What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What defines “traditional Texas BBQ” and how it has become the nuanced cuisine that it is today
• The “meat versus sauce” BBQ debate
• A history of BBQ and how BBQ has become enhanced by different cultures and evolved into new tastes

In this episode our host Axel is live at the Butcher’s Ball to discuss BBQ with a panel of experts featuring Daniel Vaughn (BBQ Editor at Texas Monthly), Ara Malekian (Harlem Road Texas BBQ), Erin Smith Ferges (Ferges BBQ), and Ben Sassani. 

They kick off the event with a discussion about traditional Texas BBQ. How does the BBQ community pin down this particular style, and what are its defining characteristics? From offset smokers and serving smoked meats on butcher paper to burning wood down to coals and shoving them under the meats, the experts dive into the nuances of Texas BBQ and how the cooking methods vary based on region. They go far back in history, recalling the community BBQ days when meat options consisted of whatever the ranchers and farmers were willing to give up. 

The group goes on to discuss how different types of BBQ sauce are characteristic of different regions, even within the same state. While the meat is sometimes cooked so well it doesn’t need sauce, sauces have become so tasty in their own right that the experts shun the idea of “shaming” sauces, explaining that they’re an important part of BBQ as well. “Good TX BBQ doesn’t need sauce but if you have a good sauce it makes [the BBQ] better as a whole in general,” they say, elaborating on this secondary aspect of the BBQ experience. While the pitmasters express the importance of sourcing your meat well, they admit that the conditions of the meat change throughout the year according to how the livestock are faring, so it’s much more important to have chefs who know how to prepare the meat regardless of its quality and condition. 

Going on to discuss different trends in the BBQ community, it’s apparent that BBQ is pervasive in the United States. There’s “no room to be mediocre in BBQ at all,” they explain, and describe interesting ways that individual establishments are finding their niche and expanding and evolving the genre while still relying on the traditional methods and staples of BBQ. Houston, for example, is known as a hub of multicultural cuisine, and has Asian fusion BBQ where brisket is incorporated into pho, creating a delicious outcome. “Every culture… has some form of cooking with live fire and smoke…. It’s so primal… everyone can identify with it,” the experts relate. 

They conclude their conversation by explaining how the tradition of BBQ builds upon a strong, multigenerational foundation. If you’re a BBQ fan, you won’t want to miss this nuanced discussion about the iconic American cuisine, including Aaron Franklin’s contributions to the craft, the different cultural contributions and iterations of BBQ, and why you should never try to make vegetables look and taste like meat. 

Listen to the final episode of the first “Packing Taste” podcast season and check out Axel’s other delicious topics of conversation here!

Host: Axel Brave

Guests: Daniel Vaughn (BBQ Editor at Texas Monthly), Ara Malekian (Harlem Road Texas BBQ), Erin Smith Feges (Feges BBQ), and Ben Sassani among others at The Butcher’s Ball! 

Transcript:

This is a founding media podcast.

Hi everybody. And welcome back to the packing taste podcast. I’m your host Axel Bravo. And this week’s episode is going to be a little. A few weeks ago, I had the honor of hosting a panel on Texas barbecue at butchers ball in Brenham, Texas. This weekend long celebration of cooking meat over flame was exciting, thrilling, informative, and of course delicious.

So instead of bringing folks into the studio this week, the studio went to the pit masters chefs and journalist who represent Texas grilling and Barbie. On the panel, we included Daniel Vaughn, Texas monthly barbecue editor. from Harlem Roadhouse, Texas barbecue in Richmond, Texas, Aaron Smith. FEGS from FEGS barbecue in Houston and Ben Susani a barbecue photographer.

We did have a few microphone technical difficulties, but I think the conversation is well worth the listen, as we discuss the cultural impact of barbecue and where we think it’s heading into the field.

So do everybody. Yeah. A favor. And because we’ve had so much barbecue today, I think we want to define what barbecue is. Right? So what Texas barbecue is, you’re right. You’re right. Because they’re all this was going to last forever. But if we can kind of, uh, give the audience some sense of what we think Texas barbecue is Daniel.

You want to take the lead, you know, a couple of things about barbecue. That’s a Daniel question. Yeah. Well, um, often that, that question comes down to what is like traditional, Texas barbecue. And what does the term traditional mean? Um, you know, uh, usually if I hear the words traditional barbecue, it is in reference to that is not traditional barbecue, not so much that is traditional barbecue.

Um, but I think when most people think about traditional Texas barbecue, they think about these places. Obviously the ones that have been around so long. Like the, you know, the crates market, south side market, these places that are, that are cooking, um, that are cooking meats, making sausages, smoking meats, serving them on butcher paper, uh, really meat market style.

You know, that goes back to, that goes back to our, um, that goes back to where Texas barbecue came from. Um, or at least we’re a part of Texas barbecue came from where those old style meat markets and the fact that we still have some of them around. You know, it’s a great historical lesson. It’s also great for all us, Texas barbecue fans who go get to go eat there.

