And Tootsie isn’t just one of the best “women” pit masters…she is one of the best pit masters. end of story.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/list/the-50-best-bbq-joints-in-the-world/snows-bbq/
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It’s not particularly popular outside the west coast. I have trouble finding it. There are a couple exceptions. There’s a butcher shop in Manhattan that slices prime tri-tip and rolls it into thick steaks. Sort of a Best buy in prime steaks. Eats like ribeye for less than half the price. So “Newport steaks” have been slowly proliferating around the NYC area.
For the most part it gets ground into burger or left as part of larger sirloin cuts with multiple muscles. So it’s hard to find. And it’s not a great match for the low and slow till beyond well done approach used in BBQ in a lot of places. Since it’s fairly lean and tender. But Texas it would be a good match as they have this secondary tradition of hot to temp grilling/BBQ over live coals with swinging grills. It’s really similar to traditional ways tri-tip was handled. But Texans I know insist that’s not BBQ.
I have a cousin in Ireland who gets into it. The biggest problem is definitely supplies. Used to be difficult to even get a pit or grill that’s commonly used for smoking. If he had wanted a Weber he would have needed to get it in Scandinavia where they’re popular. He ended up getting a Big Green Egg in Germany, I think, about 12 years ago. Cost around double what it would in the US.
There’s apparently much better access now. But getting wood chips, BBQ specific tools, premade rubs and sauces to try out so you know how to accurately represent different styles is still a pain. He tends to load up when he’s in the US. But he also finds alternate source. He uses a lot of grapevine he picks up in Spain during the season where they prune back the vines. Fruit woods are available from local orchards, and oak sticks from places that do coppicing. More recently chips and chunks are available wherever you buy charcoal.
The other big issue is space. Houses, yards and cars are significantly smaller so there’s a big cap on how much stuff and how big and what type of pit you can practically use. The big barrel style and double walled pipe cookers you see in the US are kind of a no go. He uses a collapsible spit to do pigs because he’d need a storage facility to get a pit big enough to do the size of pigs he cooks for catering.
Think he just keeps the Egg under his car port to deal with the rain, but he uses pop ups for catering. American BBQ seems to be becoming a big hobby in Ireland. Have another cousin that uses a Cob Grill. Brilliant little thing and very popular in Europe due to its compact size.
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Now hold on: you talking Eastern North Carolina style, Western North Carolina style, or South Carolina style?
(Actually, compared to Texas BBQ, all Carolina styles are better in my book)
The only people I know who associate Texas with BBQ are Texans, and folks from non-BBQ locales who think barbecuing is a synonym for grilling (it ain’t!). Personally, I’ll take slow cooked pulled pork butt over smoked beef brisket any day (though I’ll begrudgingly enjoy the brisket if I must).
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I know what’s for lunch today.
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It’s not the same, but you can cheat and use an electric oven. The key to American BBQ is controlled low temperature for a looong time. For example, I do a decent brisket in the oven that compares well to real pit smoked brisket. Easy too. Here’s how:
- 3-6 kilo brisket. Trim the fat cap to half to 1 cm thick.
- 250 ml of dry rub (paprika, salt, pepper, brown sugar, garlic powder, and so on. Find one you like by googling)
- Liquid smoke. Yup, we’re cheating and cheating hard.
- Coat the meat in liquid smoke then coat with dry rub. Thick layer of dry rub.
- Put in a pan with tall edge. There is going to be a lot of liquid dripping from the meat and you want to save it.
- Put in and oven that is between 98 and 99C. No lower than 96. Yes, this is the tricky part. Lucky for me, American ovens are in F and often can be set to 205 or 210 F.
- Bake covered or uncovered for 12 hours. I put in the oven the night before a family gathering.
- Rest the meat for 30 minutes minimum before cutting.
- Slice across the grain in half to 1 cm slices.
- Serve dry or with some of the juice from the meat.
Definitely save the meat drippings. It makes a fantastic base for soups. Cooked with wood, this flavor would be still in the meat. But it’s the price we pay for cheating.
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I just want to know if I can buy season tickets…
Aside: I almost thought their shirts said “senoritas”.
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I only know what most people in the US mean by BBQ because of the Texans I’ve known and the confusion which would result when talking about it.
I do a lot of BBQing on a Weber grill. The rain actually makes for a better cook, as it keeps the temperature modulated over the 12 hours hours that the meat’s cooking. You can definitely do that in the UK, too. Any fruit wood you can get ahold of would be fine. A lot of times, I just use charcoal anyway.
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I’m willing to bet you’re in one of the other major BBQ areas then. Because everyone from a major BBQ area says that about every other major BBQ area. Pretty much everyone else in the world associates Texas with BBQ. And the Carolinas. And so forth.
I agree with you on the brisket. It’s not a great cut, especially since it’s neither cheap nor commonly available in a lot of places these days. And and I really think pork is the best go to. But I like the minimalist Texan approach to rubs. Just salt, pepper, and maybe a few other things. Texas sauces, to the extent that they exist at all suck. Carlina’s vinegar and Mustard based sauces have most sauce styles beat by a long shot. Hickory and mesquite both suck for wood. But for regionally associated woods, Texas has my favorite, Pecan.
