Maybe that’s why KC was ranked #1
They’re so “best” that you have to split them up.
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A few years back I wen to a barbecue place in Paris near place de republique, The Beast. I didn’t think a lot of it. as per my review. I felt that I’d wasted a meal n Paris, which is a waste indeed. I hope this place does well, but I’ll skip it.
There’s a genuinely good barbecue place in Amsterdam, Pendergast Smokehouse. My review begins, “Wow!”
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I have lived in and visited Salem. Now I live in Austin. I like the bbq here. A lot.
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Lexington is a long drive for 9 a.m. barbecue on a Saturday. Even Luling or Spicewood or Llano is a trip. I’ll just sleep in and go to La BBQ or Valentina’s here in town.
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The same former CH guy that owned the Thai restaurant where I took you and G in Toronto (Nana) is a part owner of a Thai BBQ restaurant called Favorites Thai BBQ that opened in 2019. It’s delicious, but it’s in a trendy part of town, and is expensive for what it is.
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Here you go, RD.
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Thank you! I will give them a try. A buddy (St Paul native) often jokes saying, “You live in a nice area. You really ought to get out to see it sometime.”
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Now you tell me! We were just there and at at the Handsome Hog, which is mentioned in the article. Mediocre.
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Were you around for the original Big Daddy’s in St Paul? Just up the street from Little Szechuan?
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Sum Ting Wong?
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No. We were just passing through. Two day stay.
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You wrap your brisket (aka the Texas Crutch)?
For the flat, do you have a particular duration and temperature you like?
I usually don’t wrap unless I am bringing it inside to finish cooking (with large cuts sometimes I smoke for a few hours starting at 7 or 8pm and then finish in a low oven overnight). IMO the bark is better without wrapping. I generally do flats at 225, although I may start a little hotter next time given my recent success with short ribs at 240. Unfortunately, timing is very difficult to predict - usually 10-12 hours works but it varies by weight as well as by fat content. Also, age of meat makes a difference - I often buy cryovaced beef and let it wet age in my fridge for a few weeks before cooking, and my unscientific observation is that wet aged meat cooks a little faster than fresher meat.
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I think wrap and Texas crutch are not exactly the same.
I loosely wrap my brisket in paper about half way through the cooking time. That’s wrapping in my mind. The smoke still penetrates the paper but the wrap is not impermeable.
The Texas crutch takes wrapping further by using aluminum foil which then locks everything in and the meat essentially steams.
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Hmmm, I seem to recall that in Aaron Franklin’s Masterclass series, he refers to both as the Crutch.
Also, IIRC, Franklin uses buttered or oiled paper, which isn’t exactly permeable.
But since you think there’s a distinctio… Biondanonina, do you wrap in paper or foil?
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If I wrap, I use foil, largely because I don’t keep butcher paper in the house. I might try parchment next time and see if I notice a difference in the texture of the bark. I wouldn’t wrap until I was done with smoke anyway, so I’m not concerned about the smoke permeating - it’s more about moisture. I usually give brisket 4-5 hours of smoke - that is enough smoke flavor for my taste. I just stop feeding chips into my smoker and let it slow roast thereafter, although there is probably some residual smoke that hangs out for quite a while longer.
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I wrap brisket in pink butcher paper at the stall.
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I don’t know what master class is. But I recall watching Franklin on a series he did on PBS where he started by making a smoker out of an old propane tank and then went on to smoke brisket in it in a variety of ways. He demonstrated wrapped in butcher paper, newspaper and unwrapped. He preferred wrapped in butcher paper. No oil or butter from what I saw.
This link to a page from Raichlin would confirm the difference between the crutch using foil and Franklin’s use of butcher paper.
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I’m a big fan of Franklin. Franklin’s book and videos are what I studied when I first started smoking on a somewhat serious nature.
In his book Franklin Barbecue he derisively refers to wrapping in foil as the ‘Texas crutch’. He mentions it twice and neither in overly flattering terms.
From a section entitled “Wrapping”.
I don’t want to get HO in any hot water so I will only post a brief excerpt with attribution…
Most of what I cook gets wrapped at some point in the cooking process. Ribs and pork butts get wrapped in foil; brisket gets wrapped in butcher paper.
Wrapping a brisket in foil has been derisively referred to as “the Texas crutch,” because it helps a long-cooked brisket turn out better and keep from drying out in the last stage of cooking. Strangely, in the serious barbecue community it’s looked down upon almost as cheating, despite the fact that it helps many people make better brisket than they would otherwise. Even some pros use it on a regular basis, so I don’t exactly see the evil in it.”
Excerpt From
Franklin Barbecue
Aaron Franklin & Jordan Mackay
https://books.apple.com/us/book/franklin-barbecue/id914374749
This material may be protected by copyright.
Early on in my career, I found that I liked the way a brisket cooked in butcher paper better than in foil. Whereas foil creates a fairly hermetic pocket, the butcher paper still allows a bit of interchange with the outside environment. Because of this breathing, using butcher paper is a blend of using foil and not wrapping at all, a happy compromise that works really well for me.
There’s a time and a place for foil, however. If you have to cook something that’s really lean or you need to speed something up, use foil with caution. It’s a trick to have up your sleeve. I might wrap a brisket in foil if it’s an especially lean one. A lesser grade with little marbling needs every bit of its moisture conserved, so I’d wrap that in foil and probably wrap it quite early. For richer cuts, it’s not as important to seal it up as soon, as they have ample moisture, thanks to all of the intramuscular fat of the marbling.”Excerpt From
Franklin Barbecue
Aaron Franklin & Jordan Mackay
https://books.apple.com/us/book/franklin-barbecue/id914374749
This material may be protected by copyright.
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