Um, but I think if you, if you want to talk about what’s really traditional, like from a cooking standpoint, um, it’s really more hill country style, barbecue cooking, uh, or burning wood down to coals, uh, shoveling those coals directly underneath the meat and cooking the meat directly over top. Um, you know, the way that if you’ve been out to snow’s Barb, And snow’s barbecue though.

All those flat pits that there they’re bringing the coals in putting them underneath the meat. I mean, if you go way back to the, I guess the first big barbecues that were happening in Texas, these big community events, they were digging big trenches on the ground, burning wood down to coals and cooking, and usually whole animals over top of them.

But it was a direct heat style of cooking. Um, the central Texas style that, uh, has certainly become more popular than any other. Uh, uses an offset smoker. And as far as like the word traditional goes, that’s kind of a newer invention. Um, uh, you know, as opposed to those flat pits using direct heat. So there’s, there’s no like time period of when we can trace back.

And well, you know, when you start to define what is Texas barbecue, um, when we had those big community barbecues, you know, at the time before the civil war, after the civil. Uh, when these community barbecues were happening, they looked just like the barbecue you would have in South Carolina or Georgia or anywhere else.

The only difference was really the protein and it wasn’t, the Texas was just beef country and, and, uh, South Carolina was all hog country. It was literally whatever farmers and ranchers were willing to give up, you know, whatever they were willing to donate to the cause. That was the whole animals that you were going to cook for those big community bars.

The what we, what we think of and define as like North Carolina, barbecue, Texas, barbecue, Alabama, barbecue. None of that really came about until the very late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, when it, uh, barbecue became something that started to be served in restaurants. And until it started to be served in restaurants, we really didn’t even think about codifying, uh, particular styles of barbecue.

Yeah. So the whole idea around, I guess the whole, the whole idea around. So the whole idea around, um, like sauces and that being the difference between Carolina barbecues or Texas barbecues, that’s a myth or is that, do we take that into account?

I mean, like, I think sauce has helped define regions. Um, there’s various specific styles, even within the Carolinas. Like, if you accidentally say, you know, this is an east Carolina sauce and it’s not actually an east Carolina sauce, you will be called out on it. Right? Like you have to be spot on with your sauces.

But I think this day and age, with the way information travels so quickly, there are, we serve Texas gold. We, it is a complete rip off of Carolina gold. Like we are intentionally making a sauce because we love Carolina gold sauce. I think that, um, it’s just really hard to define barbecue by the sauces now, because we’re more global than that.

Like that’s just not the way people approach barbecue anymore. Um, I also think, you know, we’d love for the barbecue to be so good that you don’t actually have to put a sauce on it, but the sauces are good too. So it’s like, you don’t want to like shame the sauces, right. Sauces are delicious. Sides are delicious.

I just think, you know, I think it used to represent regions and I think now it’s more so. You know, just evolved beyond that. Yeah. I’m curious, like, you know, at, uh, at this barbecue, you do a very untraditional,

still not working. Sorry, we’re going to, we’re just going to sacrifice this one over here. Uh, so if he just barbecue, you do a very untraditional, whole hog barbecue. As far as Texas is concerned, that’s something that as far as a restaurant culture, hasn’t really been. And I’m curious if, you know, if we were to just define barbecue by sauces, do you guys serve that with what you’d think of as a Texas sauce or a Carolina sauce?

How do you serve that and how do people react to that?

All right. This is something we’re really proud of. We serve whole-hog Carolina style. Whole-hog everyday we’re open and we serve it in the style and tradition. Carolina barbecue. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, Patrick’s passion. We traveled around, we met a bunch of people. Rodney Scott is a huge mentor of ours.

Um, and you know, we saw how it was done and we really like the opportunity that we have to be able to hold up those traditions, nobody in our line. No. What they’re actually getting, we do so much explaining and we love it. You know, sometimes you get asked a lot of questions and it’s just kind of like, it can be tedious.

When we get asked questions about our whole hog, we love the opportunity to get, to explain the sauce. Cause we tossed the sauce in, you know, we still offer cracklin, but we really encourage everybody to do the cracklin and we chop it in. Um, and those are all things we learned from our mentors in the Carolinas.

Um, Sam Jones, riding. Yeah. And so I hope that we S we do them proud. I hope one day they get to try it, but we are very focused on making it, you know, um, in the style of Carolina, although I’m sure it’s not perfect and it’s, you know, our take on it. So does that make it Texas? I don’t know, but I think that, um, it’s important to us to be able to bring those styles to our guests, you know, to the people that come and visit with us in Greenway.

We want to be able to say, like, this is a really special thing. And I think whole-hog is becoming more popular, partly because it’s, you know, information spreads faster, like I said earlier. So it’s the ways to do it. The techniques are becoming, you know, more readily available, but I also think meat prices have had a huge impact on how people choose what they’re going to highlight on their menu.

And port has at times been, you know, just a cheaper option. Brisket prices are constantly fluctuating. And so. Hog and pork and other things that we can utilize. Other parts of the animal, just, it just makes it more of a no brainer as a business owner. I like at my restaurant and when I was trying to develop the barbecue sauce for my place, I actually found a recipe from a us army base in Texas from 19 late 1920s, 1930s.

