How This Pitmaster Makes Texas #1 BBQ

Texas barbecue. It's delicious and one of the most popular styles of barbecue in the world. With thousands of places popping up all over Texas, the Texas barbecue scene is exploding, and for good reason. One place has been able to find a way to smoke meat 365 days of the year and make also some of the most amazing and consistent barbecue in the state. They've been named multiple times in Texas monthly as some of the top barbecue in Texas, and they've won a ton of other awards. I, on the other hand, suck at smoking brisket. I can never get it right. So I wanted to see how this pit master can make food every single day and always have a line out the door. So this is Hutchins. But my day didn't start in line. It started at... Since Hutchins produces barbecue every day, they never stop cooking since the process takes so long. I met up with the pit master and owner, Tracy Hutchins, to see how he starts off his day. So why you guys start so early? Just the process of cooking it. We're looking at, depending on the brisket, everywhere from 14 to 16 hours. We start off on just our brisket with post oak the first four hours, which is really gonna bring your smoke ring in. Finish the briskets off with pecan. All of our other meats are cooked 100% pecan. Tracy explained to me how important not only the selection of wood is to his barbecue, but also how important it is to keep a clean smoke throughout the process. They're constantly cleaning coals out every hour or two to make sure that the smoke is perfect for the meat. So what does the dirty smoke do? The dirty smoke is you're just overloading the wood and it's just trying to shut the thermostat down. And then that's when that wood will care. So you can actually smell it. He walked me out back. Then we finally got to see it, brisket. Well, not completely done yet, but we got to see it. These briskets here were put on about two o'clock yesterday. So about one o'clock last night, we will take them out and we wrap them in the, we call it, it's the peach paper. And then we finish out our cook on me. So these will be coming off probably in about the next 20 minutes. And then we want a good five hour rest. The amount of time that goes into these briskets is wild. Basically from start to when it's ready to cut, it's almost 22 hours of cooking. No wonder my brisket sucks. I'm not staying up for 22 hours. And the wild thing is, is not every brisket's the same either. So their strategies have to change, but it all starts with how you trim the brisket. I just, I want about, about a quarter inch. We're going to just take most of that hard fat. Some of the guys, if you'll see this, this is the silver skin. Uh, we're not going to, we're not going to take the silver skin off today. So we never, we never do on ours. And then what we'll do is we'll take it right here. They will take a, we got a little mustard mix base here. And so we're just doing, we're going to just slather it up. A lot of people think, man, why so much mustard? And you know, this is gonna, gonna taste mustard. You never taste the mustard. Truly just a base to set your bark. We're going to be doing on this particular rub. And what I, what I encourage people to do is we do two thirds of heavy ground black pepper. We use a 8-16. We use kosher salt. Can I try seasoning? A hundred percent. Yeah. Drop some in. Yeah. All right. Seasoning my first Texas brisket. I mean, you want to go high, right? Yeah. And load it up. You really can't put too much, but I recommend anybody that's doing it at home. Always put your heavy ground black pepper. You don't want to put it in a shaker and then finish your kosher salt. And that way you're going to get kind of a look. So that's it. This right here, this product will go on a sheet pan and we will want to get this down to room temperature. That way it's going to, as soon as it goes on that pit at that room temperature, that's really what's going to set that smoke ring for that first four or five hours in the cook. Cause that's where you're going to get your smoke. While the briskets rest and get ready for temperature, Tracy shows us how to prep beef ribs, pork ribs, and my favorite, the Texas Twinkie. Texas Twinkie is a Hutchins invention and it's awesome. It's a jalapeno stuffed with cream cheese, then stuffed with brisket and wrapped in bacon. All right. So we take this bad boy and just stuff it. Yep. You've already got about 50% cream cheese. And once you fill that with the prime brisket, it's going to be about a 50, 50 ratio. Just, just cover it, you know, cover it, lap it. This is harder than it looks. No, it's okay. And then just you'll, when you finish that, stick your one toothpick in there just a little bit. Yeah. Not like this, these right here, just kind of sprinkle them really good. And so, yeah, it looks good. Great job. Thanks man. Yeah. Now the Twinkies go to the smoker for a few hours. Then every single Twinkie made to order is cooked on this small little charcoal grill. And then before serving, they put a secret sweet glaze on top. I'm learning that it's not just about smoking, but it's truly the attention to details that makes such a difference in the product. There's no cutting corners. Every single thing is meticulously thought out and planned. And for good reason. Yeah. Just get that beautiful right there. What do you do? Cut on the grain? We cut across the grain off to the, when we start the process, going off to flat, we keep it cross grain all the way down on this particular cut. What I'll do, that's pretty much what we got right there. So you can see the moisture in that. And then I would actually turn it here and then I would start here and going back to how we trim it. If you'll notice, I'm going to get probably, you know, 95% of this brisket and that's what you got. That bark's going to set up there really nice. So that's pretty much what it is. So yeah, that's a good quality brisket right there. The brisket was good to go, but there was still a few other things that needed to be tested. Trey wanted to make sure that everything was perfect before he opened up to the guests. It was awesome to see the level of care that goes into not only the cooking, but for the guest experience as well. All right. So now this is going to be the finished product guys of our dino bone beef rib. So this is going to be, this is our bad boy right here. I like to cut those. That's going to be your good marbling. And that's pretty much how the beef rib flows right there. Look at the size of those things, dude. What do those weigh? Like a pound and a half? That's probably, yeah, this is a good, this is a good pound and a half. You know, you don't want it falling apart to be cooked to perfection. Just, you know, it's not, you can notice that it's not falling apart. It's not overcooked, but it just gently just pulls apart perfectly. Okay. Now I'm getting hungry and apparently so is the rest of Texas because there was a huge line starting to form outside. Trey and his team continued the rest of their quality checks and took some time to prep each other on the day. Then things got really busy. It's truly amazing that Trey's been able to perfect this barbecue and serve so much of it all day long. The team's prepping meat for tomorrow while the pit masters are constantly checking coals, fire temperatures, and even positioning the meat to make sure that everything comes out perfect and consistent. Oh, also this is Texas in August. So it's about 110 degrees out. I don't know how these guys do it. They're like out here all day long. Okay. I got tired of watching everyone else eat. So I decided to get in line, which is where we started in the beginning. All right. Well, we're almost out the door and it's kind of cool though. I mean, they give you free samples and stuff and like, it's kind of like a nice vibe out here. I mean, we're watching everybody make this all day and I'm just like so stoked to actually eat some. It's going to be great. I finally started to make it through the line and got my food. This is an absurd amount of food. I'm going to try to eat all of it. We also haven't even gotten to the sides yet. So mac and cheese here I come. I took my 900 pounds of meat and headed to the table. I finally get to try this food. I wonder if this is how Trey feels after putting in 22 hours on a single brisket. Okay. This is a lot of food. We've got two types of brisket. So we've got the fattier brisket and then also like the lean brisket. Let's give this the test. Yeah. So it should pull apart like that. Okay. This food is incredible. I know I'm really bad at describing it, but just trust me. It's amazing. Trey noticed that I was eating alone. So we invited me to eat lunch with him and longtime employee Wayne and Trey opened up a little bit more about their experimentation process and really how they honed in this skill. Never get complacent in this business. And, uh, and then even when we try, you know, a few things different, we still, to this day, we, uh, like I was telling you earlier with some of these new creations and trying to adapt, uh, yeah, we, uh, we make way more mistakes until we get it right. And then, yeah, well, we kept eating until I felt like I was going to explode. These were some of the coolest people I've met in a long time. And I think I learned the secret to good Texas barbecue time and care.