Pitmaster Damien Brockway is changing the taste of typical Central Texas barbecue. At the Distant Relatives food truck in Austin, he’s infusing spices found throughout the African diaspora. On the menu, you’ll see the Texas trinity of brisket, ribs, and sausage, seasoned with African bird’s-eye chile, allspice, pimiento, and several Caribbean peppers. Even the sides — roasted peanuts, black-eyed peas, and jumpled rice — are tied to African American family recipes.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Austin BBQ is amazing.
00:02 You have multi-generational Central Texas history,
00:06 and then you also have craft barbecue restaurants.
00:10 One of the things that really kind of separates us
00:13 is our approach to seasoning, flavor profiles,
00:17 and counterpoints in our sides.
00:19 How are we doing?
00:20 Order coming in.
00:21 I am African-American,
00:22 and so a lot of what we do here is inspired by,
00:25 say, familial dishes, or inspired by recipes,
00:28 or things that were eaten in family gatherings,
00:32 inspired by history, heritage, culture,
00:35 which also ties into the overall origins
00:38 of American barbecue.
00:40 ♪♪
00:48 ♪♪
00:55 So, here we are in the morning,
00:56 the grand, illustrious, smallest barbecue trailer in town.
01:01 We got these pork spare ribs
01:03 that we're gonna get trimmed up and seasoned.
01:07 We're doing full spares, but we are gonna take the chine off
01:10 and do, like, a light trim on this.
01:12 So, we're just looking for this knuckle right here,
01:15 and then we're just gonna drive the knife down.
01:18 And I'm using a chef knife versus a boning knife
01:20 'cause I need something with a little more backbone
01:22 so that I can get through this cartilage.
01:25 Looking on the spare,
01:26 then we have this skirt here, which is great.
01:29 You know, this has so many uses, you know,
01:31 marinated on skewers, things like that.
01:35 For us, we save this,
01:36 and then it goes into the grind for our sausage.
01:41 We do have the Texas Trinity represented,
01:43 so we're talking about sausage, we're talking about ribs,
01:46 and we're talking about brisket.
01:49 So, we leave the membrane on for two reasons, right?
01:52 Like, the great temperature's gonna get that
01:54 kind of, like, crisped up, you know what I mean?
01:57 And then it also allows us to get these ribs nice and tender
02:01 and that they still adhere to the bone.
02:04 We're gonna apply our salt first.
02:07 And so, what that's gonna do is it's gonna start
02:09 drawing out some of the moisture in the meat, right?
02:12 And then we're gonna start seeing, like,
02:14 that little bit of, like, wetness.
02:16 Then, when we go to apply our spice,
02:20 it's gonna adhere to the meat a bit better.
02:23 This side's a little bit thinner,
02:26 so we're gonna go a little bit lighter on the salt on that end.
02:29 We're gonna apply salt a little bit heavier,
02:31 where the meat is a little bit thicker.
02:34 So, this one is our house blend.
02:36 We call it newspaper rub, that really old-school rub
02:40 that has, like, the black pepper and, like, red chili in it.
02:44 So, like, newspaper rub.
02:46 What's a newspaper?
02:48 It's black, white, and red all over, right?
02:51 There is African bird chili in here,
02:53 as well as some pimento or allspice
02:56 and a couple other trade secrets,
02:59 along with 16-mesh pepper,
03:01 which gives that nice cracked black pepper flavor,
03:04 but also gives it a great texture.
03:07 Malagasy pepper is one of our linchpin seasonings,
03:11 and that's a strain of pepper that originates in West Africa.
03:14 So, that's something that we incorporate into our rub,
03:16 as well as using bird's-eye chili or piri,
03:20 so African bird's-eye chili.
03:23 We're also using pimento or allspice,
03:25 which is a touchstone ingredient from the Caribbean
03:28 that also ties into the very complex, you know,
03:32 story of the movement of people
03:34 and the interchanges of cultures and cuisines
03:37 that make this amazing thing of barbecue.
03:40 And so, we're getting nice and even on here.
03:43 Nice and even, nice and even.
03:44 ♪♪
03:48 So, we're top-racking these
03:51 because we want to get a nice bark formation, right?
03:54 And this runs a little bit hotter than the bottom.
03:58 So, we're, you know, facing our knuckle sides,
04:01 facing this way.
04:02 In 45 minutes, we're gonna do a rotation and spin them.
