Hit the blinker as soon as you spot the trio of BBQ flags waving outside Kirby’s BBQ. The speed limit is 50 miles per hour on Loop 494, and there’s just a wide strip of gravel between the low-slung, metal-roofed shack and the two-lane road. Kirby’s may have the look of a long-standing establishment, but it opened in May, the newest barbecue joint in New Caney, just northeast of Houston.After the cloud of dust settled from my sudden stop in the makeshift parking lot, I walked up the steps to the screened-in porch, where employee Svea Bailey greeted me and took my order. The building only houses the kitchen, so the dining area is limited to the picnic tables lining the porch. I found a…

The post If You Spot Three BBQ Flags on a Desolate Road, Pull Over appeared first on Texas Monthly.

BJ Bradford’s jump start to becoming a barbecue entrepreneur began with 25 briskets gifted to him by the universe. In 2016, while working as an over-the-road trucker and hauling a load of beef from Kansas to Florida, a customer rejected five boxes from the delivery because they were damaged. When the company told him to keep or get rid of them, BJ’s choice was clear. Adopting those orphaned briskets would end up altering his career.He picked up four big coolers from a nearby Walmart, packed them full of briskets and ice, and headed back home to Bryan, Texas, where his family was waiting for him. “I got a lot of training from those briskets right there,” he says. Smoking meat wasn’t new to BJ. His…

The post A Long-Haul Trucker Kept 25 Briskets Rejected by a Customer—and Became a Pitmaster appeared first on Texas Monthly.

The stress of running a barbecue trailer is nothing compared with keeping the country’s nuclear arsenal safe. “It’s not work if you love what you’re doing,” Charles Carr, owner of Class-1 Barbecue, in Amarillo, told me when he explained why smoking meat became his retirement plan. He had been a facility manager at the Pantex plant, northeast of Amarillo, “where the U.S. arsenal for nuclear weapons is assembled and disassembled,” Carr explained. That position followed thirteen years of military service and three tours in the Army for Carr. “I got tired of running and gunning,” he said. He opened the trailer with his wife, Maria, last November.You could say he went from Class V (ammunition and explosives) to Class I (food and water), which are…

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When Andrew Peña’s job as a refinery inspector in Corpus Christi was paused during COVID-19, he went looking for a smoker. He found one nearby via an online ad and hauled it back to his driveway. Peña had been grilling steaks and ribs since he was twelve, but smoking brisket became his new challenge. By mid-2020, he was confident enough to sell his barbecue for preorders on Facebook. Needing a name and a logo, he sketched one out for Full Send BBQ. “It means one hundred percent. Don’t take shortcuts,” he explained. “What you put into it is what you get out of it.”Peña started dating a woman named Desirae Hill, who happened to be a great cook. They’re no longer a couple, but they…

The post This Barbecue Bus Stands Out on the Corpus Christi Scene appeared first on Texas Monthly.

It was the hottest day of the summer thus far in Houston, and Chicano BBQ‘s pop-up tent offered little shade from the late-afternoon sun. Serafin Ramirez stood sweating in the parking lot of Tikila’s bar, surrounded by a portable flattop with sizzling burgers, a roiling deep fryer on wheels, and a hot box filled with barbecue. I yelled my order over the roar of a crawfish vendor’s propane burner next to where Ramirez has been setting up five days a week for the last two months. It was a scene that folks who are considering becoming pitmasters should witness before they take the plunge.But Ramirez doesn’t seem fazed. The 24-year-old Houston native has been making money from barbecue since high school. He used to take…

The post This Pitmaster Made the Switch From Fighting Flames to Lighting Fires appeared first on Texas Monthly.

The parking lot of Salty Sow looks a lot busier during lunch these days. The restaurant only serves dinner, but six weeks ago, a West Texas pitmaster pulled in with a new trailer and a thousand-gallon smoker. The side of the building got a new paint job announcing the arrival of Waylon J’s Barbeque. The restaurant-within-a-restaurant is open Friday through Sunday, serving some remarkably good barbecue.Pitmaster Chad Deen spent a decade in Midland surveying well sites for oil companies. Starting in late 2020, he’d take off early on Friday afternoons to fire up his smoker to cook barbecue for lunch on Saturdays at Tall City Brewing under the name Bury Me in Smoke Barbecue. The barbecue bug had bitten him the year prior. He watched…

