![]() ![]() He is even contemplating adding a barbecue sauce, anathema to Texas purists (although Mr. Delaney’s BrisketTown, once a takeout joint, now has tables, a wine list and cloth napkins. He has introduced outsiders to arcane trade secrets like the strategic use of butcher paper to wrap the cooked meat - and that, in turn, has liberated his northerly counterparts to develop their skills, then flex their wings and serve their barbecue with a dash or two of New York experimentalism: Pennsylvania Dutch potato rolls, Vietnamese rice paper, or biodynamic or natural wines. Franklin and his peers have made some breaks with strict Central Texas tradition: cooking at a lower temperature, coaxing a lighter smoke flavor into the meat, using prime-grade beef. But New York’s pitmasters agree that the current passion for local brisket is fueled by a young colleague in Austin, Tex., Aaron Franklin, whose Franklin Barbecue has parlayed expertise, an urban location and a canny use of social media into cult status just five years after it began in a trailer with a walk-up window. A pilgrimage to Central Texas, where the meat is served plain on butcher paper, is obligatory for brisket newbies. The gold standard for brisket has long been set by the pitmasters of Central Texas, at places like Kreuz Market and Louie Mueller Barbecue, which got their start in the last century as German-American smokehouses. “It’s a small number of things to get right,” he said, “and I am haunted by all of them.” The version by Daniel Delaney, the owner of BrisketTown, is close to brisket Nirvana: smoky meat topped with wobbly, savory fat, rimmed with a lip-numbing crust of coarse black pepper. The city’s thriving food-stall culture, which encourages artisans to pick a food (seasonal fruit pops, Korean fried chicken, Lebanese yogurt) and work endlessly to perfect it, is suited to barbecue, a field notorious for nourishing perfectionism, competition and even intimidation. ![]() Exemplary slow-smoked, Texas-style whole beef briskets have proliferated at recently established barbecue restaurants like Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque, BrisketTown and Hometown, and at weekly food markets like Smorgasburg and the Hester Street Fair. “The brisket I’ve had in New York lately is better than a lot of places in Texas,” said Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor of Texas Monthly magazine.Īt new operations like Randalls Barbecue and Lonestar Empire, they specialize in Texas brisket. And New York is even starting to develop something new: a local style of serving it, in untraditional sandwiches or with more up-to-date side dishes. Laracuente - has narrowed in on brisket alone. Now, suddenly, the spotlight - and the obsessive attention of cooks like Mr. Then along came the Texas Trinity - brisket, beef ribs and spicy beef sausage - turned out in authentic fashion at restaurants like Hill Country Barbecue Market and Fette Sau. “You want it soft and balloon-like,” he said - not bouncy, like party balloons, but relaxed, like morning-after balloons.ĭuring all the years when New York was a city of embarrassing or better-than-nothing barbecue, pork ribs and pulled pork were the most palatable options. He prodded one plump, crusty hunk of beef with rubber-gloved fingers to feel where it was in its 11-to-14-hour cooking process. Laracuente says nicotine and heavy metal help him through the marathon graveyard shifts he spends monitoring the combination of heat, meat and smoke that it takes to produce extraordinary barbecued brisket. A pitmaster at Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Mr. As smoke from the oak-burning barbecue pits swirled around his head, Nestor Laracuente lit a Marlboro Red, inhaled hard and puffed out his own cumulus cloud.
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