Brisket…the Wonder Woman of Meats

I continue to improve my barbecue knowledge and form opinions that may or may not hold water. Today I’m thinking about brisket.

As you may know, beef brisket is an inherently undesirable cut of meat that can be redeemed by prolonged smoking at low temperatures. In other words, a typical barbecue cut. It’s tough as leather.

Brisket gets a lot of attention from barbecuers because it is hard to cook properly. It comes out dry and/or tough. The bark doesn’t develop. It’s tricky. It has to be cooked for a minimum of 10 hours. As a result, there is a lot of conversation out there about how to get it right.

I just saw a video by a guy named Steve Gow. He’s some sort of engineer, and that’s a good thing. Cooking is full of old wives’ tales and fables, like the one that says you should rest steaks. Engineers who turn to cooking can apply their analytical skills to wash away the horse manure and find out what actually works.

Gow did a lot of experiments, and he says he found the best way to get perfect brisket. Sounds great. Uh oh…one small detail: it takes 24 to 32 hours. You have to smoke it and then hold it for half a day at something like 140°.

I thought the video was interesting until I got to the time punchline. Over a day for barbecue? No. That’s ridiculous.

Let me say something that will make gatekeepers and fanatics (and Texans) steam like a freshly-unwrapped 32-hour brisket: it’s not worth that kind of time. Brisket just is not that good. It’s like Black Panther. Overrated due to a passing fad.

Am I saying it’s bad? Of course not. I like it. I’ve eaten it. But here is the truth: in restaurants, I have probably ordered brisket less than 5% of the time. Pork is just plain better. It has more flavor. It takes sauce better. It is compatible with every type of flavor: sweet, hot, smoky, salty, fruity, umami, fishy…anything. It’s the king of meats and the meat of kings.

Ribs are better. Pork butt is better. Pork belly is better. I’ve had tender, juicy brisket in restaurants, and if I had to put a number on it I would say it’s 60% as good as spare ribs. Why would I spend 32 hours ruining my sleep rhythm as well as the day on which I plan to eat, to get a B- meat when I can have A+ in 7 hours?

Brisket is what you eat when you’ve had so many ribs, you need a short break. That’s what brisket is.

I think Texans have made brisket an obsession and spread it to the rest of us. Texas is the leading beef-production state, and it trails other states badly in pork production. I think they’re just pushing what they know.

As I have often said, I lived in Austin for three years, and the barbecue was disappointing. Brisket in steam table trays floating in sauce just like the juice from pork and beans. Little dry ribs. Food service white bread, untoasted, unfried, thrown on the plate cold. It must be better now that the Famous Franklin’s is there.

The food in Texas was generally disappointing, but you couldn’t tell Texans that. The best food I had, that I didn’t cook, came from a chain of restaurants run by Greeks who had zero Texas heritage. The Pappas family.

I will probably smoke a brisket eventually just for the experience, but I see no reason to make it a regular thing when the workload is outlandish and the product is second-tier. Also, the financial risk is high. Brisket runs $7 per pound now, and a whole brisket is not small. I may blow it, or I may just end up with a brisket that lacks potential because of the way the fat is distributed. You have to be careful when you choose a brisket. It’s not like pork, which is just about always fine.

Who wants to spend $150 on a piece of meat, waste a day and a half on it, and then have to drive to Burger King?

Time to warm up some pork belly.

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I have been trying to work up some sauce recipes. There are some store sauces I like pretty well, like Sweet Baby Ray’s and Sonny’s Sizzlin’, but I have always wanted to try Carolina-style sauces, which are not widely available here. I have made some things with cider vinegar and ketchup, and they were okay, but I wanted to do better.

The only store Carolina sauce I could find around here was Southern Living Carolina Gold, which has no tomatoes in it. Just mustard. It doesn’t taste bad, but it’s too sweet, it has no heat, and it’s bland. The nice thing about it is that it helped me understand the concept of mustard sauce.

Today I rooted around on the web for ideas, and I ended up making this:

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup French’s
2 oz. maple syrup
2 oz. cider vinegar
2 tsp. Frank’s
3/8 tsp. ground pepper
1/2 tsp. chipotle powder

I didn’t measure the liquids carefully, but I know I’m not far off.

I warmed up some pork belly slices in the microwave, put them on a potato bun, and applied this sauce top and bottom.

Not a great picture. Sorry.

It was fantastic. I didn’t know a tomato-free sauce could be this good. I didn’t miss the tomatoes one bit. Best sauce I have ever had.

It was so good, I didn’t even think about the bun. I like onion rolls better than potato buns, but when I ate this sandwich, all I could think about was the meat and sauce.

I believe this would be astonishing with some thin slices of Bermuda onion and dill pickle chips on top of the meat. I like pulled pork on garlic bread, but I think pork belly is too rich for that. It doesn’t need any help.

Next time:

3/8 cup French’s
2 tbsp. hot Mister Mustard
2 oz. maple syrup
2 oz. cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. white pepper
chipotle powder to taste
2 tsp. raw pressed garlic