well thanks for havin' me. This is one of the best
steaks I've ever had. - Well good, good. (laughs) Yawanna bite a this? It's really (bleep)ing good. (Tom and crew laugh) - [Crewmember] Cut! (acoustic guitar riff) - Back in the chuck wagon days, a great way to preserve meat was to smoke it and
make beef jerky. Ohhhhh, beef jerky. I like it. Everyone likes it. Great! And it's not very hard to make. Gotta couple flank steaks here. You can get mostly
anything you want. Pretty much what
you're looking for is not a lot of fat. You don't want a real
marbled piece of meat. So you want something
pretty lean, maybe skirt, maybe flank,
somethin' around there. It's pretty common
to do a marinade, maybe with soy sauce
or liquid smoke or teriyaki or
any of that stuff. But back in the old days I don't think they had
teriyaki seasoning, so we're not doin' it that way. This is going to be
straight salt and pepper. And smoke. Now you wanna get this
meat as cold as you can without freezing it. We're gonna slice this stuff really really thin so we wanna get it really firm. I am gonna kinda go down
at an angle a little bit. We're gonna cut it about
quarter-inch slices against the grain, a lot of beef jerky you
would slice with the grain I prefer it against, just so it's a
little more tender. So it's kinda
moist on the inside and it's not real leathery. Some of this, if
you do get a piece that has some of
that fat on there, just go ahead and trim it off. It's not a big deal
if you don't, but you gotta knife handy, you might as well just
trim a little bit. It might be a little chewy
on these fattier parts, but, eh, you know, that' s okay. A piece of beef jerky that's
got a little chew to it certainly isn't the
worst thing in the world. We're gonna use
two cooling racks. I'm gonna lay the meat
out on one of them to go into the smoker. Then, we'll make a rub, I'm gonna use about
half-salt and half-pepper, buuuuut then a
little bit more salt. I'll shake it up. There's not gonna be a lot
of flavor inside the meat so we're going to
have to overcompensate with some extra rub. We'll sprinkle the rub
on preeetty liberally, then we're gonna use
the second cooling rack to flip the meat around. And season the other side. In the meantime, we're gonna let
the meat sit out, warm up to room temperature
while I start the fire. (chimney lighter
bangs against smoker) We're cold smokin' so
we're gonna keep everything under 150 degrees... and I'm gonna go wash up. (winsome fiddling) Ooooooouuuughhh, perfect! 125 degrees. So I'm just gonna pick up this tray o' meat. Stick it in here. If you wanna be pretty
heavy on the smoke, you might be lookin'
at about five hours, if you wanna be a
little more delicate, maybe closer to three. But either way it's your call. Put it in, shut the lid, walk away and maintain. (lively solo fiddling) - Oh yeah. Okay, so these
things have been on for about three hours. Definitely on the lighter
side of smokiness, which is totally great for me. Good 'n' pliable. Good color. So let's get these things inside and get 'em in the dehydrator. (lively fiddling) All righty. So I'm gonna put this beef jerky in the
food dehydrator. If you don't have
a food dehydrator, you can totally use your oven. Just put it on the warm setting. You don't want it
to get any hotter than about 145, 150. So anyway, gonna transfer this stuff over. Looks nice. Smells good too. Don't wanna smush it
in there too much, you wanna leave sorta some gaps, mmhm, mmhm. Just gonna slide this thing in. Put the front back on. Turn it to 145, and check back in the
morning for softness. (bright guitar picking) (rooster crows) (guitar picking) (coffee cup clacks on counter) - Well. 15 hours in. It's time to check the jerky. Mmmmm! Looks pretty good. It's pliable. Not too leathery, not too hard. So it's about right. So this stuff is ready 15 hours in. Your stuff may take 12 hours, it may take 20 hours. You don't really know. Take it to the tenderness
that you want it to. I'm calling this jerky done. (slow acoustic guitar chords) Here in Dallas we're
outside of Central Texas, and we're outside of
barbecue tradition. At Pecan Lodge, my friend Justin
is always changing things, and making some new,
interesting smells. (Aaron sniffs) (Aaron sniffs again) I can't quite tell what Justin's cookin' with. So we better go
back by the cookers and figure this thing out. (easy fiddling) Hey, hey, hey. - Hey, hey. What's up? - (Aaron laughs) How you doin'? - Good! (laughs) - I can't tell what kinda
