Where in the World is Carmen BBQiego?*

*(worst possible title)

It was the year 1672 when Dutch-Spanish pirates marauded the waters of the Trinity River, near the modern day DFW metroplex. Gold was the businesss, and blood was her pay. Back then, there was no rule of law, there was only rule of cannon fire. Lives were lost at the speed of the horse.

From this time of intrigue and danger arises one of the greatest treasure stories that has ever been told. Of course, I refer to the tale of “The Texas Jewel Cat, and the Secret of Archimedes’ Treasure ”.

I’m not real sure where that was going but needles to say, we hid some BBQ rub in the wilderness, and we now challenge you, the reader, to venture into the wild, and retrieve this treasure.

The TREASURE:

My standard BBQ rub in a jar.

Piuquin, Pendrey's Chili Mix, Cinnamon, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Paprika.

The Test!:

Anyway, If you're daring enough to go and find this BBQ rub, and return it to either me or Smokeador, you will receive the last El Smokeador y SmokeHopper Hat! All that we ask is that you take pictures of the rescue operation and email them to us so that we can put these pics up on the blog, along with pictures of the hat giving ceremony (which will be quite dramatic).

Also, please don’t eat or use the BBQ rub because there’s no telling who reads this blog, and would go find it and do weird stuff to it. So just return it to us. In exhange, well give you more rub as well.

Hints and More Hints:

There is only one clue which will lead you to the treasure and I’m afraid that you must use your brains. Remember now, this is the only clue:

“When chiming the doorbell in France,
One judges a man by his pants
Look into the sky, and squeeze your left thigh,
You have arrived at the party to dance.

There you go. That’s it. That should be enough to lead you to it.

Final Hint:

(it has to do with the number of fractal relationships between the odd numbered words!!)

Other small hints:

Here are the exact GPS Coordinates with a link to Google Maps:

+32° 51' 22.02", -97° 29' 9.96"

Also here are pictures of the area and final treasure hiding spot.

The Path of Destiny:

BroSmoke Tears a path:

You are very close at this point. (take a left)

Final hiding Spot:

Good Luck Treasure Seekers! Hopefully udaptes will follow at some point!

More to come soon!

-SmokeHopper

Chicken Fried Smoked Brisket ©

Alright stop what you're doing, cause I'm about to ruin the image and the style that you're used to.


On January 30th, 2010 your fun little corner of the internet (you know for meat) changed the face of brisket making on a global scale. The results of our undertaking that fateful afternoon will no doubt shape the world of brisket smoking for years to come on a physical, nay a metaphysical, level.


Just kidding, we didn't change anything on a metaphysical level but we were the first people to chicken fry a smoked brisket in the history of the internet. We did several google searches (why google and not bing, because f bing thats why) and nothing came back. Quotes, hyphens, ellipses, nothing worked. I would most likely go out on a limb and say that no one with any brisket experience has ever done this. We are proud of our creation and hope you enjoy it. In fact, take some time to try it out if you must. We insist.


It was cold as all get out on the 3oth at 9:30 when we started things up. This is a neat little trick that Smokehopper showed me. Worked awesome and kept us warm.


This is a proper smoking setup if you live in Fort Worth. Please note the cup of coffee on the table. We made coffee because it was cold. There was also some jump roping involved.



Started out with 2 flats from the store. Some readers might take offense to the quality of beef that was purchased, but its a brisket and for the purposes of this post it doesn't matter that we didn't use your precious Kobe beef briskets. Picked out the flats because they wouldn't take as long to smoke and would be a ton easier to prepare for the pan than the point would be (point is the big fatty end and the flat is the flat end).


2 2.5 lbr's.

Rubbed the flats down in a chile piquin, cinnamon and paprika rub and added salt and pepper. Coated both sides like you should with a brisket.

On the smoker at 10:30 in the AM. Fat side up, not that I think it would matter in this situation.

This is what they looked like right before we wrapped them up at roughly 12:30.

Left out a picture here because I think everyone has seen a brisket wrapped in foil by now. It's foil. Here they are post foil removal at 2:30 in the afternoon. Internal temp was right at 190 when we pulled them and let them sit for about 45 minutes inside. Moved them to a pan to collect the stock when we took them out of the foil. You will see why later.

We did take one slice before we went to the store for the rest of the supplies. Slice against the grain if you want to pan fry smoked brisket.

The idea was to have some longer cuts that would resemble steak fingers, so we did that. I also wanted to have some chunks of brisket, so we did that too.

On to the potatoes. Smokehopper did all of the work on the potatoes. I did pour some milk in at one point, but am willing to forget about it. This is garlic roasting in the oven.

Bag of fingerling potatoes boiling to soften them up.

Boiled potatoes being mashed up with garlic and a little milk.

Back to the frying of the brisket. This was the bag that my rub was in but by this point we have added flour to the mix. Added the sliced briskets to the bag and shook them around until battered.

Used Crisco as the frying medium. It was a good choice.

Here is a little video of a few of the larger slices frying up. No sound, but it wasn't that loud anyway. It sounded like something was frying in a pan.

Results:

Single battered, first batch.

After the first batch came out we realized that it would be a much better idea to double batter the remaining pieces with the rest of the batter/rub. Cracked an egg and started rebattering what we had left. Do you see:

It is really important that you replicate this process. Look at that grease.

This is something else that we did that was pretty cool. Decided that chicken fried anything needs gravy and we should use the brisket stock leftover from when they were in the foil to help make the gravy. It worked. Gravy went as follows: pan from frying, a little flour and milk added, wisk wisk wisk, add some of the stock, little more flour, wisk wisk wisk, more milk, oh shit, we're losing it, little more flour, more stock, little more milk, ok good we saved it. Wouldn't recommend following the steps above to a t, but you know what gravy should look like. Also, I wouldn't add any salt in this process. The stock has a salty taste and you should have already lightly salted the fried briskets.

Now that everything was ready to be plated, I had a beer and let Smokehopper do the plating. Luckily he has fresh parsley in his back yard. What you see below is the worlds first chicken fried smoked brisket on a bed of roasted garlic mashed potatoes with a brisket stock gravy on top.

Cook time was roughly 5 hours when you count the time on the smoker and was worth every minute we put into it. I was really looking to prove my theory right that you can fry anything and it will turn out good, but I was not expecting this to turn out as well as it did. The batter/rub had a great taste when fried and the brisket did not lose any of its consistency in the pan. That little guy in the middle was delicious.


We have other ideas that are on the way, some that are still in the developmental stages (minotaur leg) and others that might not ever happen. But, if you have something you want to see us try out please feel free to leave it in the comments or shoot one of us an email. If we like your idea, we will send you a hat. We made hats.





~El Smokeador~