And I just tweak the sauce slightly. Using better ingredients. And instead of water, I just had some of my coffee to it. So that was my twist on an old recipe that I found from windy army bases in Texas.

you know, my argument for the person that doesn’t cook barbecue up here is that good, Texas barbecue doesn’t need sauce.

If you have a good sauce, it makes it better as a whole in general. Right. But I think if the barbecue is good, you shouldn’t need sauce. You shouldn’t have to drench it like you do with Carolina style or Kansas city style or whatever. What other styles of barbecue? Because the barbecue we have here is so different than so good already.

I think sauce is secondary. And not something that should be poured on there before it’s served. And again, that’s is it working? Is it working now? Still now I’m just going to abandon. All right. Check check. Yeah. Well, but that, that is really sort of a modern sensibility to the idea of, um, of Texas barbecue, not needing sauce or, and really central Texas styles.

It is somebody who lives in Dallas. I talked to a lot of the old timers in Dallas, people who still have barbecue joints there. And a lot of them still don’t even put salt on their brisket when they put it into smoke. Um, no seasoning whatsoever. And that really goes back to those days where, um, in, in Dallas they were cooking really whole Naval plates, whole beef, navel plates, not even briskets and cooking those directly over the fire.

Um, cooking them until they’re tender enough to be able to pull the bones. And then shopping all that meat and serving it on sandwiches. There is no such thing as a sliced brisket plate. They weren’t even cooking brisket. You weren’t going to slice up that really fatty Naval cut. Um, so it went into just chop beef sandwiches and the seasoning really came in the form of a sauce that was added afterwards.

So all the seasoning that you’re going to put onto the meat came along with the sauce. So serving that barbecue without sauce would be like, sorry. Sort of an, in an, in an incomplete fashion. And, um, you know, so now with the way we cook, uh, now the way the modern day barbecue joints cook, uh, with heavy seasoning smoke, um, you know, and trying to get that perfect bite of brisket or pork rib or whatever, you know, as it comes off the smoker, I think is the reason why you’re saying that, you know, sauce isn’t necessary these days.

And, and to that, I agree, but, um, you know, Sort of more of a modern take on Texas barbecue as well. Okay. So you guys just made it sound like there’s no traditional Texas barbecue. So I think that’ll lead us to our next question. Um, if we can talk a little bit about, um, the different kinds of barbecues that are geographically located throughout Texas, obviously there’s nothing traditional that we can pinpoint.

And I think that’s kind of the beauty about what we’re doing here too. So, for example, like Asian infused barbecue by the coast or German style, barbecue in the center of a Texas or more of a Hispanic and fused a barbecue, how is that separated? Who’s bringing it, um, and working, we work. Can we kind of find it wants to tackle this one?

I mean, I think, um, history. And culture play a huge part in where certain traditions of barbecue come from. And so when we are in the state of Texas and we’re talking about Texas barbecue, it’s a confusing question because we know there’s Eastern Texas, there’s central, Texas. Um, you know, there’s even like in the valley, there’s, you know, that’s where, what we know as is Texas barbecue comes from, but in your, if you’re in New York and you’re eating it, hometown barbecue, and they call it Texas barbecue.

That’s central Texas. I mean, that’s the central Texas style of barbecue and that’s where the Trinity comes from. It’s more of a German meat market style. Um, but when we’re in Texas, there are huge areas that typically in the past, I’ve had these very distinct styles. Um, I think it becomes more muted now because you start to see just more, you know, you just, you see more people experimenting outside of what, you know, they grew up with, but.

And it’s all history-based. I look at, you know, the German style, that’s German immigrants in central, Texas, um, German and Czech. And if you look at Eastern Texas style, it’s, you know, post civil war, um, African-American, it’s chopped beef, lots of sauce. And then in the valley, you know, that’s where the origins of TexMex barbecue come from.

And those have always existed. But I think in the past, they’ve always existed in their place. And now you start to see people. Kind of trying those styles across the board and you know, I’m from Houston, our barbecue restaurant is in Houston and we get asked a lot of questions about other places, you know, blood brothers, barbecue.

They do a ton of fusion styles and you know, people always ask us about that. And that’s, it’s very natural for them to do that. Like that’s how Houston is. Houston is just a melting pot of people. Um, and of immigrants. And so it only seems natural to me that the barbecue would evolve as such. Um, and I think it’s a really great way to look at barbecue as a way to kind of introduce flavors.

Um, the techniques are very primal, uh, but our approach. In this decade, I think is just really representative of where we are and, and, you know, politics and history and all of that. And I think, you know, Houston is probably the most unique area of barbecue in Texas, because there are, there are all of those influences in our food.

Um, but that’s only expanding. I mean, when you go to Austin, I think is probably more of a central Texas style because they’re in central Texas, but you even see more of it kind of popping up over there where it’s just different influences. Um, but I think Daniel probably has some good responses to this one.

Well, actually, I’m more curious from, from that end of the panel, uh, when you’re cooking barbecue in the Houston area, do you think, do you think back to, uh, what you would consider a Houston style of barbecue as, as your jumping off point? So for both of us being classically trained chefs, it’s a little bit different.

