BBQ with Franklin

(country music) Whoa- ho-ho Welcome to BBQ with Franklin. A brisket can feed a lot of people. But sometimes, ya just have some left over. And you can do some really creative things with those leftovers.

I thought it'd be a lot of fun to give a brisket to some Austin restaurant friends to see what their take is on leftover brisket dishes. And then, we're all getting together for a potluck dinner to see what they came up with. Until then, later. (instrumental jazz music) In the last few years, Austin has really become a great city for food.

With the explosion of food trucks around town, there's been a lot of culinary experimentation. (instrumental jazz music) So with this little brisket adventure, we're sure to get some dishes that are as diverse as Austin itself. (instrumental jazz music) (guitar music) Alex Manley cooks only with local, in-season ingredients at Josephine House. She knows how to take available elements and bring them together in a tasty dish.

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Alex

And we keep our cooking as simple as possible so the flavors of the ingredients which we're getting, which are so beautiful and just at their peak of ripeness, can really shine through. This is my first attempt at a barbecue sauce, and this is a blackberry pickling liquid that I have rehydrated these dried figs with. And, they're still a little bit firm. But we'll throw them in the blender and see what happens.

And then we have some smoked tomatoes. I was kind of waffling on the smoking of the tomatoes because I feel like the meat is smoked, so you don't want to just go crazy with smoke. So we'll just, I think I'm gonna add the tomatoes little by little so that we don't overpower it with smoke. Let's throw one of these guys in there (blender whirling) It's pretty good.

I'll put one more of these guys in. And a little bit of water. It's a little bit out of my comfort zone, especially, you know, being in Texas (blender whirling and blending) where barbecue is taken so seriously. But I'm not going for a traditional barbecue sauce.

Okay, so I think this is looking good. Yeah, so let's fry a pie. (instrumental Latin rock music) When making, well, this particular fried pie dough the butter is softened. Whereas, when you make a normal pie you want your butter to be really cold.

When you are making this dough, you work the butter into the flour completely, whereas, when you make a regular pie dough you want to leave chunks of butter in, and that's what will make it flaky. And I'm not exactly sure what the science is, but this dough, when you fry it off, is extremely tender and flaky. So it sort of defies all pie-making rules. Basically, we're deep-frying butter and brisket.

Along with Aaron's brisket, I have some fresh figs. Figs just came in yesterday. That was exciting to get to use the figs on the first day of their arrival in the kitchen for this project. Working with local produce, it's pretty challenging, too.

Especially coming up in August. I'm a little bit freaked out about, you know, are we going to have a lot of okra and a lot of eggplant on our hands, and not much else. So we're pickling and making tons of jams, and just trying to stockpile stuff so that we have some local food that we can serve. So this is just a little milk that I'm brushing around the edges.

It will act as a little bit of a glue to seal the pies together. Okay, so now I'm gonna fill these guys with some of the filling. So the filling has the brisket which I pretty much tore by hand. And some figs, and then some mint from our garden.

People eat mint with lamb a lot. So I feel like it kind of cuts the fattiness a little bit. So I thought that would be nice to throw that into the mix to kind of make it seem a little lighter, maybe fresher. I guess a fried pie is probably most similar to an empanada.

But it is obviously fried instead of baked. This is sort of my favorite style of crimping to do. Just taking a fork and smashing it down. So, it's doing two things, really.

It's giving it a decorative edge, and then it's also helping to really seal the two halves of the pies together. So, I'm going to put these guys in the freezer. The dough has a lot of butter in it. And I found that they fry a lot better if it's really, really cold, if not completely frozen.

I'm just going to go right over here to the freezer. (upbeat funk-style music) -

Voiceover

Tatsu Aikawa opened up a little ramen joint in North Austin a few years ago. And the town went wild. Ramen broth takes days to draw out the flavors of each ingredient. So I gave Tatsu his brisket a little bit early.

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Tatsu

It would be too easy for me to just slap brisket on top of our ramen, you know. So I wanted to try different, something different. It's invisible barbecue flavor in the ramen. My inspiration pretty much came from Japanese dashi.

The broth is pretty traditional, we're just going to be using our regular broth right here. Which is tonkotsu which is pork based. It takes us about three days to make. I'm making a sauce that's kind of fun.

And kind of different, to go with the broth. What I do is, got the whole brisket from Aaron. And I trimmed it down. And then I got all the leanest parts possible, and I dehydrated in a dehydrator for overnight.

