Customers line up as early as 6 a.m. to get Goldee's award-winning barbecue. Since winning the No. 1 spot of the "Texas Monthly" list of best barbecue joints, the Fort Worth restaurant increased its output from 12 to 150 briskets per week to feed crowds of customers who visit from across the country. At the counter, you'll find the classics, including brisket, ribs, turkey, and sausage that can be ordered with hot honey, sweet, or with their signature sauce.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 All right, good morning everybody.
00:03 If I could have everybody's attention for a moment.
00:05 What up y'all?
00:06 We're going to have food in Austin today?
00:07 Order on the brisket.
00:08 Half pound brisket.
00:10 Half brisket.
00:12 That's going to be a half pound right there for you.
00:14 And then here's what I'm going to bring in.
00:17 What about pork ribs?
00:19 A pound of beef and any sausage and some rib tips for us today, y'all?
00:26 We worked pretty much all the big spots out in Austin after high school.
00:30 We moved out there, lived in the same house, and then at one point everybody had a barfee job.
00:34 We were all cooking at home pretty much on our days off.
00:37 That's kind of where we started recipe testing for Goldies.
00:40 We really liked our food and we felt like, "Okay, maybe we can do this."
00:44 And then we just saved up the money without investors.
00:47 Bada-bing, bada-boom.
00:55 7 a.m.
00:56 First thing we do is kind of touch these briskets up to make sure they're all looking really nice.
01:01 We trim them maybe a day or two ago.
01:04 Usually on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we'll go through and actually do our initial trim through the briskets.
01:09 And then days up, we'll go back and kind of touch them up to see if any spots we missed,
01:13 if there's too much fat or not a good shaping of the briskets.
01:16 So these are all Creekstone.
01:18 They're upper two-third choices.
01:20 And now we're seasoning them up with some 16-mesh pepper.
01:23 We have our own seasoned salt and some table salt mixture right here.
01:27 So it's kind of like a really good Lowry.
01:30 I mean, this is really salty. Yeah, it's a really salty mix.
01:33 Briskets, they're such a big cut, they can take a lot of salt on there.
01:36 So our first day, we actually did do 50 briskets.
01:39 Five weeks after we opened, COVID hit.
01:41 So then that kind of drew everything back.
01:43 During COVID, it got pretty slow.
01:46 Once we reopened, the text-to-speech thing came out, and then it's been looking pretty good ever since.
01:51 They definitely have a lot of pull. A lot of people have faith in their rankings.
01:54 We were doing about 12 to 16 briskets a week.
01:57 And then they said, "Hey, you guys are the best."
02:00 And then we were doing 150 briskets a week.
02:03 Start loading them up.
02:05 We like to separate the bigger briskets from the smaller briskets so they kind of cook evenly.
02:09 The big ones right here probably have the most heat.
02:11 I concentrate it on this back part.
02:13 The biggest ones and then the biggest ones against the wall,
02:15 because the walls have the hotter spots on there, too.
02:18 Then we kind of just funnel it down to the smallest ones going this way.
02:22 So the money bite side, you want those against the walls.
02:24 It's going to protect it a little bit more since they are hot.
02:26 And this is the part that's covered in fat so it won't burn up on you.
02:30 So we probably won't wrap these or finish them until about 8 o'clock tonight.
02:35 We actually don't wrap them up until they're done.
02:37 So we wrap them up in foil and then actually rest them that way.
02:40 That way it kind of sobs the bark back up with the foil.
02:44 It kind of steams it a little bit.
02:45 But it doesn't give it that pot-roasted taste that people want.
02:48 They wrap it at 170 and then finish cooking it like that.
02:51 So, yeah.
02:53 Right now we're kind of in a zone where we have more time to work on some of our specials.
03:01 Before the list, we were running a new sausage a week, a new side every week.
03:05 But after the list, we kind of had to dial back down and focus on our main core items.
03:10 So this is a recipe jam that I'm working on.
03:13 It's peri-peri chicken.
03:16 Right now we're just dry-brining it. Let the salt get all the way through.
03:20 I'm going to do a pretty liberal coat of this rub on there.
03:23 It's jam, secret rub. It can take a lot.
03:26 I went and ate at a spot that had peri-peri chicken.
03:29 And I just took a bite of it.
03:31 I'm like, "Oh, yeah. We should probably do something like this over at Goldie's."
03:33 So that's kind of how some of our specials go.
