Texas Barbecue-Style Brisket for the Slow Cooker

For this week's Around the World in a Pot, I'm posting a recipe that I'm cooking as I post.  I won't be able to speak about the success of the pot until later tonight, which I will update you on. 

This weekend I was in Houston, which means that I can get H.E.B.’s Texas Tasters, Taco Cabana and Texas Barbecue. The first purchase was of Texas Tasters and my last meal was at Taco Cabana. However, the first meal that I ate was at Luling City Market. From their webpag, “[i]f you're looking for REAL Texas Bar-B-Que, you've come to the right place!” Yet, I was disappointed. It did fulfill my need for BBQ, but it didn’t satisfy my craving. The brisket was dried out and the barbecue sauce tasted mustardy – a tomato-based sauce but with a noticeable amount of mustard. It was good food, but not what I wanted nor expected.

Over four pounds of brisket left
in the slow cooker this morning

So I googled “Barbecue in Texas” and I should have known that there are regional varieties of barbecue. Two of which are East Texas Barbecue and Central Texas Barbecue, which translate for me as Houston versus San Antonio and Austin Barbecues. (There is South Texas Barbecue, but that’s more strictly along the Rio Grande.) Yet, I’m not well-versed in Texas Barbecue to know the exact differences and I don’t know if Luling is the standard East Texas Barbecue.

I yearned for the barbecue that I get in San Antonio and Austin.  That's what I think of as Texas barbecue.  Brisket and ribs slowly cooked over a fire of hickory, gaining those smoky, caramel notes of the fire that lightly and deliciously scratch at the back of your mouth. Then, the meat is finished off with a tomato sauce, naturally sweet and only slightly enhanced with brown sugar, and supplemented with the acid of vinegar and the additional brightness of some citrus. If I'm luck, there's a little bit of heat from a local chili powder and the savory garlicky notes hit my taste buds too.

I returned to Philadelphia without the tangy, tart and sweet but still always savory tomato-based barbecue sauce that I love topped over slow-grilled hickory-smoked brisket and ribs. I needed to find a way to change that. Again, I googled, “Slow Cooker Texas Barbecue,” and found a recipe, "Texas Style Beef Brisket - Slow Cooker". Now I know that it won’t be actually smoked or grilled, but I thought it was a better try than dried out brisket.

Yet, I wasn’t sure about the barbecue sauce in that recipe I have my own Dr Pepper Barbecue sauce and it’s a good sauce, however, I knew what I was missing – the taste of Central Texas Barbecue. Thanks to my friend, Laura, in San Antonio, I know of Rudy’s BBQ and it’s what I think of as a good Texas chain, centered around San Antonio, for barbecue. I took it a step further and googled “Clone Recipe Rudy’s BBQ Sause [sic].” I found this recipe which I stole from Chaos in the Kitchen. Since I didn’t get to sample any Rudy’s in Texas this trip (though I now know there’s a Rudy’s on US 290 in Houston, but I didn’t find that until I had some traffic getting to IAH and I was rerouted to the 610 loop) I can’t say that it is just like Rudy’s Sause. However in tasting it last night as I prepared it for today, it was in the vein of the taste that I was looking for in my barbecue sauce.

Again, I admit, it’s not grilled brisket, rubbed with seasonings and left for hours to cook and smoke, but I suspect that it will satisfy my craving for the Texas Barbecue that I know and love.

Texas Barbecue-Style Brisket, adapted from food.com's Texas Style Beef Brisket - Slow Cooker

The finished dish

Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• ½ Tbsp paprika
• ½ Tbsp cayenne
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 4-6 lbs beef brisket
• ½ cp beef broth
• About 2 cps barbeque sauce (I used the homemade Rudy's Sause clone.)

Directions:

1. In a large resealable plastic bag, combine the Worcestershire sauce, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder and black pepper; close the bag and shake well to mix.
2. Place the brisket in the bag, cutting the beef in half, if needed. Then, seal bag and turn to thoroughly coat brisket with seasonings; refrigerate overnight, turning the bag periodically.
3. Place beef into a slow cooker and add broth; cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until tender.
4. Remove brisket from the slow cooker and reserve one cup of cooking liquid, skimming the fat; discard any remaining juices.
5. In the slow cooked add the reserved juice and the barbeque sauce and mix well; return the brisket to the slow cooker.
6. Cover and cook on high for 30 more minutes to allow flavors to blend.

