Bon Appétit brings you along for a day with Egyptian pitmaster Kareem El-Ghayesh at KG Barbecue in Austin—where Texas barbecue is being transformed by incorporating the bright flavors of the Middle East.
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00:00 I moved here from Cairo, Egypt, to learn how to cook barbecue.
00:06 I trained with a lot of pitmasters here, and finally, taking the moment and the chance
00:11 to bring my own flavors, my own culture, here to Austin.
00:15 Every day we smoke about 400 pounds of meat.
00:18 Managing fire is one of the most important things in becoming a pitmaster.
00:23 This is a craft that requires a lot of time and a lot of patience.
00:27 My personal definition of barbecue is anything cooked over a live fire.
00:32 I'm fusing and marrying the bright and fresh and crisp flavors of the Middle East
00:38 with this old tradition of Texas barbecue.
00:41 This is the best decision I've ever made in my life.
00:53 Good morning, y'all. This is Kareem from KG Barbecue in Austin, Texas.
00:57 It's 6 a.m. on a Thursday. It's our first day of the week, so it's time to get the smokers started.
01:01 Let's get going.
01:03 This is King Tut right here.
01:05 We decided to name each one of our smokers after Egyptian kings.
01:09 This is our 1,000-gallon Primitive Pits barbecue smoker here.
01:14 This is made out of a reused propane tank, actually. It's pretty cool.
01:18 Since we haven't been cooking for the last four days, we're going to throw a bag of charcoal
01:22 and kind of get the process going.
01:24 We use wood from Chief Firewood, a local company that actually supplies almost every barbecue restaurant in town.
01:30 We use post oak wood.
01:32 It's interesting with barbecue that you have to cook with seasoned wood,
01:36 so the wood has to be aged for at least a year or two,
01:40 so it kind of dries out and your fire is clean and crisp, not smoky and dirty.
01:45 And also oak is like Texas' blessing, to be honest.
01:49 I'm trying to pick some of the smaller pieces here to get the fire going.
01:53 It's so therapeutic, especially starting on early mornings like this.
01:58 Such an amazing craft, Texas barbecue.
02:01 I literally changed my entire life for it.
02:06 Now it's time for the fun part.
02:18 Isn't it so nice to start a blazing fire in the summer of Texas?
02:22 I'm already sweating.
02:24 So we're opening the smoke stack here.
02:28 That's going to create that draw and the airflow. It's going to help the fire get going.
02:32 We're also going to open the last door, also to get more airflow going.
02:36 And as soon as I do that, if we check the fire again, you're going to already see how it's drawn inside.
02:41 The higher and bigger the smoke stack, the better,
02:44 because it creates more airflow and more draw and you have a cleaner fire.
02:48 Like you eat barbecue and it kind of sits with you, that means that it has been cooked on a dirty fire.
02:53 Whether the wood is not seasoned enough, it's not dry enough, or there's not enough airflow in the fire,
02:58 so that creates this darker smoke and that goes on the meat.
03:02 It's going to take us about 20-25 minutes for this fire to get the whole smoker up to temperature at 275,
03:08 which is our desired temperature.
03:10 This is kind of like your gas pedal right now.
03:13 So if I open the door, it's going to get more airflow in.
03:17 It's going to also increase the temperature, but it lowers the temperature, in fact,
03:22 because you're letting the heat escape this way.
03:25 This is kind of like my sweet spot right here.
03:27 I like to keep it a little bit cracked, so that's going to keep the heat sucked in and it's going to go the other way.
03:33 All right, 6.30, we need to get the meats on right now.
03:36 We have briskets seasoned overnight, and then we have our lamb bacon ribs,
03:42 and then we have our lamb shoulder.
03:44 So let's move on.
03:45 All right, it's time to get started.
03:54 These cuts take the longest time to cook, so that's why we're loading up the smoker,
03:59 usually with the longest thing that takes time first.
04:03 You'll see as time gets closer to opening, we're going to start adding more things that take way less time,
04:09 like sausage and lamb chops.
04:11 What we're cooking today is going to be served the next day.
04:14 So first thing, we got the grates here cleaned, brushed.
04:20 The biggest reason why we clean the grates is because it gives it a cleaner sear.
04:25 The first thing you got to do when you start cooking on a new smoker
04:29 is really to figure out where your hot zones are, and your middle and your low zones.