03:35 Just eating out at different spots.
03:37 Kind of taking things from restaurants we like, trying to implement them here.
03:40 And then I'm going to flip it to the top side.
03:43 And now we're going to go in with the pepper first.
03:46 And it'll help the chickens get a lot of nice color.
03:50 And then I made a little sauce on the side.
03:53 So, yeah, I'm making that peri-peri sauce right now.
03:56 I'm going to roast some of these bell peppers to go in there.
03:59 And I also got to roast an onion, too.
04:02 So I'm going to roast them, let them steam so I can take off the skin.
04:05 And then I'm also going to cut up some cilantro for it, too.
04:08 Kind of like just a salsa.
04:10 Yeah, all the real chefs are going to be joking on my knife skills.
04:15 A lot of chefs think they can knock out, like, barbecue stuff.
04:17 I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that stuff looks easy."
04:19 Then they do it. I'm like, "All right, never mind."
04:21 I see why. Leave it up to the real professionals.
04:24 It's like, "I told y'all. It's not as easy as it looks."
04:27 So, yeah, these are nice.
04:29 And you kind of just want them all the way black, all the way around.
04:31 I'm going to pull them off. And I'm going to plastic wrap them so they kind of steam.
04:35 That makes it a lot easier to peel the skin off.
04:37 And after that, it's really just putting everything in the food processor and blending it up.
04:41 So I got some of my spices right here.
04:44 Just a little bit of onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, some oregano, bay leaf, paprika.
04:50 Tasting good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really good, actually.
04:56 All right. So we got our chicken breasts done.
04:59 And usually, if we run it for service, we probably wrap these in a foil and let them rest down.
05:03 But since this is a recipe test, I'm just going to cover them with some butter.
05:06 Pour a little bit of the sauce on here. It's that Peri-Peri sauce I made.
05:10 Yeah, I mean, it's tasting really good.
05:14 I'd maybe go next time maybe a little heavier on the salt in the sauce.
05:18 I think the chicken's flavored nice, but I think it might need a little bit more salt in that sauce.
05:23 But I think by next week, we should have it figured out and ready to run this order.
05:27 Goldie's is kind of running on its own.
05:31 And I know we could step away and open another restaurant.
05:35 Ruby's just kind of came about.
05:36 Well, I think we've always talked about doing like kind of like a rib shack, you know, just selling ribs and stuff,
05:42 because we'd always thought that would just be a really cool concept for a restaurant.
05:46 So here we're using the pork loin back ribs, which is just baby back ribs.
05:50 I'm just seasoning up the top side.
05:52 That's where most that's where you'll see that most of the meat is.
05:56 And a lot of people don't really even eat that membrane side.
06:00 It's not like the spares were like you have like a side bite on the spares.
06:04 This one's is more like a top down bite.
06:07 They're all seasoned with the same rub going onto the smoker.
06:10 But when you when you order the different flavors, that's when we basically add those different flavors to it.
06:17 It's just a lot more efficient.
06:18 So at Ruby's, the first four menu items are baby backs.
06:20 We have the original dry rub, the sweet and spicy sauce, the hot honey sauce and the Goldie sauce.
06:26 And then the number five is the beef back ribs.
06:28 It is like, yeah, it's an idea that's supposed to be nice and easy and and but still really good and consistent, basically.
06:35 Not really trying to win a James Beard. I'm trying to serve food very fast and like good barbecue very quickly.
06:43 But Goldie's, I'm trying to win a James Beard now.
06:46 I'm spending a lot of my time here. This place has only been open for a month.
06:49 We were able to start Ruby's because everything at Goldie's is pretty much running like a like an engine.
06:54 I felt like I was able to break away and start a new little restaurant.
06:58 I'm still heavily involved at Goldie's. Once I get this place set up and going, I'll be pretty much able to work at both.
07:05 So these are beef back ribs. We get them from Heart Brand.
07:09 Basically, they're tiny little beef ribs. They don't have a whole lot of meat on top.
07:12 They're more of a side bite like kind of meat like where you just get that meat in between the bones.
07:16 The rub on these is just salt and pepper. It's beef.
07:18 So you kind of just stick to the classic. That's it. So that was 80 racks of ribs. Not too bad. Not too bad.
07:28 How we do it is we put the we put the French fries down, the coleslaw, the bread rolls, and then we put the ribs last.
07:33 And then we kind of season them in the box before they go out.
