BBQ 801 - Meat Preparation

Last time we talked about the cuts of meat used in classic Texas BBQ. How to prepare your meat (with a focus on brisket) before cooking is the subject of this session. A basic method often used when preparing large cuts of meat like pork loins, turkeys and whole fish is called brining. To brine, your meat needs to be submersed in a mixture of water, salt, and sugar for several hours. This process promotes juicy flavorful meat by adding salt and sugar deep into the meat through diffusion (natural flow of elements from an area of high concentration to one of low concentration) and moisture through osmosis (diffusion of water) which also carries the diluted salt and sugar into the meat.

So should we use brining in barbeque? Not exactly. Unlike pork loin, turkey, and fish, beef (especially brisket) is naturally juicy because of the amount of fat, so extra moisture from a brine is not required. Although brining is not neccessarily beneficial, brisket can benefit from basic diffusion. Covering a brisket with a simple rub of salt alone will promote this. You see, salt is a solute which draws water out of moist objects that it comes in contact with. Salt on a brisket promotes diffusion while also acting as a solute which forces water and salt to continuously travel through the meat, depositing some of the salt along the way.

Any rub recipe you will find contains salt, spices (maybe herbs) and some form of sugar. All they really need for diffusion to occur is the salt, but what else can we successfully add to a rub? To a limited degree, diffusion will occur with brown or white sugar, and they will also promote carmelization and a good crust on the meat during the smoking process. Sugar is a keeper.

Spices are often used as well, but a tasting from Cook's Illustrated reveals some tips about which spices to use, and when to apply them so they don't become bitter. Spices on the "good" list include allspice, ground chiles, black pepper, cinnamon, cumin and mustard seed. Absent from this list are the popular paprika, garlic powder, and onion powder which were judged "putrid" when placed over direct heat. What also promotes bitterness is leaving the rub on for too long. Two hours is considered the maximum amount of time, while rubbing just before cooking is also successful.

Lastly, what temperature should the meat be before it's placed in your smoker? Well the point is to get your brisket up to 185-195 degrees, so starting it at 40 degrees (straight from the fridge) is counter productive, so let it set out on the counter for about 20-30 minutes before cooking.

To recap, rub your brisket with a salt and sugar, and refrigerate for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight. Take it out of the fridge and rub with your favorite spices from the "good" list, and let it sit while you prepare your fire (about 30 minutes). Now you'll have a brisket that is salted deep into the meat, with a god spice rub that's not too cold. Next time we'll work on that fire you've got to build.

- BBQ Snob

Blowin' Smoke 004 - Umami

You may have heard about umami in the past year, as it has escaped the culinary field to become quite the buzz word used more and more often in the common lexicon. It is now considered to be the fifth taste in addition to the commonly known sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Professor Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo Imperial University is credited with the "discovery" of the flavor in 1907 while studying flavors in seaweed broth...mmm! Umami (oo-mommy) has been written about in cookbooks, on NPR, and in my favorite magazine, Cooks Illustrated. Umami has been described as a "meaty" or "hearty" flavor in foods like mushrooms, red wine, soy sauce and most proteins. It exists in the glutamates which are naturally found in those foods. Umami has been synthesized into the much maligned food additive MSG, which enhances the flavors of any dish it is added to.



So how does this relate to this blog, you ask? Barbeque is a cuisine incredibly rich in umami. Start with brisket - proteins in beef are high in glutamates, and tougher cuts rich in collagen (Hello! Brisket!) are saturated with flavor from the Big-U. These flavors are heightened by both the smell of smoke, and a long slow cooking process...both characteristics of good 'cue. Sugar also acts as an umami enhancer as evidenced by barbeque sauce which uses tomatoes (high in umami) and worchestershire sauce (also high in umami) in combination with a sweetener (white or brown sugar or mollasses) to create the perfect umami-rich condiment. It's no wonder we crave BBQ. Who wouldn't want umami dipped in umami heightened by smoke and sweetness? Now get yourself some sliced brisket, a good sauce, and enjoy it with a nice cabernet and a few sauteed morels. Mmm mommy!

For more information on other umami-rich foods, check the UMAMI Information Center.

- BBQ Snob

Randy White's Hall of Fame BBQ

FRISCO: Randy White’s Hall of Fame BBQ
9225 Preston Rd
Frisco, TX 75034
972-377-0540
Open Sun-Thur 11-9, F-Sat 11-10
www.randywhitesbbq.com/

Pulling up to Randy White's (of Dallas Cowboys fame) Hall of Fame BBQ, you notice that Coach Joe's (also of Cowboys fame) Sports Grille shares a parking lot. I don't know if they always planned to share a parking lot in Frisco, but this restaurant rivalry seems odd. Even more odd is that they both have a chicken fried steak on their menu that they call a "Texas Fried Steak". Either way, I was happy to be here, and happy that my wife agreed to eat lunch at a BBQ joint with me rather than making me run in and grab something to go.

Thanks to my wife's generosity with the contents of her plate, I was able to try four meats here: brisket, pork ribs, black pepper sausage, and smoked ham. The brisket held great promise with a well-formed crust, a substantial smoke line and pull-apart tenderness. The presentation bordered on false advertising as these slices were pure roast beefyness. Even the crust held very little smoke flavor. Luckily the slightly thin and spicy sauce complemented this meat well. The St. Louis ribs didn't have much smoke flavor either. The crust was decent, but the meat below not very tender and had little flavor at all. The thick lines of unrendered fat that I had to cut away from the meat told me that this meat needed alot more time in the smoker. The ham had a mealy recontituted texture that often occurs with boneless ham. It also had little smoke flavor, so the wife really enjoyed it. The sausage here was the best of the bunch. They offer smoked sausage, jalapeno sausage, and black pepper sausage. The black pepper sausage lived up to its name. It had a medium grind, good snap, good smoke flavor, and tons of cracked black peppercorns. Randy may have made it all the way to the Hall of Fame, but his BBQ has a long road ahead for any such accolades.

Rating **