04:34 Like here, we have cuts that take a long time, so I can't really cook it on a hot zone
04:39 because it's going to burn, it's going to char, and it's not going to be done.
04:42 We're going to go ahead and start loading briskets, and they take the longest time to cook.
04:48 This is a thermometer probe that is Bluetooth.
04:51 It's a handheld thermometer that we're going to be using throughout the day,
04:55 so we don't have to come out here and check the temperature on the smoker all the time.
04:59 On our smoker here, our hottest zone is closest to the fire,
05:04 and it's interesting because this is also a hot zone.
05:07 I think it's just the way the air flows, and it kind of goes and draws up the chimney or the smokestack.
05:14 So this right here is our smoked lamb shoulder.
05:16 This is currently my favorite meat on the menu right now.
05:19 So this looks just like a pork butt or a pork shoulder, but it's lamb.
05:24 We use a lot of lamb in Egypt.
05:26 Very few barbecue joints here in Texas cook lamb,
05:30 and I really thought this was a great thing to do here because you can grind it, you can skewer it.
05:36 We have actually four different lamb options on the menu.
05:39 The second lamb option we have is the lamb bacon ribs.
05:42 This is basically like the pork spare ribs, but from lamb.
05:46 So you can see it has a lot of that nice belly fat on it,
05:50 and it gets really nice and crispy on the outside, and it's super tender and fatty on the inside.
05:56 We probably have about 150 pounds of meat on the smoker.
05:59 Just another day in Texas.
06:01 All right, we're going to come back later to wrap them.
06:04 We're going to get some more pork ribs seasoned, and then we're going to get briskets and lamb bacon seasoned for tomorrow.
06:09 So let's get going.
06:10 Here we got a brisket.
06:20 The brisket is actually the chest muscle of the cow.
06:24 It's a pretty big, funky piece of meat.
06:26 It actually has two different muscles, and that is one of the reasons why it's a little bit of a challenging cut to cook.
06:32 It has the point and the flat, or the moist and the lean,
06:36 and they are both separated by the fat decal, which starts here and comes out the other way, right here.
06:44 I'm using a 6-inch boning knife and a honing steel.
06:48 Always keep it sharp.
06:50 In the summer, the quality kind of drops because the cows don't eat as much as the wintertime.
06:56 So you can see, like, briskets get kind of smaller,
06:58 and that's why we just keep changing, and we keep talking to our suppliers on how we can make our product even better,
07:04 especially the brisket.
07:06 The brisket has a lot of fat on it.
07:08 Like I said, this is going to be the first thing that I decal here.
07:11 This is the decal fat.
07:12 That's really, really good for making sausage, actually.
07:15 So we save almost the entire trimmings and cleanings to make the skewered koftas.
07:20 We season it, and we add onion, garlic, spices, nutmeg, coriander, fenugreek,
07:25 and then we grind it and skewer it and cook it on the smoker.
07:28 And then for the pork ribs, the trimmings, we use to make our homemade sausage as well.
07:33 So I'm going to start kind of taking all that silver skin.
07:36 So this is the only thing that we don't really use, the silver skin.
07:39 This is fascia.
07:41 This is what controls the muscles and kind of gives it the spasm or makes it move around.
07:46 If you cook a thin rib eye steak or a New York strip steak and it curls up on you in the skillet, it's because of that fascia.
07:53 So as you can see, I'm really not shy when I'm trimming here.
07:56 We trim and we tie and we truss meats because they're not necessarily shaped so that they cook most evenly.
08:03 There's also the other reason of trying to make all of the briskets on the smoker kind of uniform to where they all cook at the same time.
08:11 And then the second part is just making sure that we have the right amount of fat on top of the brisket.
08:18 Probably about like quarter, third of an inch of fat that should be all over the entire brisket.
08:24 All right. So moving on, we got our next meat here.
08:26 This is the lamb bacon ribs.
08:28 It's the rib cage and it also has the belly on it.
08:31 And it's been flying off the shelf right now.
08:33 All right. So the trimming, the lamb bacon ribs is a little tricky here.
08:37 We're trying to take the bone off, actually.
08:40 So I'm going to go in with my knife right here.
08:43 One of my stops here in Austin to learn from the masters in Texas, I worked at Salt and Thyme butcher shop.
