Aaron Franklin - Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto

Copyright 2015 by Aaron Franklin
Photographs copyright 2015 by Wyatt McSpadden

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Ten Speed Press and the Ten Speed Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

With the exception of : Photo copyright Jeff Stockton, all other photos are by Wyatt McSpadden.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Franklin, Aaron.
Franklin barbecue : a meat-smoking manifesto / Aaron Franklin and Jordan Mackay ; photography by Wyatt McSpadden.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Barbecuing. I. Mackay, Jordan. II. Title.
TX840.B3F698 2015
641.76dc23
2014036177

Hardcover ISBN9781607747208
eBook ISBN9781607747215

Design and illustrations by Betsy Stromberg

v3.1_r2
a

The first question people always asked when they heard I was working on a book with Aaron Franklinthe man whose Austin restaurant is as famous for its incredibly long lines as it is for its foodwas, Is it really that good? Is the barbecue that much better than everyone elses? And, I always answered, Yep, pretty much.

The second question was always the same too. What does he do thats so different from everyone else? And my answer to that was always the same too: Not that much.

So what is the secret? Thats what everyone really wants to know. Its true that Aaron uses more expensive and higher grade meat than almost everyone else. Its also true that he has a talent for designing and tinkering with his smokers to get the optimal smoking action he desires. And, yes, he has an almost demented attention to detail when it comes to cooking meatevery log on the fire, every rib, every brisket is treated individually and given discreet consideration as it cooks and becomes barbecue. But I cant answer the original question by describing any specific maneuvers or secret techniques I learned while working with Aaron. What I can say after having spent hours and hours cooking with him at all times of day and night is that the reason his food is so successful seems to lie in his personality, his work ethic, and his remarkable talent for comprehending how things work.

During our time together, I jokingly referred to the latter as his ability to think like smoke. When he constructs a smoker, burns wood in a firebox, and puts meat in the cooker, Aaron appearsin his own completely intuitive form of considerationto calculate the way heat and smoke will curl and bounce around the insides of the smoker, around the meat, and ultimately swirl out of the stack in his desired perfect vortices. He understands how it all works, and consequently he wraps and pulls his meats at just the right moment. Its impressive.

But even more impressiveand what I most admire about the man and what I think is his greatest asset and the greatest secret of his successis the absolute, utter commitment he has to the customers who truly humble him every day by waiting for hours in line for his food. His obsessive dedication to the happiness and satisfaction of every person who eats at Franklin Barbecue is awe inspiring, especially given how easy it would be for him to kick back, drink some beers, and rest on his smoky laurels. Ive never met anyone who, while running an overwhelmingly popular restaurant, welding, working on books, and filming television shows, also tries so hard to make sure people get what they want. And these peoplediners, media, fans, amateur pitmasterswant a lot from him. He sleeps very little, and I hope he can keep it up.

Some folks may also wonder how a writer best known for his writing on wine ended up in Austin working with a modern barbecue master. Besides the fact that I grew up in Austin and went to school there (though I now live in San Francisco), wine and barbecue share several qualities that deserve observation. Both are best when made low and slow, with wine being one of the few products that goes even lower and slower than great barbecue. With both barbecue and wine, youre never exactly sure how its going to turn out until its done and you open it up. Both rely on a combination of good-quality natural ingredients and the technique and skill of an experienced practitioner. Thanks to local, natural ingredientsbe they beef or pork, hickory or oak, Pinot Noir or Rieslingand the techniques that have been developed to transform them, expressive, distinctive, and regional styles have arisen in both the barbecue and the wine world. In short, at their best, both wine and barbecue have some sort of terroir (a great French term): give me a taste of your barbecue or a swallow of your wine, and Ill tell you who you are.

That said, very little wine was consumed during the making of this book. And happily so. While wine is wonderful, immersion in the far-more-relaxed culture of barbecue was refreshing and inspiring (though the day often starts way too early). Yes, we drank a lot of beer.

Now that Im in, I dont think Ill ever be able to leave the barbecue world. Im in too deep; the compulsion is there now. Im going to continue working on keeping my fires steady, get better at knowing when to pull the ribs, and practice getting my rubs more evenly spread. And whenever I get back to Austin, Ill be putting in a few hours waiting in line at Franklin Barbecue because, yes, its just that good.

Jordan Mackay

The notion of putting everything I know about barbecue into a book is a daunting one. Not because I know so muchIm still learningbut because of the nature of barbecue itself. Its because the printed worddefinitive, exacting, permanentis in many ways antithetical to the process of cooking barbecue, which is, for lack of a better word, loosey-goosey.

So many people want to have a recipe, but with all of the variables in barbecuewood, quality of fire, meat selection, type of cooker, weather, and so onthere is no magic recipe. It just doesnt operate with absolutes of temperature, time, and measurement. In fact, there are no rights or wrongs in barbecue (well, that may be a stretch), no just one way, and certainly no simple black and white. Youre much better off with general knowledge of what you want and an arsenal of tricks to have up your sleeve.