Passport & Plate - American barbecue
USA | Thursday, February 26, 2015 | 4 photos
Ingredients
Brisket and sausage:
Brine
Salt and pepper
Free range beef brisket
Good quality pork sausage
Required gear:
Smoker
Hickory wood chips
Cowboy beans - ingredients:
150g of speck or bacon
500g of dried black beans
2 onions, finely diced
5 cloves of garlic, finely diced
2 bay leaves
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin
2 chipotle chillies in adobo sauce, finely diced (this is the secret!)
1kg of diced, canned tomatoes
Salt and pepper (to taste)
'Slaw ingredients:
½ a cabbage
4 carrots
2 Granny Smith apples
Cider vinegar
½ a lemon
Sugar
Salt and pepper
1 tsp caraway seeds
Barbecue sauce:
240ml tomato sauce
60ml water
60ml cider vinegar
15ml espresso
20ml Worcestershire sauce
½ tsp mustard powder
1 glove of garlic
1 minced chipotle chili in adobo sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
How to prepare this recipe
Brisket and sausage method:
Brine the brisket overnight in a saline solution of 60g of salt to every 1 litre of water.
Remove the brisket from the brine 2 hours before cooking, rub with oil, and cover in salt and pepper.
Prepare your smoker to hit 100C and put the brisket in the smoker with a pan of water.
Cook for 150 minutes per kilo.
Wrap the brisket in foil and let it rest for at least two hours after it is done in the smoker.
Serve by slicing against the grain.
Add the sausage to the smoker after the brisket is done. Depending on thickness, they should take around an hour. Keep warm while the brisket rests.
Cowboy beans method:
Soak the beans overnight in water
Dice and then fry the speck to release its fat
Add diced garlic, onion and bay leaves, and cook down gently
Add coriander seed, cumin and chilli and cook until aromatic
Mince the chillies, and add them.
Add the tomatoes and the beans, and add water until everything is covered by liquid
Simmer until the beans are tender
Season with salt and pepper to taste
Serving:
Ideally, let the beans cool and then re-heat to serve.
This makes enough for 8 people.
'Slaw method:
Finely shred cabbage, and julienne the carrots and apples
Mix thoroughly with caraway seeds, salt, pepper, sugar, the juice of the ½ lemon, and cider.
This really depends on how sour/sweet/salty you like your slaw. I like to go heavy on the cider vinegar and light on sugar.
Espresso barbecue sauce method:
Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and heat to combine. Simmer until reduced to your preferred thickness.
The story behind this recipe
“I’ve heard that this brisket is moist enough to bathe in.”
Charles J. Lohrmann, editor of Texas Highways magazine, and Wyatt McSpadden—author of Texas BBQ—were behind me and my friends in the queue outside Franklin’s Barbecue in Austin, Texas.
I was captivated in equal measure by both his slow and lyric southern accent, and the promise of his words.
Charles and Wyatt were teaching us about the subtleties of Texan barbecue, specializing in beef and not sullied by additional saucing—unlike the saucy, tangy pulled pork of Arkansas, for example.
After all, American barbecue is not the barbecue of Australia—that’s grilling. American barbecue is an art form of smoke, slow cooking, rubs and marinades, and Franklin's Barbecue does it well enough to warrant a big queue.
This was the first experience I had with hot-smoked meat, and it was a revelation—pulled pork, ribs, smoked sausage (hot links), melting brisket—it was something entirely new, and something entirely delicious.
I have since tried to recreate it countless times, smoking meat in everything from a terracotta pot to a huge stack-smoker, and experimented with pork, chicken, beef, salmon, and sausages.
We undertook the trip at the end of our second year of university, a spur of the moment endeavour to take one of my friends to meet a girl he’d met online to her prom. Our time in Austin was one of the most memorable stops on our cross-country pilgrimage, full of live music, strange new friends, and amazing barbecue.
Barbecuing is an endless pursuit of tender meat, with the length of the cooking time usually requiring a pre-dawn start. It is a day-long event, with an intoxicating smell, and drinks shared around the smoker in anticipation.
Over time I have refined a few recipes that recreate this essential American meal, and take me right back to 2011. So it is that every time I eat barbecue I am reminded of the ridiculous three month long road trip I took with my two best friends.