The post Just Six Weeks In, This New Austin BBQ Joint Is Already Impressive appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Fernando “Fred” Mendoza needed a smoker, and he had some Longhorn cattle to trade. Mendoza owns M3 Longhorn Ranch, near Valley View, less than twenty miles from Oklahoma. Nolan Belcher owns B4 Barbeque, in Mabank, with his wife, Emily, and they had a five-hundred-gallon smoker for sale. “He wanted some Texas Longhorns, and I wanted a barbecue pit,” Mendoza told me. Belcher ended up with seven head of livestock in the deal, and he moved them to join the rest of the small herd on his land in Mabank, about 120 miles southeast of Valley View.Mendoza has grown his herd of Longhorns for years, using a breeding program to produce cows with exceptionally long horns. Whereas other breeds are prized for milk production or marbling,…

The post A Pitmaster Traded Seven Longhorns to Get a Smoker for His Tex-Mex BBQ Joint appeared first on Texas Monthly.

 
It’s an article of faith, not to say dogma, that the proper way to cook brisket is low in slow—that is at a low heat for a very loooooooooong time—a half day or more for a full packer brisket. You need that slow, gentle heat to melt the collagen and make the meat tender without drying it out.

Yes, there are hot and fast briskets that cook in a few hours. Our test kitchen director made one that ranks pretty high on the deliciousness scale.

But what if I told you there’s a brisket dish you can cook in 2 minutes—I repeat 2 MINUTES—directly over a screaming hot fire. You’d think I was crazy.

The Secret to Cooking Brisket in Just Two Minutes

Or so I believed until I visited Baekjeong KBBQ restaurant in the heart of New York’s Koreatown. Here the chef slices frozen brisket points across the grain on a meat slicer. The slices come out so paper-thin, the meat cooks in a matter of minutes. It simply doesn’t have time or heft to get tough. You could think of this direct grilled brisket as steak on steroids, with a rich meaty beefy flavor every bit as intense as slow-cooked brisket, but as easy to chew as filet mignon.

 

The brisket itself comes unseasoned. The fireworks come from a table-burying selection of sauces and condiments collectively known as panchan. Like so much Korean grilled meat, you eat grilled brisket taco-style: wrapped in lettuce leaves. Think of it as barbecue health food.

The easiest way to slice the meat for this extraordinary brisket is on an electric meat slicer. Serious carnivores may own one already. I’ve come up with a work-around using a food processor. In a pinch, you could try hand slicing. Either way, place the brisket in the freezer until softly frozen. You don’t want it hard as a rock. If you happen to live in an area with a large Korean community, you may be able to buy the brisket pre-sliced.

 

Here, then, is a brisket dish most of us would never dream possible. Two minute brisket. Really! One bite of the luscious, seared, sizzling smoky beef will make you a believer.

Recipe: Two Minute Korean Brisket

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The post Brisket in a Minute?—Impossible, But it’s True! appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Melt-In-Your-Mouth Smoked Pork Belly

I’ve cooked pork belly a lot of different ways… pork belly burnt ends… sweet and pulled… deep fried… but this method is savory, smokey and melt in yo’ mouth! It has a real pit smoked flavor and it’s nothing short of delicious!

Tender, Juicy, and Packed with Flavor!

WHAT MALCOM USED IN THIS RECIPE

• Killer Hogs Hot Sauce
• Killer Hogs Hot Rub
• Killer Hogs TX Brisket Rub
• Thermoworks RFX
• 12′ Brisket Slicing Knife

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There are plenty of wife-and-husband teams who run barbecue joints, but at El Tejas Twist, in Forney, a town about 25 miles east of Dallas, the whole family is involved. Customers order from Esmeralda Alaniz, who patiently explains the vast menu. Her husband, Fernando Serrato, prepares the orders. Fernando’s sister Carolina Benavides makes the sides, while her husband, Victor Benavides, mans the smokers outside. Carlos Serrato, Fernando’s brother, is the utility man who helps in all roles. Together, they produce a unique variety of barbecue and Tex-Mex dishes at a joint that remains inexplicably under the radar after three years of being open.“People love the menu because they can mix it up,” Fernando explained. Barbecue platters, stuffed baked potatoes, and Texas Twinkies are just the…

The post Five Family Members Decided to Go All In on Their Tex-Mex BBQ Joint appeared first on Texas Monthly.

