- So we just got our delivery.
So Alam's just gonna open up our boxes
and get all our briskets ready
to be prepped for the evening.
Just looking at these briskets,
they weigh at least, say on average,
about a good 14 pounds.
Certified Angus there,
just has the right amount of fat cap that we want.
So right now here, we're just getting in here,
cutting out the deckle
because this piece would never render down.
As you see, it's cutting right out that deckle.
Look at that big piece of fat there.
If you have this fat capped in there,
what will happen is behind that brisket will never get done.
Some people will go ahead and just rub it and go.
But for us personally,
we just find that it's easier to trim it here.
And it gives the time to go in there
and just really get our spices and rubs behind that deckle.
So we're oiling our brisket right now.
It allows the rub to stick to the meat.
This is our white sugar rub.
Now I know of some places that use brown sugar.
It really doesn't matter.
It's your preference and your process.
But for us, we like the white sugar with our one-to-one.
We want to bring Texas barbecue north of the border.
We find that it's a rarity up here.
We find that there's a few places that do Texas barbecue,
but there's a whole community
that does not know about Texas barbecue.
Well, what I've found here in Canada,
the brisket is a little bit leaner here.
I've seen briskets with a lot more fat cap on it.
My experience with the meat down in Texas,
even the lean meat has more fat on it,
but we find that the brisket's a lot leaner here,
which is good.
You still have your fatty piece,
still have your point and you still have your flat.
All right, so now it's 4:00.
We're gonna get the briskets on
and then we're gonna light our fires.
We have the 1300 smoker from J&R Manufacturing.
It's the biggest smoker on the market.
It weighs 7,000 pounds.
We can cook up to 1800 pounds of meat at one time.
I mean, you know, we get sub-zero weather,
you know, six months out of the year here.
It can be minus 27 degrees.
And so we wanted to bring a smoker indoors.
Can you imagine trying to load up a smoker
in sub-zero weather?
You just, you got a brisket here,
your hands are frozen
and you're trying to put it on a smoker
and keep that hot?
It'd have been virtually impossible
to do what we're doing here
if we weren't doing it indoors.
(upbeat electronic music)
We gotta get our fire going
and I'm gonna do our Jenga-style loading our firebox.
So here we go.
So in this we've got to do an overnight cook now,
so I gotta load this fire box up to the max
to allow ourselves to get the maximum temperature
for our briskets.
So I'm gonna light every piece here.
So this is what you want your fire to look like,
at the end of the day.
You know this fire is gonna burn throughout the night.
So I'm ready to close this guy out
and see everybody in the morning.
(upbeat electronic music)
Well, Roddy, how are we doin' with our,
with our briskets?
How are we looking this morning?
- About five minutes, they're ready to come off.
- Well, this is Rod Bowes,
our pitmaster at Beech Hill Smokehouse.
And we're here, going to test our briskets
and see if they're ready to go for today.
- They're looking pretty good, nice and moist.
And start bringin' 'em out.
- We're wrapping up the brisket in butcher paper
because we're able to lock in that juice,
lock in that moisture.
And you have a big piece of meat here.
And what you wanna do is make sure
it retains the bark in moisture,
or it'd be like chewing a piece of bubblegum.
Brisket is king.
Brisket controls your life.
'Cause that's what they're gonna judge you on.
Is that brisket moist?
Does it melt like butter?
Can you cut it with a fork?
If you don't perfect that brisket,
you might as not even do Texas barbecue.
(paper crinkling)
What can go wrong here is that they can be too tight.
They can't make it,
they can't, (chuckles) what can go wrong is,
it may not be done.
So we make sure our clocks in here are 15 minutes ahead
just in case we have a bump in the road.
So that bump in the road gives us that 15 minute buffer.
So we like to make sure everything's off, ready to go up.
For now we can't be going back and forth.
(upbeat music)
So Rod, what's next?
You wanna do some, some ribs?
- We can do rib tips.
- [Darien] Or we can do our rib tips.
- This is the skirt that is taken off of our ribs.
Instead of tossing them out,
we'll save 'em up and make rib tips.
(upbeat electronic music)
And this is what I make my rib tips out of.
So I'll save this
and when these are cooked, we'll cut the bones,
one bone goes on top of our Austin sandwich.
So now I'm just gonna oil them up.
- So you'll find this down in St. Louis, more or less.
St. Louis is one that had the St. Louis-style ribs.
And so what they do is cut off the skirt
and then make that nice rectangle.
That's what you see.
You see that rectangle, that comes,
that's the St. Louis-style ribs there.
When we make our sandwich in terms of our Austin,
that Austin sandwich,
you don't want the rib bone goin' way over here
on the sides.
The presentation is a lot better
when you have a St. Louis-style rib.
So what Rod has done,
we've prepped the ribs
and we're ready to go for our rub.
We have great meat suppliers,
but as you can see the marble,
as it renders through the meat here,
that's what keeps our ribs meaty and juicy.
Took me two to three months to find these guys.
This is the result, nice marbled ribs.
We use brown sugar for our ribs here,
and it just works well with our process.
The rib's universal.
So you can't say rib is a Carolina region
or a St. Louis or a Texas region.
Everyone's cooking ribs, right?
(upbeat electronic music)
We'll leave 'em for a day.
So what we do after we rub them,
we just let 'em rest in our cooler,
just so they can marinate.
- Now, this is ribs that we just rubbed this morning.
And these are the ones that have been marinating overnight.
As you can see that the,
the rub and everything has gone basically into the rib
and it'll tenderize the meat
and give it a better flavor.
- Everything we've done on day one,
we're doing it on day, uh...
920.
And we don't wanna venture away from that.
This is what works here.
This is Texas.
Texas in Toronto.
That's a good ring to it.
Texas in Toronto, I like that.
So we're gonna take you through the process
of how we do our mac and cheese.
Our famous mac and cheese
was number one in Toronto two years ago.
We got a special spice blend here.
- A little salt, little bit of garlic, a bit of paprika.
I can't tell you everything.
Otherwise wouldn't be a secret.
In goes my cheese.
- We use five different cheeses.
When I first came to Canada,
I was wondering what the hell is milk doin' in a bag?
I'd never seen milk in a bag before.
So yes, that was the first time I seen milk in a bag
and you have a little cup on the side.
I mean, it's already comes in a jug.
Why are we putting milk in another jug?
I thought that was pretty interesting.
Oh, I'm used to it now because it's a,
when in Rome, you do what the Romans do.
So now I have to actually have a little razor knife
to kinda cut my bags open for milk.
When I used to just twist off the cap.
Cut that bag open.
See, look, I had to cut bags open.
Normally I twist the cap here.
So now what we're doin',
we're gonna put in some more milk for Rod.
Sides to barbecue to me is pretty much just the filler,
just a filler on the plate.
Because when you go to a barbecue place,
what are you there for?
You normally there for the meat.
- As long as it looks really soupy,
once it goes in the oven,
the noodles will cook more, will expand.
And when it comes out,
I may have to put a little bit more milk in
before I put the top layer of cheese on.
You're gonna switch the pans?
- I'll switch pans, yeah.
I'ma switch the pans.
- Like this? - Yeah.
You just put top-cheese on.
- Okay.
- But, I'ma use these.
I'ma use some bar towels.
This guy would take stuff out of the oven
and out of the smoker with his bare hands.
I don't know how he does that.
I don't know what type of fingers he has.
I'm not b*********** you.
He would do it.
I don't think he has any feeling in his fingers any longer.
- I've been cooking so long, it is,
I've sliced my finger on a meat slicer.
I've got no feeling from here down.
I had 14 stitches.
And like I say, from here all the way down,
there's no feeling.
Darien's gonna flip 'em over.
