- So, this is my FR hood that my dad brought me one day.
Once I stuck my head in like this,
my bun would touch the surface and scorch.
So, now I can't cook without it.
And I even wear it during the summer when it's hot.
So, I'm just grabbing my meats from the fridge
that I keep all of my raw prepped meats
and trimmed meats at.
I just bring it over here to the pit
and put it on my table to season.
These are prime Creekstone briskets.
I'm gonna put mustard on them,
so that way the spice sticks better.
This is eight briskets here
and this is pretty much typical for one of our lunch shifts.
I've been at LaVaca Barbecue as the full-time pitmaster
for a little over a year and a half
but I've been cooking barbecue my whole life.
I layer my spices a little differently.
So, I put multiple layers on them of different things.
This is a salt and pepper based blend
with a few extra secret ingredients
that we don't wanna share,
from our Mexican influence.
Now I'm putting our beef seasoning on
and this is just the regular brisket seasoning.
And the last layer is a very light comino layer
that I put on just to kind of bring out
our little Mexican flare
because we want it to be a little different
than everybody else's.
I don't wanna over season it.
So, I still wanna see a little bit
of the fat poking through,
to make sure that it'll render and it'll get a nice color.
I'm loading all the meat on first before I start my fire
because it gives me more dirty smoke at the beginning.
That's what usually sticks to the briskets
and all the meats first
to give like a better smoke ring, like an initial layer.
I didn't wanna waste it because I noticed
every time I opened the doors it would all come out,
and by the time I put all of them on,
I was getting that clean blue smoke.
It was hard to get that ugly smoke back.
So that's why I start my wood
after I put all my big meats on.
So, we usually make pork butts to serve
but I also cook them for our tamales
And so on these, I'll use LaVaca beef spice,
just like the briskets.
So, I'll put these right next to the fire.
So that way it gets a good crust on them.
After I smoke it and it's all said and done and cooked,
my mother takes the meat, brisket and pulled pork,
mix it and season it for our smoked tamales.
So, this is our wood shed.
This is our little wood storage.
We get it sourced out of Gonzalez.
It's post oak.
I like to use some of the uglier, lighter pieces.
They burn a little hotter right at the beginning
and I want all that dirty smoke to kind of cover
all the meats that I have on evenly.
My wood has burned down a little bit.
I just added a few logs and they're burning.
I don't wanna add any more heat,
but I do want a little more smoke.
I actually put a rounder piece of wood
that has a little more bark or a little more surface area
all the way around.
I put it right on the edge of the box.
So this is how I can get like a really thick smoke ring
without adding extra heat or making the pit spike too much.
This is the smoke that comes out from the beginning
once you start the fire
and it has all of that good dark smoke to it.
We only want this for maybe an hour or two
and then after that, the blue smoke,
the big clear smoke that comes through,
that gives you that even barbecue.
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- This is my mom, Christine.
She's the mastermind behind all of the mixing
of the spices and the tamales.
- This is Maseca.
What it is, it's a tamale flour.
I put some baking powder.
Kelly smokes tallow for me
and we use tallow for everything.
And this is just a different spice
with a lot of chili powder in it
to give it that color,
and chicken broth.
We always make tamales at home.
We were sitting there and we wanted something different,
something that we could add to the barbecue scene
but at the same time, bring our Hispanic culture in.
- I've always considered myself the barbecue instigator.
So, the thought was nobody's done a smoked tamale.
So, Christine's our tamale maker.
I rolled over the idea and I go,
"Hey, what about a tamale in a smoker
and let's shoot, let's wrap that guy up in a butcher paper.
What can we do?"
- So we played with the recipe for a little while
to make sure that instead of using a corn husk,
we were using butcher paper.
And instead of steaming them,
if we could put them directly on the pit.
So now I'm taking Kelly's cooked brisket and her pulled pork
and we need to make sure that all of it is shredded.
I add our spices and it's all different kinds
of chili peppers in there that have been ground up.
I don't measure because I've been making it for so long.
I just know just by the color
what it's gonna taste like.
Now it's gonna be easy to stuff the tamale with this meat.
- Typically, you see the tamales in a corn husk
with the masa spread and steamed.
Since this is barbecue, we picked the butcher paper.
That way, I could put it straight on the pit.
(upbeat energetic music)
- I hand them to Kelly and she puts 'em on the smoker.
- So now, I put the tamales on,
straight on the smoker, right in front of the fire,
so that way it can get a good crust on it.
So I love that it's the same, but different.
It might taste a little different because of the extra smoke
that comes off the pit, but it's still at the heart of it,
it's still the same.
So, it's been a couple hours since I put the tamales on.
