The Secret to This BBQ Joint's Chicken is Butter — Smoke Point

Austin barbecue is amazing you have multi-generational Central Texas history and then you also have craft barbecue restaurants one of the things that really kind of separates us is our approach to seasoning flavor profiles and counter points in our Sid how we doing what are coming in I am African-American and so a lot of what we do here is inspired by say funo dishes or inspired by recipes or things that were eaten in family gatherings inspired by history Heritage culture which also ties into the overall origins of American [Music] barbecue so here we are in the morning the grand illustrious smallest barbecue trailer in town we got these Park spare ribs that we're going to get uh trimmed up and season we're doing full spares but we are going to take the the chine off and do like a light trim on this so we're just looking for this knuckle right here and then we're just going to drive the knife down and I'm using a chef knife versus a boning knife cuz I need something with a little more backbone so that I can get through this cartilage looking on the spare then we have this skirt here which is great you know this this has so many uses you know marinated on skewers things like that for us we save this and then it goes into the grind for our sausage we do have the Texas Trinity represented so we're talking about sausage we're talking about ribs and we're talking about brisket so we leave the membrane on for two reasons right like the great temperature is going to get that kind of like crisped up you know what I mean and then it also allows us to get these rib nice and tender and that they still adhere to the Bone we're going to apply our salt first and so what that's going to do is it's going to start drawing out some of the moisture in the meat right and then we're going to start seeing like that that little bit of like wetness then when we go to apply our spice it's going to adhere to the meat a bit better this sides a little bit thinner so we're going to go a little bit lighter on the salt on that end we're going to apply salt a little bit heavier where the meat is a little bit thicker so this blend is our house blend we call it newspaper rub that really old school rub that has like the black pepper and like red chili in it so like newspaper rub what's a newspaper it's black white and red all over right there is African bird chili in here as well as some pimento or all spice and a and a couple other Trade Secrets along with 6 mesh pepper which gives that nice cracked black pepper flavor but also gives it a great texture malagata pepper is one of our Lynch finin seasonings and that's a strain of pepper that originates in West Africa so that's something that we incorporate into our rub as well as using uh Bird's eyed chili or Peri so African Bird's eyed chili we're also using pimento or all spice which is a touchdown ingredient from the Caribbean that also ties into the very uh complex you know story of the movement of people and the interchanges of cultures and Cuisines that make this amazing thing of barbecue and so we're getting nice and even on here nice and even nice and even so we're top racking these because we want to get a nice bark formation right and this runs a little bit hotter than the than the bottom so we're you know facing our knuckle sides facing this way in 45 minutes we're going to do a rotation and spin them and then after that you know you're going to see we're going to wrap them and then invert them once we flip them we don't really want that heat on the flesh side right so you're going to see when we wrap that we're going to make a pillow on the bottom to elevate it and insulate it off the rack this is the chicken leg quarters it's a fan favorite has been since the very early days of the truck they come in with the with the spine split this leg quarter has like really great chicken flavor and especially like this chicken back and like the oyster meat all this good stuff is super packed with flavor and also it has the highest fat content skin side is starting down intentionally just that way once we apply our seasoning it stays nice and even the chicken leg quarters is a jumbled rice dish other ways to think about that dish are jumble yeah the chicken ironically kind of became the thing that the truck was first like known for which seems interesting right cuz we're in Central Texas there's a few places doing chicken but that became one of those runaway items and it goes pretty fast we're going salt first tapering on the season applying just slightly heavier in like the thicker areas we got skin side down this one is like a Savory spicy rub it also does have like a little bit of black pepper in there as well a little bit of ground mustard everything is seasoned a certain way for a reason and that you end up having like a Harmony on the plate of all the different things that you eat and once you eat it all together it creates the overall you know experience get this seasoned and then we'll get this on so these generally take about 3 hours we're doing it skinside down we use the heat of the grate to set the skin and then we we flip it to then desiccate the skin a little bit but leaving the interior the chicken leg quarter nice and moist we know that this thigh is is thick so we're facing that towards the fire right and we do the same thing with the pork shoulders right like we fa we Face the blade the shoulder blade towards the fire right they're going to be crispy when they come out of here we're on a m scale thg Offset Smoker we're not running an insulated Firebox it helps us control the temperature nicely that way if we get any temperature spikes we got that air gap in there so it's not like a a runaway freight train we're using pan mainly for its flavor profile p is actually the largest species of hickories it's also the state tree of T we want to taste the meat but we also want to be able to taste like the nuances of our spice blend that we add there the wood adds like a subtle very very mild sweetness to the meat but it's also a little bit softer so so it allows those flavors to kind of ring through showcasing the wood itself as well as meat at this part of the day we're trying to build the coal bed for you know the rest of the day so up here in the first door we have the smoke roasted peanuts they're roasting nice and even pulling them out so going for like deep golden brown and then the interior so one of the things you can do is you got to split it and ensure that it's like roasted on the on the interior so these are very very very close if not done right now the importance of the peanut is that this is a complete tie into what the trailer speaks to which is African diaspora shared hair her itage history and so the peanut um is a is a central ingredient to that we know in the United States that peanut farming and cultivation has been a staple of you know African-American agriculture since the first ancestors and George Washington Carver work uh with that legume specifically now that these are cool enough to touch uh they're getting transferred into a a bowl and then we're going use them this is just regular vegetable oil that way the spices and the salt uh can actually adhere and then penetrate into the into the nut so then I'm going to go with the with the salt pretty liberal the blend is is pretty specific to go with the peanut but it's like mixing and matching some of the other spices that we have like we said on the tray we want uh cohesion right so there's like certain spices that as you're eating it it's in the background just a flavor that helps tie all the components of the tray together I mean we literally sold a