08:49 I learned one of these cool random things here that this grip is called the pistol grip.
08:54 And this is kind of like it's the best grip that you can use to kind of like maneuver your way around bones.
09:00 So I'm going to make a score this way.
09:04 And you have no idea the amount of people and the number of people that show up to the food truck and be like, oh, I've never tried lamb before.
09:10 I was like, great. You're like, come here. I got you.
09:13 The lamb chops have about seven different spices on it.
09:16 And then we smoke it. And so it takes away all that gaminess.
09:19 It's cooked to medium or medium rare.
09:21 It's a great introduction for people here.
09:23 I'm going to go ahead and take all of the meat off here.
09:28 This is all usable meats.
09:31 Moving on.
09:32 So now we're done with the lamb bacon ribs.
09:38 So you can see it's all nice and clean.
09:40 And then we're going to season everything.
09:42 We're going to start by seasoning the brisket.
09:48 I always like to season everything presentation side last.
09:53 So we always cook brisket fat side up.
09:56 We're going to use a mustard slather.
09:58 This doesn't do anything to the flavor at all.
10:01 It just provides us with this nice, tacky, moist surface that the dry seasonings can stick on better.
10:07 So here we have our brisket rub.
10:09 A brisket rub is pretty simple and basic.
10:12 In Central Texas, it's all about salt, pepper.
10:14 We add a little bit of garlic and oregano.
10:17 So I'm going to start seasoning the sides first.
10:20 And the way that I do that, I kind of like, almost see me like season my hand and tap it in the brisket.
10:26 The brisket is the only thing on our menu that is more traditional.
10:30 So you'll see a lot of different spices on the pork ribs and the lamb.
10:35 Everybody tells me like what makes KG BBQ different, what makes it Egyptian.
10:39 I always like point to the spice rights.
10:42 But with brisket, I like to keep it as traditional as possible.
10:46 Because I want to pay my dues to respect this cut that I've moved across the entire world for.
10:52 This is considered a dry brine here.
10:54 We let that sit overnight.
10:56 You see me when I pick it up, nothing falls off because of the mustard binder.
11:00 We host brisket classes here once a month at the food truck.
11:04 Just giving back what I've learned and sharing this knowledge and this food with the people is what I live for really.
11:11 You know, I tried barbecue over 10 years ago now.
11:14 2012 was my first experience.
11:16 And back then I was working in corporate finance.
11:18 I was working as a banker in Cairo.
11:21 I loved cooking barbecue, but barbecue is very different in the Middle East.
11:25 It's all about hot and fast cooking.
11:27 But then I came here and I tried barbecue and I was blown away by the experience.
11:31 And I went back to Cairo and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
11:35 I couldn't stop thinking about specifically brisket though.
11:37 I wanted more. I needed more.
11:39 So I decided that I want to quit my job and move to Texas and learn from the pros here in Austin.
11:46 All right.
11:47 So now we're going to season the lamb shoulder.
11:50 We always use coarse spices because that is what creates the crispy bark on the outside.
11:57 In Egypt, almost everything is marinated because everything is grilled.
12:01 But on a smoker, you almost need a dry rub.
12:04 Because if you put marinated meats on the smoker, it's a wet surface.
12:08 So it's not going to have a good, nice crust on the outside.
12:11 We're having our pork ribs here.
12:14 These are pomegranate glazed pork ribs.
12:16 Doing a sriracha slather.
12:18 Unlike the mustard, sriracha does add flavor, color, and a little bit of heat.
12:23 Legally, you can't sell pork in Egypt.
12:25 You can buy it privately.
12:27 It's almost like you have to know a guy to get some pork in Egypt.
12:30 The majority of Egypt is like 90% Muslim right now.
12:34 And pork is not something that Muslims eat.
12:38 So once the pork ribs are wrapped and cooked on the smoker,
12:41 once we unwrap them, we glaze them with our pomegranate barbecue sauce,
12:45 which is what we're about to make right now.
12:47 Let's get to it.
12:53 So we got our trusty pomegranate juice here.
12:57 This is pomegranate juice.
12:59 So the pomegranate barbecue sauce,
13:01 which is kind of like everything we do here,
13:03 is a Texas-style, ketchup-based barbecue sauce.
13:06 So we start with pomegranate juice.
13:09 And then to that, we're going to add the pomegranate molasses.