04:05 And then, after that, you know, you're gonna see,
04:08 we're gonna wrap them and then invert them.
04:11 Once we flip them,
04:12 we don't really want that heat on the flesh side, right?
04:16 So, you're gonna see, when we wrap that,
04:17 we're gonna make a pillow on the bottom
04:20 to elevate it and insulate it off the rack.
04:23 This is the chicken leg quarters.
04:25 It's a fan favorite.
04:27 Has been since the very early days of the truck.
04:30 They come in with the spine split.
04:33 This leg quarter has, like, really great chicken flavor,
04:36 and especially, like, this chicken back
04:38 and, like, the oyster meat,
04:39 all this good stuff is super packed with flavor.
04:43 And also, it has the highest fat content.
04:46 Skin side is starting down intentionally.
04:49 Just that way, once we apply our seasoning,
04:51 it stays nice and even.
04:54 The chicken leg quarters is a jumbled rice dish.
04:56 Other ways to think about that dish are jambalaya.
05:00 The chicken, ironically, kind of became the thing
05:04 that the truck was first, like, known for,
05:07 which seems interesting, right?
05:09 'Cause we're in Central Texas.
05:11 There's a few places doing chicken,
05:13 but that became one of those runaway items.
05:16 And it goes pretty fast.
05:18 We're going salt first.
05:20 Tapering on the seasoning,
05:22 applying just slightly heavier in, like, the thicker areas.
05:25 We've got skin side down.
05:28 This one is, like, a savory, spicy rub.
05:33 It also does have, like, a little bit of black pepper
05:35 in there, as well.
05:37 A little bit of ground mustard.
05:39 Everything is seasoned a certain way for a reason,
05:43 and then you end up having, like, a harmony on the plate
05:46 of all the different things that you eat.
05:48 And once you eat it all together,
05:50 it creates the overall, you know, experience.
05:54 Get this seasoned, and then we'll get this on.
05:56 ♪♪
06:00 So, these generally take about three hours.
06:02 We're doing it skin side down.
06:04 We use the heat of the grate to set the skin,
06:08 and then we flip it to then desiccate the skin a little bit,
06:12 but leaving the interior of the chicken leg quarter
06:14 nice and moist.
06:15 We know that this thigh is thick,
06:18 so we're facing that towards the fire, right?
06:22 And we do the same thing with the pork shoulders, right?
06:26 Like, we face the blade,
06:28 the shoulder blade, towards the fire, right?
06:32 They're gonna be crispy when they come out of here.
06:35 We're on a mil-scale, 1,000-gallon offset smoker.
06:39 We're not running an insulated firebox.
06:41 It helps us control the temperature nicely.
06:43 That way, if we get any temperature spikes,
06:46 we got that air gap in there,
06:47 so it's not like a runaway freight train.
06:51 We're using pecan mainly for its flavor profile.
06:54 Pecan is actually the largest species of hickories.
06:57 It's also the state tree of Texas.
07:00 We want to taste the meat, but we also want to be able
07:03 to taste, like, the nuances of our spice blend
07:05 that we add there.
07:06 The wood adds, like, a subtle,
07:08 very, very mild sweetness to the meat,
07:10 but it's also a little bit softer,
07:12 so it allows those flavors to kind of ring through,
07:16 showcasing the wood itself as well as the meat.
07:20 This part of the day, we're trying to build the coal bed
07:22 for, you know, the rest of the day.
07:25 So, up here in the first door,
07:27 we have the smoke-roasted peanuts.
07:29 They're roasting nice and even, pulling them out.
07:32 So, going for, like, deep golden brown.
07:36 And then the interior, so one of the things that you can do
07:38 is you got to split it and ensure that it's, like,
07:42 roasted on the interior.
07:43 So, these are very, very, very close, if not,
07:48 definitely not.
07:50 The importance of the peanut is that this is a complete tie-in
07:54 to what the trailer speaks to,
07:56 which is African diaspora, shared heritage, history.
08:00 And so, the peanut is a central ingredient to that.
08:06 We know, in the United States,
08:08 that peanut farming and cultivation
08:10 has been a staple of, you know,
08:12 African-American agriculture since the first ancestors,
08:16 and George Washington Carver's work
08:19 with that legume, specifically.
08:23 Now that these are cool enough to touch,
08:25 they're getting transferred into a bowl,
08:28 and then we're going to season them.
08:31 This is just regular vegetable oil.