Like for me personally, I’ve cooked all over the world and I’m classically trained in French cuisine, but I love everything about Texas barbecue. So I try to stay as true as I can to it. More of the craft barbecue using better quality meats, better quality ingredients, as far as the peppers that I use, they’re fresh ground.

Um, so we each bring our own touch to that craft barbecue that we do right. Barbecue being so popular now on everybody who was getting into it, doing the great job, like our friends from blood brothers, Aaron and Patrick, myself, and all the other guys. We bring our own touch to it and trying to stay true to as much of the traditional Texas barbecue as we can.

And what’s traditional Texas barbecue. Well, well, what, what we, what we define as, you know, a barbecue that doesn’t necessarily need a sauce that is that it does have the places that we love and we admire, um, ourselves, this snow’s the Louie, Mueller’s the, all the other great places that we, we love to eat out ourselves and trying to stay.

As close as we can to that, with what our touch on it. Well, and you still have those classic, even though you’re a classically trained chef. Um, many of the sides that you have are those classic Texas barbecue. Yeah. Like on my place, I only have four sides. Yeah. Beans don’t of that crazy stuff that Aaron’s doing.

Yeah. At my place, I stayed very true to, I only have four sides, I think at your place, you guys have like 11 or two. So, but I do get crazy with my specials on a daily basis that I do doing smoked duck lamb chops, smoked octopus, and I do get, get crazy with those sides. So that’s where I get to have fun bringing my background as a fine dining chef into Texas barbecue.

But I think with barbecue though, I think it’s getting so. That the, the meats, the general meats, you have your briskets and beef ribs and pork ribs and all that. Everybody is on such a top-notch level that you, when you go to one place or another it’s, it’s kind of hard. If you had a blind taste test, it’s hard to tell who’s food these days, because everybody, if there’s no room to be mediocre and barbecue right now, like none at all.

What sets people aside is going to be your sides, your sausages, your desserts, and things like that. And perfect example is like, Hey, hos, they’re doing this chili Reno sausage. That is just absolutely mind blown. W you know, they’re an hour and 25 minutes away from my house. The last time I went over there, I bought five or six of them just to take home, to leave in the fridge so I can eat them later because I don’t want to drive an hour and 25.

But, you know, it’s the same thing. Like when I come to Aaron’s place, the same thing I get, you know, I, I get a lot of size when I go to like this place. Same thing. When I go to truth, when I go to killings, you know, the bread pudding at Killins is just, I would rather go there for the bread pudding than almost anything else.

Right now it’s up. It’s phenomenal. Right. So, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s how you’re deviating. And then there’s people like Valentino’s who are setting themselves completely aside from everybody doing the tech, the TexMex stuff. But they’re also doing amazing barbecue and then turning into textbooks and then blood brothers, what they’re doing with it.

And then you guys like, you know, you were Patrick. Um, so I, you know, I think at this point, it’s just getting to a point where everybody is just, I don’t wanna say branching off, but everybody is just finding their niche and just kind of growing it until something else becomes the standard alongside Texas.

Yeah, I think, uh, you know, the idea of us talking about TexMex barbecue right now, I, I really do think in about 20 years from now, nobody will even use that term because everybody will be serving some version of it. But a friend of mine wrote an article about the different types of barbecue and not so much styles, but sort of the, um, uh, the place that each one of the proprietors was coming from.

And rather than calling it craft barbecue, which would assume that other barbecue is not a craft, even if. Um, he uses the term high barbecue to be like this big city, barbecue that we see folk barbecue being these like old school places that really do stick with one traditional style of cooking and then mass barbecue, just people who are out there really just trying to make a lot of money off the barbecue.

Right. That’s the Dickies is like any, any of the chain, uh, barbecue places of the world. Um, they, they fall within that and you know, we certainly see a lot more of the high barbecue. Being the ones that open up these days, uh, they are, it’s a very Instagram friendly style of cooking. Uh, certainly helps get the word out.

Um, the, the thing that I lament is not seeing so many of those folk barbecue places, uh, opening up or have that, um, places opening up that have that sort of goal in mind, you know, where it’s a place that we’re just going to be cooking this really simple, uh, local style of barbecue. But, um, you were talking about volunteers.

And it made me think like, yeah, that TexMex style of barbecue that we see from places like Valentino’s or two M or a number of places now around the state, it’s not a new style of cooking. It’s really what all of these people who opened these places would say, that’s what they ate in their backyard. Um, a lot of them from San Antonio as well, like if you were going to be cooking at home, if we were going to cook barbecue at home, this is the way it was going to be served.

This is the way we were going. I think just the way now that it’s being served in the restaurants, that’s the new thing. The fact that it’s now being served in restaurants, food trucks, and, uh, maybe that is like an new type of folk barbecue. No one person that I forgot is Dawn. I don’t know if he’s in here or not, but you know, that’s another branch that is going into because Don is Asian, he’s Vietnamese and he’s mixing Texas style barbecue with Vietnamese food.

So he’s putting Texas style bread. Inside the bowl of food that you eat at any fall place with just very mediocre brisket. And it is absolute to me, it’s phenomenal because in Houston phenomenal, that’s so cheesy. No. Okay. So, um, between all these different cultures that we’re talking about and all the people that are here, what are some, uh, um, like key differences that we see among Asian barbecue, Latin barbecue.