So I made petrified, kind of like a jerky out of them. And I'm going to make a powder out of these, too. And I want to incorporate into our miso sauce. So this is petrified bonitos.

It's been smoked. And this is a shaver for it. And in Japan, we shave this like so to get this. Trying to mimic this with Aaron's barbecue.

(machine grinding and whirling) And this is what we get right here. It's pretty much, it's like a beef jerky powder pretty much. After we grind the bonito flakes, it becomes this. And then now I want to incorporate this together.

So I got some dried peppers here, and some sun-dried tomatoes. I'm going to make a puree out of this to incorporate the miso. Incorporating something like barbecue works perfectly because barbecue is pretty much, you're just eating umami with all the smoke. Right now I want to toast this, peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.

I'm not trying to char or anything 'cause then they will just get bitter. So, all I'm trying to do it just warm it up, get the oil out a little bit so it's got a nice smell to it. So, I want to soak this in the hot water for 30 minutes. You know, it makes it soft.

I mean, all this dried peppers, it's dry. I mean you can't really do anything with it. I wanted to add a little sweetness and acidity. This is a little bit of tomato puree, and I want to add a little bit of tomato paste.

What I have here is our miso sauce that we usually use with our tonkotsu broth. So I'm going to incorporate this and this should give a nice spice to it. Now, this barbecue powder I made is going to go in. I think ramen and barbecue is pretty similar.

Because it's regional, right? You know, everybody claims their favorite. It's like this, if they don't agree, so. Everybody's obsessed with certain shops.

And that's just like the same in Japan. (acoustic guitar music) -

Voiceover

Andrew cooks what he calls ranch-style bar food with fresh local ingredients. He's sure to bring something awesome to our potluck. Here we have our lovely brisket. Thank you, Aaron.

We're gonna slice it up, slowly reheat it in a little bit of brown butter. We're gonna go in with some ground beef fat and let it render. This is going to create the liquid that we're gonna heat the sliced brisket in. We'll go the the fatty side 'cause it's cold and cooked and we're reheating it.

Might as well get as much moisture in there as we can to keep it from drying out. As you can tell, this is quality meat. You still got some good marbling left, even after it's cooked. And also, knowing it's from Aaron, you know he's not gonna skimp on quality.

Generally when I eat barbecue, it's a daystopper. I tend to eat too much and it's a lot of heavy, rich food. So the direction with this dish was trying to add a refreshing element to it. We've got a lot of little chicharrones in here that we'll save for the end that are gonna be nice and crispy.

(blender blending) All right, we've got our brown butter and our beef fat. We'll go in with a little sherry vinegar. I'll throw a few tomatoes in there. At this point, we're adding a number of elements a little bit at a time.

And that's to tweak the flavor. And that's kind of the fun part of it is dialing it in a little bit at a time. (blender blending) All right, we're there. So now this goes over the beef.

So again, this is a mix of brown butter and beef fat, sherry vinegar, a little bit of water, and a few cherry tomatoes, and some salt. We will slowly warm the brisket up in this. And see what happens. We chose these ingredients based on what was available in our garden outside and from one of our local farms as well.

We are driven by the seasons and by our in-the-minute inspirations. We've got some mint, fresh butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, basil, baby arugula, cucumbers. We've got our herbs. We got some shishito peppers.

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Voiceover

Andrew was nice enough to let us host our brisket party in his restaurant Contigo. So we've got all three of our chefs crammed into one kitchen. I'd actually never had fried pie until I moved to Memphis, Tennessee where I worked at Sun Studio Cafe, where they made banana fried pies because that was Elvis' favorite thing. (instrumental music) -

Andrew

All right, so our brisket's out. We'll go in with the warm peppers, olive oil, a little sherry vinegar, a little bit of love. (instrumental music) -

Tatsu

When we serve it, I actually made rillettes out of all the fatty trims I made. I'm gonna try to melt that a little bit with a torch which should give it another layer of umami on the bowl. (timer beeping) (instrumental Latin-inspired music) -

Alex

It's pretty versatile. You can have it as an entree if you paired it with a side salad and had a savory filling. At Lambert's, when I was working as the pastry chef, we served fried pies for brunch service and we also did them as a plated dessert. -

Andrew

As I like to eat barbecue, we will eat leftover barbecue. And that's with some good friends eating family -style. (instrumental music) Hey, hey,hey Hey How's it going? Nice to see ya.