13:13 This is one of the best ingredients.
13:15 It has this sour pomegranate tanginess to it.
13:19 So now we're going to add the spice mix here
13:21 to kind of facilitate our processes here in the food truck.
13:24 We love making kits for everything.
13:27 So we have our spice that has salt, lots of brown sugar,
13:30 and it has garlic, onion, sumac, cinnamon,
13:33 and then apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire.
13:38 I hope I said it right this time.
13:40 And sriracha in here.
13:42 All these ingredients are kind of classic things that you add to barbecue sauce.
13:47 And it adds a little bit of consistency,
13:49 a little bit more thicker body to the sauce.
13:52 And then we just boil it for maybe five minutes,
13:57 and then we'll turn off the heat.
13:59 And this will probably last us less than two days.
14:02 Every day, we have to make a batch.
14:03 We're about to double that up so that we're just making it twice a week
14:07 because things are getting busier every day.
14:10 All right, it's 8.30 now.
14:11 I'm going to go check on the smoker, add a couple more logs on the fire,
14:14 and then we're going to come back and get the line ready for service.
14:19 Right now, we have to maintain the fire at 275,
14:25 so we kind of give it some love.
14:27 Every time I come out here, I just kind of make sure that the fire looks good.
14:31 I now kind of got it to a system where I can tell how hot the fire is
14:36 when I open the door, actually.
14:38 It gets more resistance when it's hot.
14:41 Like, pretty good right now, but I'm going to go ahead and add a couple more logs.
14:44 We're going to go in and kind of rearrange the coals here.
14:48 So you can see me kind of breaking down the older logs
14:52 that have been turning into coals already.
14:54 I'm going to put the two big ones on the side,
14:56 and my smallest one is going to go in the middle.
14:58 I don't want it to be sunken and buried in the coals.
15:02 I need airflow.
15:04 Now we're going to add probably just one more log.
15:06 It'll be good.
15:07 So this is the part where you take a deep breath and close your eyes.
15:10 Just get that on.
15:13 And we're about to add some of our hot cooking items,
15:16 like the chicken, the kofta, and the sausage.
15:19 This is what we call the hell door.
15:21 This door gets really, really, really hot.
15:24 So now Daviny is loading up our smoked chicken thighs.
15:27 It's one of our meats that have just a little bit of a spice kick to it.
15:31 The smoke can be really hard to work with, but contacts are like magic.
15:35 Just wear your contacts every day.
15:40 It's about time to glaze the ribs.
15:43 They've been on the smoker, and we wrapped them up,
15:45 and now they are done.
15:47 I'm going to come in here and open it up.
15:50 The classic three-to-one method.
15:52 They have been cooking for three hours.
15:54 We wrapped them for two hours until they're tender and soft.
15:57 The way we check for the doneness here, I can show you.
16:00 You want to see this bend on the rack of ribs.
16:03 It feels a little more elastic.
16:05 And then you want to see this draw here.
16:07 The meat is drawing a little bit from the bones,
16:09 and it's kind of like soft to the touch.
16:11 So these look beautiful.
16:13 We're about to glaze them.
16:15 Pomegranate barbecue sauce.
16:16 A nice thick layer.
16:18 So the sugar and the molasses are going to cook down,
16:20 and give it a nice sticky, dark, and vivid color.
16:24 I don't really even brush it.
16:26 For the amateur cooks and the beginner barbecuers,
16:29 there's something that's called the stall.
16:31 And this is when the meat reaches well-done temperature,
16:34 which is about 170 internal.
16:37 Moisture and the water starts to push out and evaporate,
16:40 and then cool down the brisket.
16:42 And it's just like an hour of just 170.
16:44 It's not rising because of that evaporation and the cooling.
16:48 But for a cut like brisket, you actually need to take it
16:50 way past well-done at 200 degrees,
16:53 and then let it sit there for a little bit
16:55 before it's actually done.
16:56 We start to wrap to push through the stall
16:59 and kind of finish cooking without drying out the brisket.
17:02 And that really applies for all the meats, really.
17:04 About eight hours in when we wrap the brisket.
17:06 Right now, it's about three hours in.
17:08 All right, it's 9.30 right now.
17:09 Let's go get the line ready for service.
17:11 ♪♪
17:15 So, over here, I can walk you through the line.