08:33 That way, the spices and the salt can actually adhere
08:37 and then penetrate into the nut.
08:41 So, then I'm going to go with the salt.
08:44 Pretty liberal.
08:47 The blend is pretty specific to go with the peanut,
08:49 but it's, like, mixing and matching
08:51 some of the other spices that we have.
08:54 Like we said, on the tray, we want cohesion, right?
08:58 So, there's, like, certain spices that, as you're eating it,
09:01 it's in the background.
09:03 It's just a flavor that helps tie
09:04 all the components of the tray together.
09:07 I mean, we literally sold a gallon and a half of peanuts
09:10 within 45 minutes yesterday.
09:13 I'm dead serious. [ Laughs ]
09:15 It sold out before the brisket. That never happens.
09:18 Yeah, so, working, massaging the oil into the nut,
09:21 working the spices into the nut.
09:23 You can see that they've got this sheen to them.
09:26 Got to taste them, got to taste your food,
09:29 make sure that it's seasoned.
09:31 Hey, that's pretty rare that I get it just, like, first try.
09:35 So, on our menu, it serves as, like, a snackable item,
09:40 but it's also a ubiquitous item.
09:42 It's something that everybody gets on the tray,
09:44 and it's there for this reason.
09:47 It's just kind of, like, the icon of the concept, right?
09:51 It's a great beer nut, as well.
09:54 So, we're about eight to nine hours into our cook for today.
09:58 So, we have pork here, brisket.
10:00 They're going to be coming up on the afternoon wrap,
10:03 and then it's going to get rested,
10:04 and that's for service tomorrow.
10:07 We have two different spritzes.
10:09 Instead of, like, a traditional-style mop,
10:12 we're applying our liquids have been strained,
10:15 and they're in spray bottles.
10:18 So, we've just given these, like, a nice little wet-down.
10:21 And so, not only are we applying, like, acid
10:24 and an extra layer of seasoning there,
10:27 but we're also, you know, aiding in the bark development
10:29 because by putting that moisture on the exterior of the meat,
10:33 we're going to capture a little bit more wood smoke on there.
10:37 When you're talking about the history of American barbecue,
10:40 we're talking about wood burned down to coals
10:42 and smoke coming from rendering fat and juices,
10:46 but then also the application of, you know,
10:49 mop sauces over the top.
10:51 There are accounts that talk about this.
10:53 You have African-Americans or enslaved Africans
10:56 applying these mop sauces,
10:57 and so common threads that you're going to find
11:00 in those stories is acid.
11:03 I'm thinking about the counterpoint of acid
11:06 cutting through richness and fat.
11:09 -We're going to wrap up these long-cooked items.
11:11 We finished getting the smoke flavor on the meat,
11:14 so now it's time to make sure they render properly.
11:17 So, what I'm doing right now
11:18 is just getting one last spritz on here.
11:20 ♪♪
11:23 With the pork butts, we're making pulled pork.
11:26 Pulled pork sandwiches, we do pulled pork by the pound,
11:29 so that's why we wrap it in foil.
11:31 It's actually going to create more steam.
11:33 You want to wrap it real tight.
11:35 Holds in that heat, almost braises it
11:38 until we can pull it.
11:41 Briskets are going to go on butcher paper.
11:43 Just one wrap because if there's too many pieces of paper
11:45 between it, you're not feeling how well it's rendered.
11:49 So, we just, like, one.
11:50 It holds in as much heat as you want.
11:53 It lets in as much air as we like to get that bark.
11:56 That was the first part of the process.
11:58 The decal is, like, the hardest part of the brisket to render
12:01 because it's just, like, hard fat.
12:03 So, we make sure to face those towards the fire
12:06 in the first part of the cook.
12:07 So, you can see this is the decal meat.
12:10 Or the decal fat, rather.
12:12 So, we just get the fire hitting that all day,
12:14 and now we're just kind of changing the position
12:17 a little bit.
12:18 ♪♪
12:22 So, we're just going to leave this closed
12:24 and open it around, you know, 6 or 7,
12:30 when we know that there's going to be a possibility
12:33 of some of these being done.
12:36 I started out in an upscale restaurant in high school.
12:39 Loved the energy and the, you know, being able to cook,
12:43 and I had a really great chef that served as a mentor for me.
12:47 Upon graduation, I went straight into fine dining
12:51 and then turned more towards the wood-fired,
12:54 flavor-first thought process.