I haven’t found too much in the other major BBQ belts that I like enough to run with. But I’ve learned some really interesting things from some pretty obscure ones. Like there’s a very small, almost dead BBQ tradition from PA. Pretty much only exists these day as an Amish family meal, and at a handful of Mennonite owned businesses and Penn Dutch restaurants. Very little smoke, pork based, minimalist rub, vinegary sauce. The thing I learned from that was a small amount of fresh ground clove in that simple rub.
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12 hours of meat cooking smells in the house… that sounds like absolute torture. I would probably expire from dehydration due to excessive drooling. 
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You can faithfully recreate any given real BBQ recipe in everything but the smoke. Just by following it in the oven. BBQ is basically slow roasting in the presence of smoke. So the best way to replicate it with out a grill or smoker is to roast. Not to braise or stew.
The one thing to remember is that there is no “stall” in an oven. Ovens are better ventilated than barbeques, so you don’t have the same level of evaporation issue that drives the stall.
Not even fruit woods. Most hard woods will work. Oak, maple and Adler are excellent smoke woods and from what I understand they’re widely available in Europe. Many nut woods work well (hickory and pecan being the most famous).
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Texas does brisket because Texas is cattle country. Briskets are easy to find a often less and $2/lb. We don’t claim to be good with pork, we don’t claim to be good with chicken. Ribs and brisket is what we do.
I hear this a lot from people outside Texas who best know our BBQ from the hill country area around Austin. They often use thin dripping based sauces but in truth, most Texans love and use real BBQ sauces. Texas really has 5 major geographic regions with 5 distinct BBQ traditions. Ennis is (despite what the article claims) central Texas south of Dallas and what you see there is mostly the hill country BBQ but it’s also heavily influenced by the Katy Trail, Chisholm Trail, north Texas traditions as well. North Texas where all the cattle trails converged (Denison/Grayson County/MKT). There you find what I consider the best BBQ in Texas. It’s a perfect blend of the other 4 BBQ traditions and they make great sauce. Have you tried Stubbs? It’s a great example of what most Texans use on their beef and you can find it nationwide.
Time has nothing at all to do with it. Cook all brisket at 225 F until internal temp reaches 203 F. That’s it. Those are the magic numbers. The old school method was to shake the brisket and take it off when it wiggled like jello. That happens at 203.
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I’ve never been a fan of Texas sauce, but love the brisket. When I lived in Austin, I’d buy a pound of Rudy’s brisket and take it home, and use my KC or St. Louis-style sweet sauce.
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Those sweet sauces are great on pork and chicken. Even ribs can take a sweet sauce. But the spice of something like Stubbs is what I want on brisket.
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Here’s the smoker our welder made. Thing is super heavy duty, wish i had taken pictures of details and the inside but didn’t think about it at the time.
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Texas sauce is ok, i’ve had some that i really liked but felt that they masked the taste of the BBQ too much. Which is why i like the vinegar and mustard based ones better. And i think brisket is overhyped for BBQ, it can be good but beef ribs or pork ribs are much better, also a fan of burnt ends and anything pork. Smoked chicken is also great but i actually haven’t had one here in TX yet (i have had smoked hot wings though).
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What is the point of “The Most Dangerous Game” if you can’t eat your trophies?
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That wasn’t what I was getting at. Like I said it’s not too cheap or easy to find elsewhere often times. I’m in a fairly big Jewish area where brisket is a big thing. It’s tough to find point or whole briskets, mostly we see the flat at few dollars more per lb than chuck or sirloin.
But even in regards to beef it’s a really tough cut to deal with for a variety of reasons. And it’s not really all that tasty, comparatively. Chuck and short rib are better options, much more and better flavor, and easier to cook as well. And Chuck is cheaper than brisket almost anywhere.
For a go to cheap, bulk cut pork shoulder typically beats brisket on both flavor and price.
The dripping based one is real BBQ sauce. And if you look at the history there it cuts closer to historical BBQ sauces than most. Originally sauces were often vinegar and spice based, vinegar and butter based, or dripping based.
And I actually like that better than many of the other Texas styles I’ve had. But generally I’m not a big sauce guy on BBQ. Many of them make good condiments for other things. And Stubb’s is a favorite among packaged sauces in a pinch. It’s closer to the mark on what I’m looking for in a sauce. But I generally prefer the hard core simple and more vinegary ones. Though more complex than the simplest which are just vinegar and red pepper/chilies. So Carolina sauces cut closest for me. Also I have 12 different mustards in my fridge right now so there’s that.
I’m talking for the most part about personal preference here, all of it is “real” BBQ and everywhere has some sort of BBQ tradition, not all of it is slow smoked tough cuts. Here in the coastal North East it’s clam bakes and other seafood that was originally cooked over coals/hot rocks in a dirt pit. Which is the root of all of this stuff. If it was cheap, available and could be cooked in a hole in the ground it’s what an area built things around.