17:18 We have our hot box.
17:20 This is really where all the money is.
17:22 It's controlled temperature,
17:24 and then it goes anywhere from 80 degrees
17:27 all the way up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
17:29 We use this hot box to rest the meats overnight
17:31 and have them ready in the morning.
17:33 You need to rest the meat because of the reason
17:35 that all of the fibers and all of the juices
17:37 are kind of running around like crazy
17:39 once the meat comes off of the heat.
17:41 And your ideal time, resting time,
17:43 is half the amount of time that you took to cook the meat.
17:46 So, first thing, I want to make some rice.
17:48 Here in the rice cooker,
17:50 our batch of rice is half a gallon of rice.
17:53 I'm going to add half a cup of butter to that.
17:57 And then we have a rice kit.
17:58 This has salt, turmeric, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves.
18:03 Each single grain needs to be coated in the melted fat
18:07 and then the spices as well.
18:09 And then it's super aromatic.
18:10 As soon as we open the rice pot, when the rice is done,
18:13 you can smell that.
18:14 The most popular dish that we have right now
18:16 is the brisket rice bowl.
18:18 It has a bed of our Mediterranean rice,
18:20 and then it has the meat on it,
18:22 baladi salad, which is bright, fresh cucumber,
18:25 tomato, onion, mint, creamy tahini sauce.
18:28 We top it off with candied toasted nuts,
18:30 and then last but not least, my favorite ingredients,
18:33 the pomegranate seeds.
18:34 So you get that nice, sweet, savory crunch.
18:37 Now it's time to get some water for the rice to start cooking.
18:40 So one of the biggest struggles of working out of a food truck
18:44 is the water situation.
18:46 We have a fresh water tank down here,
18:48 and once it's empty, we have to fill it up.
18:51 So we have a gray water tank outside of the truck
18:54 that we have to empty four to five times a day.
18:57 We now have a designated full-time dishwasher,
18:59 and he does that.
19:00 And after a lot of testing with the rice cooker,
19:02 we found that nine cups of water is the right measure.
19:06 Go ahead and turn this on.
19:07 Moving on, and we're going to put some water here in the steam well.
19:11 Maybe about 15 to 20 minutes before service,
19:14 we're going to start chopping some brisket and some chicken
19:16 because we don't want it to sit too long before we serve it.
19:19 Now it's time to get the sandwich fridge here ready.
19:22 We're all with all of the sides.
19:27 So everything is coming off the smoker right now,
19:29 and it's going to start to get stacked in the hot box.
19:32 So the dressing that I just added to the baladi
19:34 is made from salt, vinegar, and cumin.
19:37 It's very basic, but it's very bright and fresh.
19:40 In my opinion, barbecue is amazing,
19:42 but it's also a hugely unbalanced meal.
19:45 Like, it's a meal where the sides are even richer and heavier
19:49 than the meats themselves,
19:50 and that's kind of what makes us different here
19:52 with how light and crisp and bright our flavors and our sides are.
19:56 When it's busy, maybe every hour we'll make the same amount.
19:59 It's time to put on my service apron.
20:08 All right, as you can see,
20:10 we have a full house here in the truck right now.
20:12 Everybody's busy getting to work.
20:14 We're putting the final touches here on prep,
20:16 and we're about ready to start serving.
20:18 I'm going to go check on the meats real quick.
20:20 All right, let's see what we got here.
20:22 Briskets are already looking amazing.
20:25 Got a nice bark going on.
20:27 The meat is pulling a little bit back from the bones,
20:30 so I would say probably in another 30 minutes or so,
20:33 we're going to be about time to wrap the lamb bacon ribs.
20:35 Everything looks great.
20:36 Let's start serving our customers.
20:38 It's going to be 108 degrees today in Texas,
20:46 so wish us luck.
20:48 So right now, we're in the middle of service.
20:52 We got tickets rolling in up here on the board.
20:55 Everybody's at work.
20:57 We're almost serving about 100 people an hour.
20:59 All right, y'all, it's getting really busy here,
21:07 so now it's time for me to say goodbye.
21:09 I hope you all enjoyed this,
21:11 and you get an idea of how it's like
21:13 to run an Egyptian barbecue in Austin, Texas.
21:15 Ma'a s-salama. Peace!
21:17 [laughs]
21:19 (gentle music)
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