I'm home and I finally finished making the brisket.  It's not true barbecue, but it really satisfied my taste buds to no end.  I had some reserved Rudy's Sause clone and I topped the brisket with it and it sent me to the moon. Yum!

Not yet named food entry: Green Chili Stew (Austin)

In Austin, there is a great restaurant that is its own small chain, Chuy’s.  To comment on their food and restaurant philosophy, I need to phrase it in the company’s own words, “if you’ve seen one Chuy’s, you’ve seen one Chuy’s.”  I’ve seen only one Chuy’s, the first one on Barton Spring Road in Austin.  It’s been love at first order. 

I was led to this Chuy’s by the “big as yo’ face” burrito 5 years this upcoming February when my travel companion wanted to show off a Tex-Mex burrito since I champion a Mission-style burrito as the world’s best. (Still I religiously go to El Farolito at 2779 Mission Street whenever I visit San Francisco).  The line was long in the restaurant – about a 45 minute wait – and we were starving from driving up from San Antonio.  We perused the menu to come up with our order: two burritos and some chips and salsa.

I thought about it.  If the burrito was truly as big as yo’ face, that was going to be a lot of burrito for two of us, even if we were grown men.  I talked us down from the ledge, but my friend saw the green chili stew and thought that it might be worth a shot.  It was February in Texas, so not too warm, and stew sounded good.  How bad could chicken and hot peppers in a stew be?

Before we found out, we waited at the bar for our order.  The place is like a 50’s diner with ADD.  Painted in kitschy aqua, pink and teal, I noticed all the character in this restaurant.  In the main bar, there is a jungle of wooden fish in a combination of primary and tropic colors hanging from the ceiling.  Dotted throughout are pieces of Elvis paraphernalia; over the cashier’s podium, there is the galley of t-shirts for sale. 

What caught attention was the wall of pictures as you entered – people posing in their Chuy’s shirts in front of landmarks from the four corners of the globe.  I remember Chuy’s at the Salt Lake City 2002 Olympics, in front of the Pyramids in Egypt, with the Sydney Opera House, at the Grand Canyon, and more. Obliviously there is some reason for the cult of Chuy’s.

Our order was ready and since it took longer than the hostess had thought, they threw in some hot appetizer.  Making sure we had all the utensils and napkins we needed, we hurried back to the hotel to eat.  We snacked on the chips en route, and set up a place to eat in our room.  We dove into the burrito, and it was ok.  It wasn’t bad at all, but it didn’t wow me.  Again, Mission-style burritos are the gold standard.  The appetizer was fine.  We were ready to say that Chuy’s wasn’t a bad choice but it’s just Tex-Mex, we tried the green chili stew.

Remember, “how bad could chicken and hot peppers in a stew be?” The stew was far from bad; it was incredible.  The chicken was tender and moist.  The carrots and potatoes were cooked to the point of easily giving way when bitten and releasing a sweet flavor or a good starchy sensation.  The broth of the stew was fragrant with sharp garlic and onion, verdant cilantro and the happy stinging heat of peppers.  We fought over the stew. Simply, it was that good. 

While it was the lure of burritos that brought me to Chuy’s, it’s the green chili stew that brings me back. The green chili stew with its famous hatch peppers, only grown in Hatch, NM, made me jump feet first into the cult of Chuy’s. Not all of the Chuy’s have this green chili stew, I understand that the San Antonio ones don’t make it. 

The Cult of Chuy's - Wearing a Chuy's T-shirt in a desert hookah lounge in Dubai, UAE

My friend and I searched the internet for a recipe since we were profoundly in awe of it. Through the years, we have worked on our recipes separately to come up with the right alchemy to recreate the stew that we tried that February.  We swap our notes and I am pleased to say that we have a great recipe (that’s not for sharing, sorry!) 

I’ve been back over the years, and I believe that the recipe has changed since my first experience.  I think that it’s a matter of who’s making it at the restaurant, personal touches that made more recent stews differ from that first one.  Touches like grilling chicken and adding it to the stew immediately before serving versus slow cooking the chicken in the stew from the beginning.  Though the stew is different than I first remember it, it is still my happy comfort food for when I’m in Austin.

Chuy's Restaurant is located at 1728 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX.