BBQ Brisket at the ASBEE Competition
I had this final bit of coverage of the ASBEE BBQ Competition that I was holding on to, but today seems like a brisket-day, so here it is. The BBQ Railroad team, from the Baron Hirsch Men’s Club were the winners in the brisket category. Here were their responses (through David Schlesinger) to my post-game questionnaire:
Tell us about your team. How many years have you been competing together? Have you won before? Who is the pit-boss of your team?
Our team has been together for six years. It was originally known as the Baron Hirsch Kiddush Club - an “unofficial” group of Baron Hirsch members. There was a core group of five “club” members who did the BBQ every year. This team won several awards in 2002 and 2003. I joined in 2005 and brought a recipe that helped us win 3rd place on ribs that year. In 2006, we merged with the BH Men’s Club and got their official sponsorship. This added one or two people to the team. By this year, other than one original member, all the BBQ participants had joined in 2005 or after. The common theme has been our association with Baron Hirsch (and our abiding appreciation of great kosher BBQ and libations…). After our original pit boss’ departure in 2005, David Winestone and I started sharing that role.
Describe your winning entry. How did you come up with the recipe?
Since I’ve been on the team, we’ve had several guys who have varying recipes and methods for doing BBQ. As a result, we will buy enough ribs and brisket to do two or three different recipes. Then, we sample all the outputs and decide which one to send up to the judges (no, we don’t mix and match - we send the result of one method each for ribs and brisket). This method has its upside and downside. The upside is that if one recipe fails, we’re still likely to have something good to send out. The downside is that we don’t always agree, and we could end up sending something that some of us like, but misses the point with the judges. This might indeed have been the case with our ribs - we all thought we sent some amazing ribs, but it was a sweet recipe and might not have been that different from what others were sending. We had a tough time deciding on our brisket, too. We had a sweet, carmelized pulled brisket and a moderately spicy dry-rub brisket. We thought the former to be unique, but the latter was just so tasty that we went with it. That turned out to be a good call! Our winning brisket was made by Brian Kiel after he heard about a coffee-based dry rub and tried it out on some steaks at home.
Does your team BBQ together throughout the year?
As a team, we try to get together one or two times before the BBQ and we Q up a few trial runs to see what works and what needs improvement. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. Actually, this is just a great excuse to get together and BBQ and have a few l’chayims. We’re all pretty close, so as individuals, we get together frequently during the year to BBQ. Sometimes we use a smoker, other times a charcoal grill like the ones they have at ASBEE, but most of the time we’re just lazy and use a gas grill. Either way, all of us pretty much wrap our lives around BBQing, with that statement likely being the most accurate for me (we typically get together every Monday night for football and watch the game from the vantage point of my grill; some of us also get together on Thursday nights to grill for Shabbat - funny how half the food doesn’t make it to the Shabbat table!).
What does competing at the ASBEE BBQ mean to you?
Competing at ASBEE means that I live in a Jewish community that has a unique event, which is the talk of a lot of people in many communities. It feels special to be in a place that, while a relatively small community, is able to put on an event that garners so much attention. Equally important, it speaks to the fact that even though kosher food events are inherrently complex affairs, if you adopt a “can-do” attitude, which the ASBEE organizers and volunteers embody so wholeheartedly, you can have a wonderful time while at once being filled with pride about your Judaism.
Any BBQ secrets, tips, advice?
It all starts with the cut of meat. If it’s beef, it should have some marble but not excessive fat. First cuts are good, but London broils are great! Don’t bother with chuck or shoulder steaks - use either bone-in rib steaks, or better yet, rib-eyes or del-monicos. And here’s a little secret I discovered accidentally about grillig chicken wings: If you put them on the grill frozen, keep grilling until the outside gets a little crispy and they will come out much jucier than fresh or defrosted wings! This has been tested and proven on many Monday nights at my place.