For the Heffernan family, 2017 was a tumultuous year. Bob Heffernan, the patriarch and pitmaster of their barbecue trailer, Heffernan Bar-B-Que, learned he had lung cancer in the spring. His oncologist estimated he had seven months to live. Bob’s wife, Jeannie, helped run the business, but Bob was the one who made the barbecue. The couple’s older son, Cole, had already graduated college and was starting his career. If the torch were to be carried, it would fall to their younger son, Evan, to do it. “I knew if I said no, it would be gone forever,” Evan said. He felt a responsibility to sustain what his father had started, so he dropped out of college and tied on an apron.“I had really no aspirations…

The post When He Learned He Had Seven Months to Live, a Pitmaster Taught His Son Everything He Knew appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Mike Fritts is an unconventional pitmaster. Instead of pulling his trailer-mounted, thousand-gallon Austin Smoke Works offset with a Ford F-150, he does it with a Porsche Cayenne. He bought the used car because it had adequate towing capacity and the rear—with the brake lights illuminated at night—reminded him of Darth Vader’s helmet. The aesthetic of his favorite bespoke tailor in London (Huntsman, of Savile Row) inspired the signage design for his joint, Mythic Barbecue, which he opened with his fiancée, Sally Sosa, in Cottonwood Shores, outside Marble Falls, last year.Fritts didn’t like the sound of his surname as the joint’s name. His goal was to make people happy with his food, and a YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning had brought him much happiness over…

The post He Left a Career in Finance to Make This Hill Country Town “Barbecue-Famous” appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Mohamad Kharboutli had an established restaurant chain overseas before he opened Levant BBQ, in the Galleria area of Houston, late last year. Born in Syria, he owned several locations of Saltenas restaurant in Moscow, Russia, and Amman, Jordan. After moving to Texas in 2009, he brought three locations of Sult’an Pepper, serving a halal Mediterranean menu, to various Houston food courts. Despite the punny name perfectly suited to reference the typical smoked meat rub, Sult’an Pepper doesn’t serve Texas barbecue. Kharboutli chose the moniker Levant BBQ for his first restaurant serving fully halal Texas barbecue.“We put everything for the service in front of the people,” Kharboutli told me when I asked about the lineup of smokers directly behind the serving line. Customers can watch as…

The post Lamb and Beef Rule at This Halal Barbecue Joint in Houston appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Marc Solis, after a 23-year teaching career, is ready to retire. He told me this over the phone as he trimmed briskets during his lunch break from Heights Elementary School in Laredo, where he teaches special education students. The ten-minute walk to LowPoint Barbecue from the school has become a weekday routine since he opened the restaurant in 2023. “I can’t serve two masters,” Solis told me. To become the pitmaster he hopes to be, Solis needs to make barbecue his full-time job. “I’m going to be taking the plunge,” he said.Solis has been taking steps to get here since 2020. He taught his students virtually during the pandemic and used his extra time to work on his backyard smoking skills. In 2022, he got…

The post A Special Education Teacher Fulfills His Dream of Becoming a Full-Time Pitmaster appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Nothing much happens on the barbecue front in Del Rio. My full-time job is to travel all over the state looking for the next great barbecue joint. Until recently, I hadn’t been to Del Rio since I started this job twelve years ago because there was no reason to go. This year is different. After Hot Pit B-B-Q closed for good after operating for more than fifty years, a trio of Del Rio natives held the grand opening of their new restaurant, Humo Prime Barbecue.Hervey Huerta, Elias Mtanous, and Michael Willard left the city shortly after graduating from high school. They moved to San Antonio, where Huerta had his first barbecue experience (having never visited Hot Pit back home). It was a spot next to…

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I smoked a brisket last weekend and while it was tender, delicious, and amazing, that is just the start of this post.

One night last week, I made twice-baked potatoes with some of this tasty brisket and leftover pimento cheese that Alexis had made.

Twice-Baked Potatoes

The process is simple. 

• I baked two large Idaho bakers on the Egg until they were tender. 
• I sliced the top off and scoops the steaming potato pulp into a large bowl. 
• There I added about a cup of chopped brisket and a heaping amount of pimento cheese. 
• I stuffed most of this mix back into the potato shells.

I put the potatoes on a tray into a Big Green Egg set up for indirect heat and running at 350°f. I topped them with a few pats of butter and let them run for 20 minutes.