We're just kind of trying to check on them.
So, what I do is I usually take one out,
I open it and if the masa has like,
a nice golden color to it, that's how I know they're ready.
- The fats are rendered out
and they get soaked into the paper,
just like on the brisket.
They're about a quarter pound or a third pound a piece
and you get the rich flavor and we wanna do something unique
that nobody ever done before.
- They're gonna go straight into the hot box
and then they're ready to serve for lunch.
So, these are our pork ribs
that I'm gonna be prepping to put on.
At the end, we're gonna put the Big Red glaze
but I also spray them with Big Red throughout the smoke.
Big red was honestly like,
that's what you had with barbecue.
When I was younger,
that was one of my father favorite drinks.
And so in turn, that was one of our family favorite drinks.
Some of the other barbecue places will cut this off,
this little tail right here.
The reason why I do not do that
is actually to protect the last rib.
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I have a beef seasoning and a LaVaca pork seasoning
and I will actually put the LaVaca beef
on the bottom of the rib.
So that way, when you bite into it,
you kind of get like,
a little bit of a different taste than the top.
So it just gives it a little more layering of flavor.
Yeah so, these will probably go on
for about six to eight hours
and then I'll wrap 'em before I take 'em off.
- We're making our sauce that goes into our ribs.
This is the sauce we use to finish our ribs
that has Big Red in it.
The Big Red sauce came about during our competition days
and we were all in the circuit together.
Kelly was with us.
And we would do a rib that was really shiny and sweet,
and that was what was winning.
Rhe thought came out is, you know, why not Big Red?
So this is our sweet sauce,
and this is the base of it.
So, we start with the equal amounts of our sauce.
So, we're gonna pour that in.
This comes in a cardboard box.
You can buy this stuff at Sam's, but it's Big Red.
We're gonna pour that in here.
You can see the beautiful red color of it.
And that is solid soda syrup.
Big red is a big staple with barbecue, barbacoa,
and it's just a great thing.
That's behind a lot of the products that we're putting out.
- So, we're checking in on the ribs now.
And so, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna spritz 'em down
with some of my Big Red to give 'em more of that flavor
that we want to go with our glaze.
It's basically just a mix of Big Red
and some other stuff that we have in a sprayer.
And then once we're ready, we'll wrap 'em.
These are the beef cheeks.
This is what we use for our barbacoa.
What I'm going to do
is I'm going to cut off some of this connecting tissue
because this is kind of tough to eat.
We need to trim that off
so that way, we can get down to the meat itself.
Traditionally, what they used to do was
smoke the whole head of the cow.
You know, it was more cost efficient
for Hispanics at that time,
because that was mainly a cut
that people didn't want to eat.
I'm going to season this barbacoa in this tin on both sides,
just the same as I would season my brisket,
and then we will put it on the smoker.
We only do barbacoa on Sundays.
That's traditionally how we would eat it after church,
or you know, whenever you get family get togethers,
it's a big deal to eat it.
They're gonna go right by the fire
so they can get that good color to them.
Then I'll put it in a tray.
After we smoke it, typically what you make is tacos.
And we usually put it on our blue corn tortillas.
- So, today we're gonna make the blue corn tortillas.
We take a blue corn flour
and it is made from actual blue corn.
We use blue corn because it has no gluten
and it has a lesser starch than the regular yellow corn.
We add water.
And in Mexico, they use blue corn a lot more
than they do the yellow corn just because it's healthier.
And once we get the consistency that we want,
we'll then put 'em on the press.
So we have this press, this tortilla press.
We put the masa in between two plastic sheets,
so that way it doesn't stick to the wood.
You flatten it.
Once we finish pressing them,
what we do is we bring it over here
to the cast iron griddle.
We call this a comal.
I have two different flames going.
So what I do is I start it over here and I just lay it down.
It's a gray color right now,
but once it starts changing color around the edges,
then you know it's time to flip 'em
and put 'em to the higher heat.
So I'm pressing down on the edges
so that it'll cook evenly
and it will send the air bubbles to the middle.
And see, so that one's starting to bubble.
We'll flip it back over.
And if you'll notice,
it starts getting that big air bubble
right there in the middle,
and that tells you that that is ready to take off the comal.
- So now that the barbacoa has a really nice color to it,
you wanna see like a pretty red dark color to it,
but it's still pretty soft.
It's not too crunchy.
It's not too dry.
I'm gonna put some of our beef tallow in here
that we rendered.
So I don't wanna cover them completely in the tallow
because I don't want the spices to wash off.
This kind of adds that smooth moisture
to kind of help it break down a little bit more.
Once it's ready and done, we'll drain all of that out.