07:36 And it's just that cake like fresh flavor like going right out.
07:39 The honey sauce has been a big favorite so far. I'm actually working on trying to get a bottle like the like the Goldie sauce.
07:46 So this is the sweet sauce. We put the sweet sauce on first and then we're going to put a little bit of our spicy rub on top of that.
07:53 And that's what makes the sweet and spicy. And this is going to be the Goldie's sauce.
07:58 That's our table sauce at Goldie's that we're taking over here and just putting on top of the baby backs.
08:02 And the last one is going to be our original dry rub.
08:06 So you can get this one. You can get the Goldie sauce, the hot honey sauce, the sweet sauce, the spicy rub.
08:11 And you can get that on the side and try it and kind of test it before you order a whole box of that certain flavor.
08:17 You know, it is pretty streamlined so that they can be done super quick and really easy.
08:22 There's not much room for error. So it should be super consistent.
08:25 Friday, we're going to run this Brussels sprout au gratin special that we've kind of been tweaking with the past couple couple weeks.
08:36 It's a really nice cheesy dish. It is pretty heavy.
08:38 We like to go a little lighter on some of our sides since the barbecue is so heavy.
08:43 But everybody likes a cheese dish. So we went ahead and ran this.
08:47 That's one thing we wanted to do, open up Goldie's because most barbecue spots, they might like nail the meats.
08:53 But usually the sides are kind of lacking. That's kind of something we didn't want to do.
08:56 We want it to be a whole whole meal.
08:58 So I'm just halving these up and then I'm kind of going to coat them in some salt and tallow.
09:03 And I'm actually going to smoke these on our rotisserie smoker.
09:07 At about 250.
09:10 And I'll kind of roast them a little bit.
09:12 Start on the sheet trays and I'll start smoking.
09:15 So these are going on our rotisserie we got from M&M.
09:19 We're going to cook these for about 30 to an hour. Probably around 45 minutes.
09:25 They should be nice and roasted by the time they come out.
09:31 So right now Cecilia is making our buns for our chopped sandwiches or turkey sandwiches or sliced brisket sandwiches.
09:39 Same recipe as our normal bread dough.
09:42 But instead of making it a loaf, we ball it up and make it a bun.
09:46 And then she's going to put some sesame seeds on there and make it look pretty.
09:49 Put an egg wash on there, help it get color.
09:52 We're going to cook it up.
09:53 I think it makes it kind of fun too, doing like little extra steps.
09:56 And we're just trying to make our favorite overall tray that we can.
10:01 And we have to make the bread and buns to do that.
10:03 These are the loaves.
10:05 It's basically our take on a brioche recipe.
10:08 Typically we try to shoot for like a one slice per quarter pound.
10:11 Or if there's a group of eight, then we'll give two slices of bread per person.
10:15 Just so we don't waste any.
10:17 Some people want to cut them and they want like ten loaves of bread.
10:20 But we'd be baking bread all day if we did that.
10:23 It's always nice hearing people being pumped up over just the bread.
10:26 We had one lady, she was like 90-something years old.
10:28 She was like, "Oh, that's the best bread I've ever eaten."
10:30 I was like, "Oh, wow. This lady's actually had some bread in her life."
10:33 [Laughter]
10:35 That was a bigger compliment than I think she knew.
10:39 All right, so that's pretty much all of prep today.
10:42 Now we're going to go back, get some sleep, and be back up here at 5 a.m.
10:44 to get it going for the weekend.
10:49 I'm Dan Hart from Columbus, Ohio.
10:51 I'm Zach Hison.
10:53 We got here 6?
10:55 I think it was 5.53.
10:57 We had to be first in line because it's number one.
10:59 We're on a barbecue tour around Texas.
11:01 We started in Austin, went to Terry Black's, and now we're here.
11:05 Yeah, there's people lined up.
11:07 That's why we're kind of--what is it, like 5.30 right now?
11:10 You really don't have to come in that early.
11:12 I've had people show up at times like now,
11:15 and then the next group doesn't get there until close to 8 a.m.
11:19 I'd say around 8.
11:21 If you want to be first in line, maybe like 8, somewhere around then.
11:24 But if you just want to come eat, don't show up until like 9.30.
11:27 Or do what you want.
11:28 I mean, we love it, but y'all could be getting a little bit more sleep.
11:31 So right now we're going to season pretty much all the meats
11:34 that we're going to be serving today.
11:36 We got turkeys here.