You know, um, are the cuts very different? Are this it’s not the sauce is obviously, I think, I think a lot of that has to do with the individual establishment as like I choose to use very specific brand and they’re all hand selected for me. Like I use snake river, farm briskets, beef ribs. My pork ribs are all hand selected for me.

Uh, same with the pork butt. So, um, I have a. Advantage that because of my fine dining background, and I have a relationship with a lot of these farms and ranchers that I can leverage that relationship to get that product consistently. So I choose to go down rod, because for me, it’s all about the quality of the meat and the type of wood that I used to smoke.

My meats. I’m outside of very traumatizing. I’m one of the very few guys who uses French Oak wine barrels after had been retired. And that’s where I smoked my. So, but you said that that’s your big advantage is a lot of the relationships you have with your meat purveyors. Um, I would argue your biggest advantage actually is having a, um, having a population close enough to you, willing enough to come eat with you and willing to spend enough, spend that type of money to be able to get that, that style that too.

Yeah, because it’s not for everybody and not everybody can afford to spend $20 a pound for bread. Or spend $23 upon for a beef rib when each beef rib is pine and a half to almost two pounds. So that’s a big chunk of money to spend on a beef for it. Well, yeah, I, I just went to smoke a holics barbecue in Fort worth and, um, they’ve got rib tips on the menu and they have all the other craft, barbecue, sorry, all the other high barbecue, uh, you know, they have the trays and the sliced brisket in the beautiful barbecue, but they’re serving rib tips as well.

Which is more of a historically black, uh, barbecue. And I asked him about it, about why he’s serving that if that’s something that he grew up eating and he said, really, it’s just it’s so that I can serve my community. And so that I can bring people in from outside who were driving 30 minutes or an hour to come eat my barbecue, but the people in the neighborhood, um, can come by and actually get a good meal, uh, for a cheaper price.

And I guess that, that kind of goes back. What the, or where Texas barbecue, I originally came from, you know, using those cheaper cuts to make something good out of them. So it was kinda nice to see that coming full circle. Um, okay. And so I guess, looking at today, um, what cultures would you guys say have had the most impact on Texas barbecue to got a little heated, like has.

Latin. Is it Asian? What, what has had the most influence in today’s Texas? Barbecue? I’ll start this one. Start this one, you know, living in Houston. I think it’s like Erin said, it’s just this melting pot of everything in Houston is that every food genre in Houston has a melting pot of another genre in it.

For example, every everything. So you see fusions of everything with everything else. So I think barbecue right now in general in Houston is going through a lot of fusions. So you see, for example, blood blurs, again, bringing them up, let’s see Don, what he’s doing with it. You see, you know, um, like Eddie, oh, who’s doing, who’s doing textbooks, um, JQ out there doing textbooks.

So, you know, I don’t want to say that that’s driving the rest of Texas, but I just see it in my hometown, like in the Houston. Becoming the norm to see fusion, because there are so many other barbecue places you can go to. You can go to Kaelin’s, you can go to corkscrew, you can go to, or you can get the same thing on every corner of the city.

But, but it sounds like that’s always been the case in Texas, then this multicultural barbecue structure that we have here. I think, I think that the, you know, in the traditional sense of barbecue that we know. Has it become so saturated that, that people are doing what they’re doing. Like what Daniel said is they’re making stuff that they used to make in their backyard and it’s catching on.

Right? So then the next person goes, well, maybe I can do this. They push it a little bit far more forward than that. A little bit more and a little bit more. Then next thing you know, you have Asian fusion, then you have, you know, Middle-Eastern fusion. Then you have this, then you have this, you have, you’re putting in a middle Eastern spices in your food.

So it’s just, it’s for me, it’s a melting pot. You know, but I, I haven’t been to many other Dallas places, so I don’t know, but I know in Austin, I don’t feel like Austin is the same style of fusion as it is in Houston, because Houston is just such a huge melting pot that it’s, I think it’s advantageous for us to be in Houston, just because we see everything, you know, for me as not being originally from Texas.

I know I look like a Texan, but, uh, I’ve been on, I’ve lived on every continent in the world and every culture, every race has some form or some way of cooking with live fire and smoke. I think that’s what it is. It’s such a comfort food because it’s so primal, uh, cooking with live fire and smoke and, and everybody can identify with, so I think that’s why a lot of people, when they think about Texas, they think about beef country.

And they think about the Cowboys and, and the cattle runs. And, uh, everybody loves Texas. You go anywhere in the world. Some people may not like Americans in general, but they love Texas. So having lived all over the world and seen the different styles of cooking with live fire, I mean, I’ve hung out with the better ones in, um, in the desert that they’ve done.

Whole camel in the, cooking it in the sand with smoke and charcoal and fire. So that’s amazing to see, and then seeing the Texas style of barbecue, I think it it’s something that it, it will evolve. The, we will always have the barbecue for the masses, the high barbecue, as it’s evolving with every Pitmaster and every.

Restaurant tour who is doing the barbecue and putting Derrick touch on it. Um, I personally am a fan of the whole smoking with live fire and cooking. The primal cuts until it’s nice and tender, slow, low, and then letting it just speak for itself, going at it.

