BBQing goes beyond beef brisket

I received a message from a friend today who bought Aaron Franklin's "Meat Smoking Manifesto"after I'd spent a few days raving about it.

I bought the Franklin BBQ book. It certainly makes you feel that sitting up all night tending a fire and nurturing a brisket is a noble thing to do!

YES! That's true. The book is highly inspiring in terms of building a passion for offset smokers and smoking brisket, which is his main activity. In fact, it was one week after completing the book that I went out and bought myself a serious, large offset smoker for doing brisket.

Something I lovingly modified & tuned over the next few days using an angle grinder, sandpaper, blow torch & welding kit to arrive at my desired design aesthetic & functional form.

But here's the thing: I don't really like beef.

I definitely love cooking outdoors, especially when there is warm sunshine. That unique smell of real lump wood charcoal cooking burgers, sausages, chicken or steak is appeal that probably is hard wired into humans, elevating cooking smells beyond that of things cooked on a stove or in an oven. So, in my head, BBQ brisket should be the next step beyond simple lump wood charcoal cooking, adding in the layers of complexity in flavour created by smoke (the good invisible kind).

If so many people around the world can get so passionate about flow of air in their smokers, the shape of the fire control basket,  the level of moisture of their fire wood, the specific temperature ranges across 20hrs of cooking time, then there has to be something next level with proper BBQ beef brisket.

This was the trigger then for my mission to find & taste the best possible BBQ brisket here in the UK, so I can work out if don't enjoy beef because I've never had it cooked well enough before. Sounds crazy but there is a possibility that I've just not had the quality of cooking yet to understand what I should be experiencing.

Five years ago I visited what has become my favourite restaurant in the world - Es Raco d'Teix in Majorca. I was my first experience a Micheline starred restaurant and my expectations were high, so when the desert on offer in the three course lunch was "a poach pear", I didn't know what to make of things. Surely something as simple as a poached pear wasn't worthy of being on the menu but I was assured that it was something beyond just a poached pear, so I went with the flow.

 The Es Raco d'Teix "Poached Pear" comprised:

• Poached pear
• Port sorbet
• Pistachio mouse
• Lime & lemon curds
• Candied hazelnuts
• Cookie crumb

This desert was unbelievable - never have I experienced a single ingredient elevated to well to the point where the pear was still the star of the plate but everything that was done to it make it into something other worldly.

And that, from what I understand from the Franklin BBQ book, watching hundreds of hours of YouTube videos, thousands of backyard BBQs with friends and now, having started my tasting journey of beef brisket, I know what I am looking for from BBQ beef brisket.

A humble ingredient turned into something otherworldly through what appears to be a  simple cooking process (using fire).