Smokestak Hot and Fast (+Others!) I haven’t cooked American style BBQ for ages but when I saw The Smokin Elk cook Brisket and Pulled Pork on “The Lockdown Show” using Smokstak specification meat from Warrens butchers and cooked Hot and Fast I knew I had to give it a try – Time for Smokestak Hot […]

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This Traeger Smoked Beef Brisket is seasoned simply and cooked low and slow to take a tough piece of meat and transform it into a masterpiece. The secret to making a spectacular pellet grill brisket isn’t fancy spices and expensive equipment.

If you have ever been intimidated by the thought of smoking meat all day long, let me put your mind at ease. This Smoked Beef Brisket recipe is simple and straightforward enough that you’ll be looking forward to honing your meat smoking skills with your next brisket.

Being a relatively inexpensive cut of meat, you’d think everyone would be eating beef brisket. But since it’s a part of the animal that holds more than half its body weight, there’s a lot of connective tissue and muscle that must be cooked correctly for it to be tender and delicious. 

SmokeD beef Brisket ingredients

Jump down to the full recipe for specific amounts of each ingredient. This is just an overview.

• Brisket – This recipe calls for the whole packer brisket, which is the full brisket (the pectoral muscle containing both the point and the flat muscles). 
• Kosher Salt – No meat seasoning would be complete without salt. Kosher salt retains flavors better in your meat and has a slightly different flavor than seasalt, so it’s a much more versatile option for smoking.
• Coarse Ground Black Pepper – Bringing along the robust flavor, coarse ground black pepper will pair well with the kosher salt to enhance the brisket flavors.
• Paprika – You’ll often find paprika in the spices list for smoking meats. With its own smokey flavor enhancing the meat, it is a great spice to use with brisket. 

Other Items You’ll Need or Will Be Handy

• A Filet or Chef’s Knife – Don’t feel like you have to go buy a brand new knife the first time you smoke a brisket. But let’s be honest, a new knife is pretty fun to try out. Either way, just be sure your knife is sharp.
• A Large Cutting Board – This one is very necessary. Your brisket is a very large piece of meat and you will need space to work.
• Pink Butcher Paper – Some people may use foil to wrap the brisket partway through the smoking process, but the peach butcher paper will create a better smokey flavor and an incredible bark.
• A Meat Thermometer – You’ll need a good, reliable meat thermometer to make sure you don’t overcook the brisket.
• A Large Thick Towel – Once your brisket comes out of the smoker, it will need to rest for an hour, wrapped in a large towel. Just be sure you have one on-hand.

How to Make Smoked Beef Brisket

Start with preheating your smoker. It should take around 30 minutes to prep the brisket, so time this accordingly. Before you start the trimming, though, go ahead and combine the kosher salt, coarse ground black pepper, and paprika in a bowl and set it aside.

Now you’ll need to trim your brisket. You’ll have to trim both sides and shape it, too. It’s good to familiarize yourself with the different parts of the brisket so you know what you’re trimming.

After your brisket is trimmed, cover every bit of it with the seasonings. Now it’s ready to go into the smoker, thicker side closest to the hottest part of your smoker. Close the lid and let the smoke work its magic.

Around halfway through the cooking process, you’ll remove the brisket and double wrap it with the peach butcher paper then return it to the smoker until the correct internal temperature is reached.

Now you’ll remove the wrapped brisket from the smoker, wrap it in a thick towel, and place it in a cooler to rest for an hour before slicing and serving. This will help the meat absorb some of the juices back to keep it tender and juicy.

How Long to Smoke a Traeger Brisket

The smoking time will depend a lot on the size of your brisket. The estimated smoking time is around 16 hours for an 11-15 pound whole packer brisket. 

You’ll want to have your meat thermometer handy to check the internal temperature around halfway through (right around eight hours). When the internal temperature is 165 degrees, you’ll wrap the brisket.

Once the internal temperature has reached 203 degrees (usually around 6-8 hours later) in the thickest part of the meat, it will be ready to rest. Checking the internal temperature is the best way to gauge the readiness of your brisket. A leave-in or bluetooth thermometer is the best way to keep an eye on the internal temperature without having to open your smoker constantly, losing heat in the process.

What Sides To Serve With Traeger Brisket?

While we could certainly make a meal out of this mouth-watering brisket, we should have some sides to go with it.

• Corn on the Cob: You really can’t ever go wrong with corn!
• Grilled Asparagus: Add a little green to your meal.
• Potatoes: Whether you serve Potato Wedges or Smoked Potatoes, don’t forget the butter and sour cream!

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