And so that way, it's just the meat.
I'm gonna check in on the meats.
I'm just gonna come in and spritz a little like,
Worcestershire and stuff on 'em.
So right now, they're getting that good crust on them,
that good bark, and the red that you see right here
is part of that smoke ring that we like to see
that I got from the beginning smoke.
Typically, you know, you don't see a lot
of short, young, Hispanic females doing this.
Being a woman in barbecue,
the only issues I've run in with
are some of our customers or people who have tried my food
who don't realize who I am.
"Yes, ma'am, miss, waitress,
Can you come over here?
And, you know, we were just wondering where the owner was.
Where's the pitmaster?"
And I tell 'em, you know,
"I'm sorry, I am the pitmaster."
And they like, look at me and they're like,
"Mm, no, no.
You know, like, we wanna meet the real pitmaster."
You know, I have this handle here
that my dad put in special for me,
because I'm not tall enough to reach the door all the way.
He put the amount of weight I actually needed on the door
to actually pull it up and everything.
So this whole pit has been like, really customized
to me and my mom.
I don't consider myself special.
You know, why wouldn't I be able to do it?
I just happen to be a woman who cooks barbecue.
- We've got here, we've got our beef fajitas.
Fajita is basically the brisket of Mexican food.
These are a prime fajita.
They're some of the best fajitas
that we can get here locally.
In fact, we're the only ones getting 'em
within a hundred miles.
From this point,
what we're gonna do is season them
and then they go into the smoker
Got a little salt, pepper, garlic.
So they're gonna go on the smoker
for probably about 45 minutes,
And then we finish 'em off as we sear 'em in our PK grill.
Right now, we're gonna go ahead and put 'em in.
(upbeat energetic music)
And then we're gonna come back
and spritz 'em with our spray.
This is the spray that we use just for our fajitas.
We're gonna start.
We always use a Mexican beer
and here, I just freshly squeezed some limes,
put our Big Red in there.
We're gonna go ahead and spray the fajitas.
And then we're gonna reach over
and there you go,
we're gonna reveal those beautiful grill marks
that they're starting to develop.
They've got a pretty color to 'em now.
We're gonna pull them out.
We've got our old PK grill here.
I shoveled post oak coals into here
instead of using charcoal, we want that same flavor.
The grill's giving you a quick char to the finish.
It's creating, it's caramelizing,
it's taking a lot of that Big Red that we've put in it
with a little bit of that sugar
and sort of burning it a little bit.
So, a fajita really doesn't have to be charred.
A lot of times you'll go
to a Hispanic restaurant, Mexican restaurant,
and they bring 'em out on a hot cast-iron skillet.
But you gotta think that skillet's gonna be
way over 200 degrees.
So when they bring your fajita out
and yes, it's good to see it steaming,
but in reality, that fajita, it's overcooking.
So we've got that tray about full.
As you can already tell,
look at the juice that's already coming out of 'em.
So they're starting to rest.
We'll take 'em into our warmer.
They'll be ready for service and we'll be serving them
and just like we would a brisket
- The ribs have been on for about eight hours.
So now we're gonna check them and see if they're ready.
So, I have a nice little fold here.
That means they're super tender
and I have some juices popping out.
They're about ready.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put 'em on a tray.
After I let them rest for about 30 minutes,
and then once we're ready to serve,
we put our Big Red glaze on them.
- Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.
Lord God, heavenly king almighty God and Father,
We worship you.
We thank you for everything
that you have bestowed upon us this week.
We pray before every service.
- I think it kind of reminds all of us and the workers
like no matter what kind of chaos is going on that morning
kind of just calms us a little bit
to make sure that we're all on the same page before we open.
- In Jesus's name we pray, amen.
(energetic music)
- Welcome back.
I got extras today.
(energetic music)
A lot of our recipes,
a lot of our influence has been our family,
our traditions, our culture.
I think we've been super friendly with people as a family.
Having these people come in and enjoy the food
and then having them as regulars
and remembering all their orders,
it feels like you're just kind of growing your family.
And we want them to have that feeling
that they can come here, be comfortable, like, be open
and enjoy the food while they're at it.
(energetic music)
We want people to be happy
and feel like family to us
and not just customers who are like,
"Okay, what do you want?"
You know, like, "Next person, please".
That's why our cutting board is very like, personable.
You're right there.
You're talking to the cutter.
You're talking to the person
making your food and plating it.
And so, you get to see and interact
and build your own plate and see it happening
and have a part in that.
(energetic music)
- We want them to walk away thinking,
"I just had a quality product
with great customer service."
For us, we want our customer service
to actually be better than our food,
and we think our food's pretty good.