I’m sorry. I don’t even remember the original question.

I think it’s too hard to say because each, I think throughout history, like the techniques have been building on top of themselves and what we do now is not like revolutionary. Um, everything we’re doing has been built on the. That have been used for hundreds of years. Right. We might be adding different spices.

We might be serving it with a different sauce. Um, but those techniques are like the fundamentals and it would be impossible to point out one and say, you know, the Germans were more influential than, you know, the African-Americans. I just don’t think you can do that. I think it’s all led to where we are now and they are equally important.

So this can lead on to our next question, which I, I have an answer to, cause I do have one. Uh, and it’s, uh, it’s actually not one group. It’s one person and it’s Aaron Franklin. Yes. And I know that, that sounds like maybe a tired answer, but there is no Pitmaster in Texas. Who’s been more influential in the way that we eat barbecue.

Now, 10 years after Franklin barbecue first opened and especially not the way the Texas barbecue outside of Texas, uh, around the country and around the world is interpreted and, uh, and sort of read it. Um, nobody has been more influential in spreading that word than Aaron. Frank agreed. There’s like pre Aaron and post Erin.

And it is a clear difference in not just how people cook, but I think how the barbecue community is received, like how we, as restaurants are able to thrive, it is because of Franklin barbecue, a 100%. And you know, pat, Patrick’s always saying, well, like pre Aaron or post Darren, like there’s a timeline and you can base it on before people knew who Aaron Franklin.

And even the places who are doing different sorts of a barbecue fusion, if that’s what you want to call it, like their base of their menu is still reflective of what Franklin barbecue was doing. You know, when they opened 10 years ago, a hundred percent agree. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, Aaron did put a standard out there because.

He really has been the number one influencer of Texas barbecue. Right? Um, consistency, the equipment that he uses, the offset smoker. I don’t think that many people were using an offset smoker before him. It was either the traditional brick over direct fire and smoke. And. That Aaron is the one who influenced using an offset smoker using a 501,000 gallon propane tanks.

You know, they grown up in Austin. If you didn’t want to drive, I don’t know, 30, 45 minutes away to Lockhart to have before Aaron, you know, you went to Rudy’s, right? Yeah, because that was the best chain out there. And to this day, any, I will defend Rudy’s as the best change. Not because their food is the best, obviously it’s not, but they’re the most consistent for one it’s.

Okay.

walked away because of Rudy’s. Anyway, Rudy’s is the most consistent from one point to another point, because I mean, I go out to west Texas all the time and I stopped at the one in Del Rio and it tastes exactly the same one as I eat and clear. It was the same one that I eat in Austin. So I mean, you know, I’ll defend them.

Some people like it, some people don’t, but I think they’re the best chain. But before that, I mean, you go over there and people saw them as they were growing as the barbecue of Texas, because there were set up in a gas station. There were this, you know, that they look Texas, you know, and, um, but then when you go to the Lockhart and when you go to Wayne Mueller’s place and you see one room is green, the other youth room used to be green.

Um, then you understand the history. And, uh, you know, after Aaron, everything has been more, what’s the word? Modern, I guess restaurants are nicer restaurants, more high end restaurants, you know, cleaner. They’re better set up. They still feel like Texas, but you’re not going to get them to duplicate what quartz mark.

It looks like we’re black, smart or blacks and Lockhart looks like, um, so it’s, it’s the new era and it’s the new look of barbecue, I think. Cause it’s what Erin brought on. I think we all think Aaron for all that then. Um, I agree. Yeah. So Daniel, I guess we have, we have two more questions till we open up the floor.

If anybody, if anybody has questions, but how, how important is sourcing your meat? Cause people think, oh, I’ll just buy a brisket, smoke it for hours and hours and hours. And it’ll turn out the same, but how are we becoming more interested in where we’re getting our meat? What cow, what type of cow? Where are we get it?

Well, there’s some panelists and some, some rests owners might say that they are paying a lot of attention, but I’d say statewide. Um, people say they are, but, or say they’d like to, but then everybody’s just buying commodity beef. Like there’s a few places out there that, that are, are paying real good attention to the beef they’re buying.

But by and large it’s it’s commodity beef. Um, there might be certainly more of a, uh, more of an emphasis on higher quality. Commodity beef prime grade beef, uh, upper choice, grade beef. Um, and still nobody seems to care about the quality of their pork or not many seem to carry about the quality of their poor guy either.

So, um, yeah, I mean, the idea is always there that we should be eating locally and more, uh, environmentally friendly, raised animals and hormone free antibiotic free beef, but. I think you guys might have figured out the fact that there’s only so much of that to go around these days. Yeah. It’s in short supply, so it’s kind of hard and also it makes it cost prohibitive to get all organic, all local.

Uh, it makes it a lot more difficult. I mean, if you’re doing barbecue at home is one thing to go spend a hundred dollars on one brisket to cook it at home. When, when you’re doing a hundred briskets. It’s a little bit different story and you want every single one to come out the same. So, you know, one, one story that I’ll, I’ll add to all this is, you know what Buckman at corkscrew, you know, I hear stories like document the pictures and I hear the stories, right.