11:37 Joseph's going to be doing more briskets for Saturday,
11:40 and Kim's going to be around that corner doing pork ribs also for today.
11:44 All right, y'all, so starting the Friday morning rib prep.
11:48 So we just take our pork ribs, set them rib cage up
11:53 so we can go ahead and get the bottom side seasoned up.
11:57 So we just use water as a quick little binder.
12:01 The meats kind of chill for a day or two, kind of depending on when we put them on.
12:05 So things do tend to dry up a little,
12:08 so it just helps to slick things back up
12:12 and ensure that the seasoning's really able to stick well.
12:17 And so we'll just do a pass on the bottom end of Goldie Season Salt,
12:21 and that's just to get some nice flavor on the bottom side.
12:26 There's nothing like an under-seasoned rib.
12:29 There are a couple different binders in barbecue.
12:32 Obviously the most famous ones are like mustard.
12:35 I've even seen mayonnaise.
12:37 People like to do a mixture of like Worcestershire, apple cider vinegar.
12:42 We really don't use any of that here.
12:45 I've noticed personally that it doesn't really affect the flavor of our cooking in any way noticeable,
12:51 but we just go pepper, seasoned salt, water.
12:55 Typically we like to find some of the larger racks, and we'll put those on the end,
12:59 and those will kind of shield the smaller racks from the harshness of the heat coming through.
13:06 And we like to, as you'll see as I'm rotating it, we only go on the top racks
13:12 because we like to ensure if any juices are going to drip down,
13:16 they've got enough space to kind of flow freely.
13:19 We can achieve a nice spark on them.
13:22 So on these turkeys, all I've got going on is pepper.
13:25 They already come in pre-brined, so you really don't have to add any salt to them.
13:29 And this is one of the items a lot of people really don't like turkey too much,
13:33 but after they try ours, they like it.
13:36 It's a sleeper item for sure.
13:39 So yeah, this is our backyard pit.
13:41 It's a different design.
13:43 We actually have this 90-degree elbow going in.
13:45 So we sell these on our website.
13:47 This is actually the first one made.
13:49 We were just making sure it worked before we started selling it.
13:52 And turkeys are pretty easy cooks, so that's kind of why we do it with the turkeys.
13:58 And then we kind of ran out of pit space now for everything else, so might as well keep using it.
14:03 So I like to kind of ball them up so it's kind of the same thickness all the way throughout
14:07 because the edge just kind of cooks a lot faster than the middle does.
14:11 And I feel like the slices look a little bit better too.
14:14 So these are going to cook for about maybe three hours.
14:18 Yeah, probably around three.
14:20 It's a pretty quick cook.
14:22 So service is getting close by.
14:25 We're checking the ribs, see which ones are done, wrap them up in a little bit of sauce, let them rest down.
14:30 It's almost like a Carolina vinegar sauce, so it's like really sweet, really tangy,
14:34 but then we don't put a whole lot on, just on the top side, so it just adds like a little extra flavor.
14:41 So I'm about to check these turkeys out.
14:45 All right, yeah, they look good.
14:47 Yeah, they're all ready to go.
14:48 Just wrapping them up.
14:50 On to butter.
14:51 I mean, everybody loves butter, so it kind of helps it stay juicy, adds a little bit more flavor to it.
14:57 So yeah, I'm going to let these turkeys rest down a little bit, maybe for like 30, 45 minutes,
15:02 and I'm going to throw them in the warmer after that.
15:06 All right, good morning, everybody.
15:09 We do have a giant menu board here right beside me.
15:12 We've got all of the meats listed besides desserts.
15:16 Thank you for your time, guys.
15:17 See you all soon.
15:19 That gets caught right over here.
15:21 Okay, cool.
15:22 Let me grab you all some sample bites of our brisket real fast.
15:25 And how much brisket were we thinking today, y'all?
15:29 Half pound brisket?
15:30 People come so far, spend so much money, and spend all this time,
15:34 and we want to make sure they get something that's worth their time coming here.
15:39 So we'll quality control the meats the best we can just to make sure everybody gets a meal that we want to get ourselves
15:46 if we spend all that money and time.
15:50 Hopefully it was worth the trip, worth their money, and they like the food, they like the customer service, they like the restaurant.
15:57 Yeah, that's pretty much what we like to do.
15:59 Look at that.
16:01 Best barbecue they ever had.
16:03 That's what I want to hear.
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