Man, this looks, this looks like you. Does it? If I saw this plate I'd be like, Andrew did this. Nice.

I'll give you a little run-down. Give it to me. So we started with this mighty fine brisket. We sliced it thin.

Okay. W made an emulsification with brown butter, beef fat, sherry vinegar, and tomatoes. We took all of the sliced brisket and poured the emulsification over it. And slowly heated it up to keep it from drying out.

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Aaron

I'm doing it, Man. -

Andrew

Do it, dig in. Mmm. God, those tomatoes are amazing in there. which is cool 'cause I feel like that's a lot of kind of what Contigo is.

These really fresh vegetables from around here. You know, like really nailing it. We let the farmers do the work. And it's still like buttery and velvety and stuff.

And of course, that's 'cause of how you reheated it and everything. But a lot of times the stuff just kind of dries out and kind of congeals and gets kind of weird. But, man, this brisket, you treated it so well. This could have been fresh off the cooker.

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Andrew

Nice, good to hear. -

Aaron

And you'd never know the difference. -

Andrew

Thanks. You've done me proud, sir. We're glad to have you, always. -

Aaron

Yeah man, I'm stoked to be here. We love when you come in. (twangy music) Who-who-who-who-ha-ha, dude that looks awesome. So, talk to me.

My inspiration actually, was a Japanese cooking, right. We used smoked petrified fish and we shave it. That's how we get the umami flavor out of it. Gotcha.

So our thought was, well the meat's smoked too, so... Why not? I dehydrated it, almost made like a petrified barbecue. Cool.

Ah! (laughing) Yeah, I made a powder out of them. And then I mixed them with miso and so that's the core of the broth. The remaining fat we made a rillette out of it.

We made barbecue butter, pretty much. (laughing) Oh my God. And then we kind of melted it in the soup, it was fun. Oh my God.

I'm so excited. Actually man, try the soup first. Maybe get the flavor. Hey, you're the professional here.

Ah, man, it tastes like brisket. Like it totally tastes like liquid brisket. Yeah, liquid brisket. Hm, God, that's good.

You know, it takes a really long time to cook a brisket. But it takes you guys like a stupid long time to make this. Yes, so in a sense this is like one week's worth of work. -

Aaron

Yeah, it just always goes, right? Yeah, 'cause our soup takes about three days to make. You know, you used to sleep right by the pit. Yeah, you guys are sleeping by the kettle?

Yeah, we did that, too, for sure. -

Aaron

It's kind of one of those foods, like you guys get a long line, and stuff. It's like I feel like people are kind of willing to wait for something when they understand what it took to make it. Man, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it.

This is so good. (upbeat instrumental music) Thank you so much for doing this, I hope you had fun. Yeah, yeah, it was super fun. I see you did fried pies.

Yeah. Do tell. Well, there they are. Take a bite.

So tell me about the sauce. So the sauce is a fig barbecue sauce made with dried figs and a blackberry pickling liquid, and smoked tomatoes. And then inside the fried pie is your brisket with some... Wait, what?

My brisket? Your brisket. -

Aaron

(laughing) I'm gonna double-dip. We've known each other long enough. I think it's okay. I think so.

Oh my God, that's good. It's such a cool play on a traditional, I mean, you got the onions and stuff, you got the fig sauce. Obviously you've got brisket. This is cooked so perfectly.

Thanks. I mean, it's moist in the middle. It's flaky on the outside, perfect coloring I've got a thing for figs. That is gu-ud.

Thank you. I have never made a barbecue sauce before. So that is pretty awesome that you think that that's good. I'm proud of you.

I was kind of terrified. Really? Why? It's just rearranging condiments, pretty much.

I know, but you know it was out of my comfort zone, but yeah, I like it. I think you should be very comfortable with this. I mean, go fig. It's awesome.

Go fig. (laughing) Man you nailed it, homegirl. I need more than that. Thank you.

Aw, thank you. (instrumental music) the... Shhh, not now. It's good.

Girl, you gotta fix your hair, girl (laughing) Arms crossed? I'm getting tired of that move. But that's my move. Or I would sit there with one hand up in the air and do the beginning of "Unforgiven" (laughing).

Well, I actually have a fig recipe on this show. Oh, really? It tastes nothing like that. Awesome.