July 28, 2019
Yesterday was smoked brisket day. Many cooking adventures are therapeutic for me, but a day spent slow smoking tough meat cuts is an exciting day that merits eager anticipation. I’m not sure when this fascination started – several years ago anyway – and like most fixations, it grew gradually. One Christmas Eve I smoked a pork butt overnight and waited for Santa Claus; it was heavenly.
I started on a cast aluminum charcoal grill, which was challenging to maintain the proper temperature ( 225-250F if you’re interested ) and involved more guesswork than I would have liked. Although that guessing game gave me a decent instinct for the craft. Subsequently, I experimented with our gas grill, which permits good temperature control, and used improvised smoking equipment fashioned out of aluminum roasting pans. Better, but Andrea was dismayed with the detritus of this operation.
Recently, my brother couriered over a Green Egg from Kansas City, which my dad had rarely used. This ceramic miracle is the real deal. Hardwood charcoal, covered with unsoaked chunks of pecan, apple, hickory or mesquite, generates a beautiful low temperature smoke. It’s quite nice for brisket, chicken, pork and fish.
One of the fun bits of smoking days is getting up early. Augustus McCrae, one of the finest literary creations of Larry McMurtry, understood this from his biscuit-making in Lonesome Dove, Texas:
“The heart of his breakfast was a plenitude of sourdough biscuits, which he cooked in a Dutch oven out in the backyard. His pot dough had been perking along happily for over ten years, and the first thing he did upon rising was check it out. The rest of the breakfast was secondary, just a matter of whacking off a few slabs of bacon and frying a panful of pullet eggs. Bolivar could generally be trusted to deal with the coffee.
Augustus cooked his biscuits outside for three reasons. One was because the house was sure to heat up well enough anyway during the day, so there was no point in building any more of a fire than was necessary for bacon and eggs. Two was because biscuits cooked in a Dutch oven tasted better than stove-cooked biscuits, and three was because he liked to be outside to catch the first light. A man that depended on an indoor cookstove would miss the sunrise, and if he missed sunrise in Lonesome Dove, he would have to wait out a long stretch of heat and dust before he got to see anything so pretty.”
Perhaps the sunrise in Kirkwood Missouri is not so romantic. But a fragrant. smoky Green Egg and a cup of extra black coffee as the sun comes up on a summer middle western morning is a splendiferous spiritual exercise.
By 2 pm, the outdoor temperature was up past 90 degrees. The singing insects were buzzing in the trees and the brisket had attained the beautiful ebony crust known to enthusiasts as “bark.” An hour to settle and fill our house with wood-smoked aromatics and we were in the chow business !
Poor David's Almanack 