And, uh, when he told me the story, he goes, make sure you ma you put that it was 2013. So Daniel doesn’t read it and think I’m still doing this. So in 2013, when he made that. Top 10 list. Was he top 10, 2013 top fit, for course you. So corkscrew made the top 50 list in 2013 using Walmart briskets. So that says a lot in the techniques and the person that’s cooking the meat.

Right? Well, obviously now he’s a lot bigger and he’s a lot more organized and he’s using, you know, better grade meetings. You know, better barbecue, new place on so forth. But I mean, to me, it was fascinating that he was using Walmart great brisket. It was probably the best brisket, the Walmart. So, but it’s still Walmart brisket.

Um, and he still made the list. So it says a lot about the person cooking get to, so I picked up a lot to do with it. The wholesome answer everybody wants to hear is that, you know, we go and hug the ranchers every day and they hand us our briskets and that’s. That would be great. That’s not reality. As a business owner, I can tell you the most important things to us are consistency of product.

And there is a very valuable relationship between you and your vendors. And if not your vendors between you and your ranchers, we, we always purchase our meats through our vendors. So we like to have a very good relationship with our vendors, so that if products start coming in and our yield. Changes substantially, you know, we can ask them, why is this happening?

And they have the ability to reach out to the ranchers and get an answer, or, you know, we might switch our product in order to keep that consistency, because the most important thing to us is having a consistent product on your plate every day. And so that means being able to pivot when the products change, when the quality changes throughout the year, when fat percentages change.

It’s hotter and they’re panting more outside. Um, we want to make sure that what we’re cooking every day is a similar product. So it’s important to know your product. Um, it’s important to recognize when your product starts changing on you because these are living beings. And so they certainly fluctuate over time.

Um, and it’s, it’s important for us, for our cooks. You know, when they, we give them an instruction on how to cook something. And if the meat is fattier than usual or larger than usual, what we’ve taught them might not be status quo, right. They might have to pivot. They might have to change, you know, the way they handle the briskets.

And so it’s just really important that we’re able to provide as consistent a product as possible. And that means being able to speak to your vendor, use different products from time to time. Um, it’s not always. The specific, like your loyalty towards a specific ranch might actually hurt you, but being loyal to the industry as a whole, I think is sustainable for everybody.

Okay. Um, last question that I have for you guys, and then we’re going to open the floor for whoever wants to ask their own questions, but can one make a bad barbecue? And what the hell does that look like? A bad Barbie.

Yeah. If I ever hear somebody tell me, um, there’s no such thing as bad. Barbecue. The simple answer to that is you haven’t eaten enough barbecue, or just let me cook it. I’ll I’ll I’ll show you how bad barbecue looks. We’ve all made bad barbecue, barbecue. Just come to your place. I need it. We gotta start somewhere.

We have time for questions. All right. Yeah. So we have time for two questions. Does anybody want to ask something? Yes. Yeah. Do we have a mic or can she come up here?

Yeah.

Hi guys. Um, I am a health coach, also a, um, wellness. And I am. I am one of those people that I live in Texas city, and I will travel to Houston to get my eggs and my beef. I am one that I guess I’m lucky because it’s just me and mom, but the quality of your food does make a difference. I’m not here to preach or to say anyone’s wrong.

I’m just bringing up a very valid point. I am one that I will gladly pay 15, $20 for a burger. If it’s top class. And one of the reasons I don’t need out often is because when I eat out, because of all the cheap, great ingredients, I get sick. So I’m in, I’m here to invite. First of all, the thank you because I’m immensely grateful just by looking at the pictures at the work that you guys do in order to get meat on our table.

I want to thank you on my behalf. I do Quito and I’ve got to have protein. If not, I will get very sick. But I also love the fact that you guys take the time to raise the animals. So my question is, are you guys looking to purchase and get more involved with sustainable beef and lamb or whatever, you know?

So here’s the problem with doing sustainable and local products? Uh, it’s good if you’re doing it at home, I absolutely encourage. In a restaurant commercial setting. It is absolutely not sustainable. We cannot stay in business. If we pay 10, $12 a pound for locally grown cattle, that is hormone-free. I mean, it’s just, no, one’s going to come into a restaurant, pay $40 for a pound of brisket.

It’s just not going to happen. And we can’t stay in business. I mean, we can be careful about, and I’m a restaurant tour. This is my 15th restaurant I’ve done across the U S so I’m very careful. And I’m, again, fortunate. I have a personal relationship with a ranch that I get my meats from, but to use a hundred percent local organic meat in a commercial setting, it’s not economically viable.

We cannot stay in business. No one’s going to come out. We cannot feed there’s. It’s a very small market that people will pay that high dollar value. Okay. People are on a budget. So when they go out and eat, they’re looking for a specific price range. I mean, my brisket is $20 a pound and people still complain that, oh, his prices are too high.

They love the flavor. The product, but today, even a $20 is high and that’s, and I’m lower than some, yeah.

Something that is happening in barbecue right now that helps to really maintain that sustainability in our industry is we’re using new cuts. You’re going to see tri tip more often. You’re going to see hanger steak more often. Um, it solves a number of issues that plague our industry. One of them being there’s only so much brisket produced from one cow, right?

And if brisket is at a demand that it’s out right now, prices are only going to go up. It’s also what happens to the rest of the meat. The ranchers are sitting on all this product that they cannot get rid of. And then they say, Hey, we’re not, you know, we’re just going to raise our prices on brisket until you guys are kind of forced to use these other things.

And you see it more and more now where people are using these other cuts, we’re using more of the animal. You’re seeing more whole-hog used. And those are some really critical steps, um, that help us to become a more sustainable industry. I also think as somebody who, you know, as seeing the amount of effort that goes into cooking, a brisket tri tip is a more sustainable product from a human standpoint, it takes much less time to cook.

Um, so we’re asking less of our pit now. We’re burning less wood to produce it. Um, those are the types of things that our industry is kind of leaning towards. And the market has been very receptive. I think people really like the idea of these other cuts. It’s something new. And so as long as that is maintained, I think some of that sustainability is going to kind of naturally happen, um, because briskets take, you know, on average 16 hours, um, that’s a lot of time.

That’s a lot of wood. Really one part of this massive animal. And if our demand is only for that one part, um, w as a country, we will never be able to keep up. Awesome. All right. We have time for one more question question.

So far, you talked a lot about the future with maybe the text max stop being called text message in the future. One thing that I would like to ask is. The non-protein constituents in live fire and smoke cooking. And I’m not just talking about, oh, people doing creative sides, but where they’re taking things like the beverages, the, uh, the desserts and like a latte or other, uh, other things that on the vegetable side that can’t be smoked well, where’s the future for that

right restaurant. I have a relationship with a local mushroom grower, so I’ll actually. Mushrooms, uh, occasionally like once or twice a month, I do a smoked mushrooms. So that’s my way of going outside the box and doing some vegetables that are smoked, that I will do that. I think this is a really market driven answer because we are in a very competitive industry.

There is so much good barbecue as both of these gentleman have said earlier. An amazing bite of brisket at dozens of places in many cities in Texas. Right? So the only way you’re going to differentiate yourself is through the other services you provide. And I think that has a lot to do with how you round out your meals.

From a food standpoint, which would include sides, which would include desserts. I think people want to be taken care of. So you’re seeing more full service. Um, it’s not always going to be the cafeteria style stand in line restaurant. Now you might sit at your table in order your barbecue plate, right. And cocktails, beers, wines.

It’s just an, it’s another way to elevate your product and your restaurant so that you are appealing to a broader audience because that is how you stay competitive. And that is how you stay. And there is always going to be a nostalgic place for the restaurants that don’t have all of that, but not everybody can be that.

Not everybody can be where you have to do all the work yourself. You, if you want to be competitive, you have to offer a multitude of other things than they have to be top quality. And I think there’s a different breed of people that get into barbecue. Right? You have people that are self-taught that get in and do amazing stuff.

And then you have people like these two right here who are from the chef world, like they’re classically trained. They come in understanding barbecue. Well, what they do is they add amazing sides because that’s what they knew before already. So, you know, when you go and you have the brussel sprouts and errands place, like to me, that’s phenomenal.

That’s an amazing side, you know? Um, and I, and I enjoy that stuff, but same thing with RS place, you know, I went over there and we had the duck, like the duck was. Amazing. So I think it’s just how you differentiate yourself other than the normal things that you can get anywhere else that at this point, it’s pretty much on the same level.

Just a matter of a few points here and there, you know, and Paki I’m with you that, uh, I’d love to see more like main course vegetables, um, you know, using smoke or live fire cooking. And that’s just something I’m not seeing very much of, unfortunately like the. Uh, the vegan barbecue that I’m seeing or vegetarian barbecue goes straight towards vegetable proteins and trying to make them look like a rib or trying to make them slice like a brisket.

Um, I’d love to see some, you know, wood-fired carrots, um, more smoke mushrooms, um, you know, smoke. If you’ve never smoked and fried a whole head of color cauliflower, it’s a beautiful. So, yeah, I’d, I’d love to see more things like that on, uh, on barbecue joint menus. Um, I’m just not seeing them. Yeah. Well, I think you guys are all on the money there.

I think more restaurants nowadays are starting to add more vegetables and kind of, like you said, the smoke cauliflower. Don’t try to make vegetables, look like meat. Yeah. Just recognize. I think we grew up a ton of vegetables today, but anyways, I want to thank you guys so much, so, so much for coming on the panel.

And I want to thank the audience for coming in to listen to you guys. If we can get a round of applause for everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Once again, we have Erin over here. Lovely. Aaron, you guys can find her and Houston are over here. Chef Harbor road, Texas. We got a boy, Ben, who’s a master photographer working.

We poverty, barbecue. And then we have a bias stroke, Daniel Bond that the Texas monthly barbecue editor. Thank you guys for coming.

Thanks again to butchers ball for letting me record the conversation and to all of my guests. We have put links in the show notes to all the guests information and socials. Thanks for listening. I would also really appreciate if you guys hit subscribe, like following share so we can get this podcast as many listeners as possible.

Thanks again.