wood you're cookin'. I'm smellin' a lotta stuff. - Yeah. It's a blend. It's definitely changed
over time for us. When we first started cooking, we were cooking
exclusively with mesquite. That's what I grew up cooking with, when I was out in West Texas, that was the only
wood you could get. And that's just
what I started with. We ran like that for about a year, I was spending the
night at the restaurant, getting up every
couple hours to put-- - I remember some late
night phone conversations. - Yes, yes. - 'Heyy, what are you doin'?' (Justin and Aaron
laugh together) - The problem with mesquite is it burns really hot and it burns really fast. So I was like, what can I use, that'll burn not quite as hot, burn longer, like get
some bigger pieces. 'Cause mesquite
comes really small, you know, really
narrow branches, and stuff like that. And so we started
blending in oak. To get more of a burn time. And we ran like that for another six months with the mesquite and the oak. And then I went to the, uh, brisket camp, at Texas A&M. - Ha, ho! - And I learned that
my favorite smoke was hickory. - Oh! Well, that's interesting. - 'Cause they do the
blind taste test, or whatever, like that. All the different ones, unseasoned meat and
stuff like that. I never would've picked hickory, but if that's my favorite, then I should probably use it. - Might as well start
playing with it. - So now it's it's the blend of all three. - And I think your brisket, although it has
evolved over the years, just kind of those
mesquite tones, maybe think more of like
West Texas kind of stuff. - Yeah, and my personal preference is to
have more smoke than less. And some people like, they like it a
little bit milder, and when I think of barbecue, I think of smoke, I think of the crust, you know? And so those are the two things that we really focus on
developing a really good a really good bark on the
outside of the brisket, and for that to be deeply smoky. When we opened, we didn't open as a
barbecue restaurant. It was really kinda Texas food. So fried chicken, Tex Mex, the barbecue was a small portion, but we felt like, 'Hey, it's Texas,
let's use barbecue.' Then the barbecue happened to be the thing that kinda
caught people's attention and so it grew from that. - Since you didn't
really start off as a barbecue place, it's like, where are you pulling influences for your barbecue? - My family was kinda divided. That's why I had I had part of my family that was was West Texas, and Abilene, and another part of it that
was kind of Deep East Texas, near Toledo Bend. So the barbecue, stylistically, is kind of a blend of both of those. - And you learned how to do barbecue with
your grandpa, right? - Yeah. Yeah. But we'd use a traditional cooking
method that you'd find in Central Texas
and stuff like that. But our rubs were a little bit more
complex on the brisket, it's not just salt and pepper. The sausage is more
Central Texas style sausage
- [Aaron] Like German, Czech-- - Yeah, exactly. We baste our ribs with sauce, and those are definitely
things that you see in East Texas. - But I think it's
cool that you actually experimented while you had a
restaurant going, you being in the
middle of Dallas, you could do whatever
the heck you want. Like you've got no tradition like that you have to stick to, you can be like,
'I like hickory' 'and we're gonna use it.' - Which is great,
because you're right, I mean there's no, nobody
looks at me funny because we've got more than salt
and pepper in our rub, or we're not using
post oak, or whatever. It's kind of like, Oh well
I came from East Texas-- - I am Justin and
I do what I like! - Yeah, you know. So we sauce our ribs, and it's cool, because we
get East Texas people that come in here. And West Texas guys come in, and they're like,
'Hey, mesquite!' and like, 'All right!' And all the Central
Texas guys are like - 'Ha, ha! They got
Pecan in the name!' - We use all the
woods in Texas... (both laugh) So you know, it's strategic,
so there's no complaints - It's hot. You got any iced tea in there? - I do. Let's go. - Yeees. (solo fiddle sawing) (acoustic guitar chords) - When I'm cookin'
dinner at home, it's usually grillin' steaks, so I'm gonna show you
how I like to grill. Always start off with
a charcoal chimney. I like to use butcher
paper to start it with. I use oil. It's pretty cool, you
can use vegetable oil, whatever you got. You wanna crumple it up preeetty loose, that way a lot of air