Ow, God, I just burnt my elbow.
- See look at that, see?
Another brand.
So we automatically change our pans here.
And the reason why we changed our pans,
we wanna make sure that we don't burn it on the bottom.
So that's one we just changed.
We just take these guys out here.
Now we're ready to go.
Now we're going to top-cheese it.
This was what made it
the number one mac and cheese in the city.
- This'll go back in for a half hour.
- What we have up next,
we're gonna prep our chickens.
We are known for the chickens.
And actually this is a capon bird,
which is the biggest birds
you can kinda get at this range.
This is a one-to-one salt, pepper rub,
and a little bit of brown sugar.
Spices that we use are more expensive here in Canada
than they are in the States.
Maybe because down there barbecue is more prevalent,
but I did some pricing on a few things here
and I'm like, "Oh my God."
So it's actually like pretty much double,
but I mean, it is what it is.
I mean, for us to get that authentic Texas flavor,
you gonna definitely have to have
these certain spices that we use.
And that's our rubbed chickens.
We're all marinated out for this overnight here.
And you can see that everything
is already rendered into the meat here.
As you see, we just rubbed these guys here
and you can see how it's going to take another,
it's gonna take a day for these guys to become,
to look like this.
So you know that the,
all your spices have penetrated our meats here.
Here you can see, it's gonna take some time.
So that's why I've been marinating overnight.
- [Rod] This is turkey breast.
I've already oiled them.
Now I'm just gonna rub 'em.
This is the last bit of meat that we gotta prep
to go on the smoker for the day.
- What we've learned
is that people do have a high expectation
of Beech Hill Smokehouse.
Reason being because we call ourselves
true, authentic, Texas barbecue,
whatever you wanna say,
however you wanna title it.
So for us to call ourselves authentic,
the expectations is a lot higher here at Beech Hill.
And we believe we exceeded the expectation
because we have people who went down to Texas
to have their barbecue.
And then they come up here and say, it's just as good
or if not better.
Barbecue is slow and low
and it takes a long time to prepare.
This is the labor of love.
So you sit back and while the whole world is sleepy,
we're here.
I don't even wanna say what time Rod gets in here
'cause it varies.
It could be 3:30, 4:30.
We have to be up early to meet that 11 o'clock threshold.
If we don't meet the 11 o'clock threshold,
when we open the doors, we won't be ready, right?
So in essence, it takes a long time.
What I'm doing now is I'm putting all the meats on
for the day.
Our ribs on, our chickens on, our rib tips,
'cause that's our special for today.
So I'm puttin' all the meats on.
We've gotta get them on by 8:00,
have them off by 10:30.
Here's the funny thing.
Once you get in,
and once you turn the lock on the door,
you automatically get into the barbecue mode.
It's nothing, you,
everything else blocks out,
and next thing you know, the sun is shining.
Ding, ding, ding, door would open,
everybody just comes in, they wanna eat, right?
First customer!
What's happenin', James?
See, we even know our customers by name.
Guarantee he orders an Austin with some baked beans.
Am I right or wrong?
- [James] Times two.
- Times two!
Look at that.
(calm music)
- See how it's bending, it's cracking right there,
right across there.
That's tender as heck.
(calm music)
- Barbecue is the labor of love.
You, look, we're here early.
We're leaving late.
Barbecue pretty much brings people together.
I don't know what it is about barbecue.
I think it's the process, the time,
the love you have to put in a barbecue.
People know when you bring out that brisket
and you unravel it and see the,
just the, just how moist it looks,
the bark on that brisket.
It just brings people together.
So you don't do a large cut of meat like that
unless you have a huge event, a gathering,
some sort of a celebration.
What barbecue does is bring people together
from all backgrounds.
Everybody's barbecued.
I don't care what part of the globe you're in.
What part of the hemisphere you in,
there's some sort of barbecue goin' on
and it's gonna be a huge gathering or event
that's goin' on with it.
(calm music)