gallon and a half of peanuts within 45 minutes yesterday I'm I'm dead serious it sold out before the brisket that never that never happens yeah so working massaging the oil into the nut working the spices into the night you can see that they've got this Sheen to them got to taste them got to taste your food make sure that it's seasoned hey that's that's pretty rare that I get it just like first try so on our menu it serves as like a snackable item but it's also a ubiquitous item it's something that everybody gets on the tray and it's there for this reason it's just kind of like the icon of the concept right it's great beer nut as well so we're about 8 to 9 hours into our cook for today so we have pork here briskets are going to be coming up on the afternoon wrap and then it's going to get rested and that's for service uh tomorrow we have two different spritzes instead of like a traditional style mop where we're applying our liquids have been uh strains and they're in spray bottles so we've just given these like a a nice little wet down and so not only are we applying like acid and an extra layer of seasoning there but we're also you know aiding being in the bark development because by putting that moisture on the exterior of the meat we're going to capture a little bit more wood smoke on there when you're talking about the history of American barbecue we're talking about W burned down the coals and smoke coming from rendering fat and juices but then also the application of you know mop sauces over the top there are accounts that talk about this you have African-Americans or enslaved Africans applying these mop sauces and so common threads that you're going to find in those stories is acid I'm thinking about the Counterpoint of acid cutting through richness and fat we're going to wrap up these long cook items we finished getting the smoke flavor on the meat so now it's time to make sure they render properly so what I'm doing right now is just getting one last Spritz on here with the pork butts we're making pull pork pull pork sandwiches we do pull pork by the pound so that's why we wrap it in foil it's actually going to create more steam you want to wrap it real tight holds in that heat almost brazes it until we can pull it briskets are going to go on butcher paper just one wrap cuz if there's too many pieces of paper between it you're not feeling how how well it's rendered so we just like one it holds in as much heat as you want it lets in as much air as we like for the to to get that bark that was the first part of the process The Deco is like like the hardest part of the brisket to render cuz it's just like hard fat so we make sure to face those towards the fire in the first part of the cook so you can see this is the deal meat or the deal fat rather so we just get the fire hitting that all day and now we're just kind of changing the position a little bit so we're just going to leave this close and open it in around you know six or seven when we know that there's going to be a possibility of some of these being done I started out in an upscale restaurant High School love the energy and the you know being able to cook and I had a really great chef that served as a mentor for me upon graduation I went straight into fine dining and then turned more towards the Wood Fired flavor first thought process cooking with wood curating flavor and that being your your primary mode of of creativity or uh craftsmanship barbecue is that right hours upon hour is almost the entirety of the day spent to create such complexity the parallels to fing are there right all right we're going to look at these ribs and then get them ready to to wrap this mahogany starting to come we got barks starting to set in pretty nice we see our seasoning level is good to the eye nice and even all right so we have our pork spray so we're going to spray nice wet down on these then we call this like a spider web pulling it over and then we talked about the pillow so then pillow this coming like this and then folding down and then we talked about doing that so that we have insulation from the temperature the great because now we have like the flesh side of the ribs look at this guy same deep mahogany once it's wrapped I don't need to mess with it too [Music] much okay so we're checking in on our chicken leg quarters we're an hour and a half to service right now so we're we're right on track of getting uh getting everything off because we we do need and want everything to get a to get a rest period before we cut that's important because you know we're putting all this work in for moisture retention and you know we're talking about humidity and you know all of these things just that way when when we cut into it you know it just doesn't Purge all the all the moisture so we need to let that temperature balance out juices redistribute the next step for these is they rest and then it's it's not uh they're not going to get cooked more per se they're going to get just finished in butter like on a on our flat top um and what that is is just like ensuring that the skin is crisp and then just giving it a nice little little base I'm really worried of it coming across as like cheffy I don't want it to smack of like you know oh you know it just it's just like the being intentional sure maybe you call that you know being cheffy we're doing a quality check and then we're setting the warmer for service every single piece of meat uh gets touched you know we're looking for like you know bounce we're looking for you know all the Hallmarks of like you know what we want like just jiggling resistance on the bottom so I'm like pushing with my finger so we're unwrapping and then shingling these in here so that we can reconstitute the the bark get it crispy because we we want it crisp all right got our lights on everything is ready to roll all right what can I do for you absolutely half pound and a side of the peanuts dude first order today peanuts dude part of my family had origin in the South but moved to the Northeast and then brought these foods with them such as blackeyed peas that's on our menu uh it never leaves the menu blackeyed peas originate from senagal in West Africa traditionally you would have ham Hawks or you know pork neckbones we're in Central Texas so we're putting brisket burn ends in there what can I do for you hello hi brisket yes sir first of all I hope they leave with a smile on their face CU they enjoyed everything and that they love the technique and that they feel like they they understand a little bit more of what we're trying to do and then maybe they're inspired to go check out more places that that serve things like this you could definitely call this slow food soul food style here's the thing so so with soul food right that was a great term that came out of the Civil Rights Movement to highlight contributions and to put an emphasis on these food ways and so I think over time like that term we specified modern African-American and and isolated these certain things like like peas and and peanuts and and so on and so forth and that's our way of being more succinct about it

Channel: Eater

Views: 168,940

Keywords: barbecue, texas barbecue, bbq, barbeque, black bbq, black barbecue, brisket, pork, ribs, bbq rub, bbq pitmaster, best barbecue, barbecue chicken recipe, best brisket, pork ribs, bbq ribs, austin barbeque, austin bbq, bbq food truck, distant relatives, distant relatives food truck, distant relatives bbq, classic texas brisket, beef brisket, bbq sauce, best bbq in austin, black-eyed peas, texas brisket, bbq ribs recipe, how to bbq, smoke point, brisket recipe, barbecue ribs

Id: wen-M4H0S1s

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024