can still get in there. I only use lump charcoal. Burns hot and fast. Doesn't have chemicals in it. Ooo! Big pieces. Big, big pieces. We got the oily butcher
paper down here. Maybe light it from a
couple different sides. I normally kinda lift up the charcoal
chimney a little bit just to get some air going, even though it's on the grate. So right now we're
gonna season the steaks while the coals
are gettin' ready. I've got two pretty nice sized ribeyes here. So I'm just gonna put a
little bit o' oil on 'em just to let the salt
and pepper stick. Rub it in, just a little bit. You can use any kind of
oil you want, really. I like walnut oil for my steaks. So start off with some pepper, let it fall like rain. You could use your
favorite steak seasoning, or anything else,
you could use garlic, whatever. Don't want
to miss the edges. We're gonna let these things
warm up to room temperature while we're gettin' our coals, aaaaand in the meantime, I'm just gonna enjoy
a tasty beverage. So I'm just gonna
dump these coals riiiight in the middle. And then, I really like
to use a piece of wood, so I'm just gonna smush that kind of up against the coals right there. And what that does is it kinda creates a
hot spot and a cool spot and it also smokes a little bit. You get a little bit
o' flavor and you get kind of a hot zone
and a cold zone. It's a great time for that. This is definitely too hot. So we're gonna let this
kinda cool down a little bit, not quite ready. Then we're gonna
look at our steaks. Seasoning's been on there
for about 30 minutes now, but the meat's
startin' to sweat, so you can really
tell that the salt's kinda startin' to
blend in to the surface of the meat and stuff. These things look great. Coals are perfect,
they've gotten hot, they've kinda peaked out, now they're startin' to go down, I can hold my hand there
for about a second, before it hurts really badly, that's perfect. I'm gonna use this little towel, I'm gonna squirt
some oil on there, I'm gonna rub down the grates. So oilin' the grates
is gonna help clean, that also helps the steaks
not stick to the grates when we put 'em on. Time to go on. (steak sizzles) Ooooo. (steak sizzles) Ahhhhh. We got the steaks down. We're gonna get some good
grill marks on there. Let 'em cook for
about three minutes, then flip 'em. At that point, we'll leave
'em on the other side for about three minutes, then I'm gonna start flippin' even quicker back and forth until I get to the right cook. And if your flames get
really out of control, that's kinda why you got this
little safe zone right there, you could just
pull the meat off, give it a second, come back. You know, keep it safe, keep it very safe. I'm just gonna melt a little
bit of butter on the surface. Just kinda keep it moist, it's got a lot of fat in there, but I'm a huge fan of butter. All right, so these've been on, they're feelin' pretty good, color's lookin' good. What I'm feelin' for, the outside feels firm, but the inside still feels preeeetty soft,
so I think that's just about a
perfect medium-rare. And what it's doing, the muscle's kind
of tightening up, you're cooking out moisture, fat's cooking out of it, and it's getting tighter
and tighter and tighter. So we're gonna let this
one rest a little bit. But what you're really gonna do is let it reabsorb
some of those juices. It's pushin', it's pushin'
all this moisture out, and all this fat out, and then it's gonna ahhhhh, it's gonna relax and then it's gonna rest. And it's gonna reabsorb
some of that stuff, so that's what
we're lookin' for. Most likely we're gonna eat
a room temperature steak that's cooked, hopefully pretty close to perfect. So. Kinda what I'm going for. This steak feels great. It's a good lookin'
Fatty McFatterson. Ohhhh just for fun, let's melt some butter on there. Mmmmm. So we let the steaks
rest for about fiiiiive minutes, they've reabsorbed
a lot of moisture. They look beautiful. Let's see what they
look like on the inside, I'm shootin' for medium. Let's see. Riiiiight about like that. So I've got a good
crust on the outside, nice cook. Nice and pink in the middle. It's a good lookin' slice. Mmhm. It tastes good too. And that's how I make my steaks. (singing) (cough) You could swim
through this smoke
in here! This is a national show. - All right! - It's not just local.
- Hello. Americans. - Hello. ♪ Re frame! Dee,
de-dee dee dee! - I like the way
the flame kinda
licks the steak. Or kisses it. I don't know which is the
proper way to say that. - (laughs) Well either
way I'm into it! - That's right!