12:57 Cooking with wood, curating flavor,
12:59 and that being your primary mode of creativity
13:04 or craftsmanship, barbecue is that, right?
13:09 Hours upon hours, almost the entirety of the day
13:12 spent to create such complexity.
13:16 The parallels to fine dining are there, right?
13:20 All right, we're going to look at these ribs
13:23 and then get them ready to wrap.
13:28 This mahogany is starting to come.
13:29 We got barks starting to set in pretty nice.
13:32 You see our seasoning level is good to the eye,
13:36 nice and even.
13:37 All right, so, we have our pork spray.
13:40 So, we're going to spray nice, wet down on these.
13:43 Then we call this, like, a spider web.
13:46 Pulling it over.
13:47 And then we talked about the pillow.
13:49 So, then pillow this coming like this and then folding down.
13:53 And then we talked about doing that
13:55 so that we have insulation from the temperature of the grate
13:59 because now we have, like, the flesh side of the ribs.
14:03 Look at this guy.
14:05 Same deep mahogany.
14:07 ♪♪
14:10 Once it's wrapped, I don't need to mess with it too much.
14:13 ♪♪
14:17 Okay, so, we're checking in on our chicken leg quarters.
14:21 We're an hour and a half to service right now.
14:22 So, we're right on track of getting everything off
14:28 because we do need and want everything
14:32 to get a rest period before we cut.
14:36 That's important because, you know,
14:38 we're putting all this work in for moisture retention
14:41 and, you know, we're talking about humidity
14:43 and, you know, all of these things.
14:46 Just that way, when we cut into it, you know,
14:49 it just doesn't purge all the moisture.
14:52 So, we need to let that temperature balance out,
14:56 juices redistribute.
14:59 The next step for these is they rest
15:00 and then it's not --
15:03 they're not going to get cooked more, per se.
15:05 They're going to get just finished in butter,
15:07 like, on our flat top.
15:10 And what that is is just, like,
15:12 ensuring that the skin is crisp
15:14 and then just giving it a nice little baste.
15:17 I'm always worried of it coming across as, like, chefy.
15:21 I don't want it to smack of, like, you know, "Oh."
15:24 You know, it's just like the being intentional.
15:28 Sure, maybe you call that, you know, being chefy.
15:32 [Laughs]
15:34 We're doing a quality check
15:36 and then we're setting the warmer for service.
15:41 Every single piece of meat gets touched.
15:45 You know, we're looking for, like, you know, bounce.
15:48 We're looking for, you know, all the hallmarks of, like,
15:51 you know, what we want, like, just jiggling,
15:55 resistance on the bottom.
15:56 So, I'm, like, pushing with my finger.
15:59 So, we're unwrapping and then shingling these in here
16:03 so that we can reconstitute the bark,
16:07 get it crispy because we want it crisp.
16:11 All right.
16:13 Got our lights on. Everything's ready to roll.
16:15 All right, what can I do for you?
16:18 Absolutely. Half pound?
16:20 And a side of the peanuts.
16:23 Dude, first order today, peanuts, dude.
16:27 Part of my family had origins in the South
16:30 but moved to the Northeast
16:32 and then brought these foods with them,
16:34 such as black-eyed peas.
16:36 That's on our menu.
16:38 Never leaves the menu.
16:39 Black-eyed peas originate from Senegal in West Africa.
16:42 Traditionally, you would have ham hocks or, you know,
16:44 pork neck bones.
16:46 We're in Central Texas,
16:47 so we're putting brisket burn ends in there.
16:49 What can I do for you? Hello.
16:50 -Go ahead. Hello. Hi.
16:52 Can I get a quarter of brisket?
16:53 -Yes, sir.
16:54 First of all, I hope they leave with a smile on their face
17:00 'cause they enjoyed everything and that they love the technique
17:03 and that they feel like they understand
17:06 a little bit more of what we're trying to do,
17:07 and then maybe they're inspired to go check out more places
17:11 that serve things like this.
17:13 You could definitely call this slow food, soul food style.
17:17 Here's the thing.
17:18 So with soul food, right, that was a great term
17:21 that came out of the civil rights movement
17:22 to highlight contributions
17:25 and to put an emphasis on these food ways.
17:28 And so I think over time, like, that term
17:30 re-specified modern African American
17:33 and isolated these certain things like peas and peanuts
17:37 and so on and so forth,
17:39 and that's our way of being more succinct about it.
17:42 ♪♪
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