From 3 Michelin Stars To A Texas BBQ Truck

[upbeat rock music]

Fiasco BBQ is my barbecue food truck,

and I'm the owner and pitmaster.

I am literally the only employee,

I'm the only one who works here.

The vast, vast majority of my career

is on the wine side and the beverage side,

and it turns out I could make it all the way to the top,

becoming the beverage director

for a three-star Michelin restaurant called Jean-George,

and then, I took a step away from hospitality,

then when we moved to Austin,

that's where I started teaching myself how to smoke meat.

I opened Fiasco BBQ because, number one, I love barbecue,

number two, I love cooking barbecue for other people,

number three, I love a challenge,

and number four, I'm not afraid of it.

[upbeat rock music]

Good morning, it's 4:25,

my name is Eric and this is Fiasco BBQ,

my food truck in East Austin.

First thing we have to do is get the fire lit

so we can get the meats on the smoker by five o'clock.

Let's go.

[upbeat funk music]

[crickets chirping]

So I use post oak,

which is very traditional in Central Texas.

Little tip and trick for you folks at home,

if you're having a hard time getting your fire lit,

you get a leaf blower,

because you're adding oxygen to the firebox,

which is what fire needs,

and as you can see right now, this fire is going.

It is 4:39 AM and the current temperature is 80 degrees,

81% humidity.

Yeah, I'm already sweating.

I could start a little bit later,

but then I'd be here later and I've got kids at home,

and I already get up at 3:30 in the morning

to get here and get this started at 5:00,

so I'd rather just get it over with.

I wanna make sure that I keep this door closed

so I don't lose all the heat.

Definitely still plenty enough space

to get oxygen coming in to keep that fire going.

Now we're gonna go pull the meat out of the refrigerator

and we're gonna get ready to put it on the smoker.

[upbeat funk music]

Brisket number one, brisket number two.

So these briskets will be for tomorrow,

I'm also cooking one rack of pork ribs for today,

I never really have any way to know when people are coming,

so I just make sure

I got everything ready to go at 11 o'clock.

And I've got clean smoke coming out of my chimney.

The smoke that you can barely see

lets you know that you've got good smoke.

They call it blue smoke.

Right now you can't tell that it's blue,

but later today, you'll be able to see it.

I'm gonna give a quick check on the temp

just to see what it's at.

Right now we're sitting at 250°.

Oh, I'm ready to put meat on now,

even if it was under 250°,

as long as I've got that clean smoke, I'm good to go.

Yesterday I trimmed and seasoned the briskets

to dry brine overnight.

They really take on a lot of flavor.

The longer you can season these things,

the better off you are.

This is the second brisket going on the smoker.

We moved to Austin in 2020,

that's where I started teaching myself how to smoke meat,

was in the parking lot of our apartment on a Weber kettle.

If you look back in my Instagram,

you can see untrimmed briskets

and meat pointed in the wrong direction,

but, you know, I just kept going and going and going,

and trial and error, and research, and asking questions

and brisket was not something I did a lot at home

because I would have to start

at basically three o'clock in the morning

with my smoker right outside the bedroom window.

And last, but certainly not least,

probably my favorite, the ribs.

They're the first ones

that I was able to do well consistently.

First, I like cooking 'em, I like eating 'em.

So this is the pit at Fiasco, it's a big offset smoker,

the fire is in the firebox here,

gets pulled through the smoker by the chimney,

that's what makes this the warmest part of the smoker.

I was incredibly lucky to find this smoker

on Facebook Marketplace

because it is in a trailer fully enclosed,

which is a requirement of the city of Austin

so the general public

can't come up and touch it and get hurt.

So in the warmest chamber right here, I've got the briskets,

and in the the middle chamber I have the pork ribs.

This chamber is more consistent in temperature,

this chamber, it's hotter towards the back

than it is towards the front.

Every smoker is different,

they all have their own idiosyncrasies,

warm spots, cool spots,

a very common practice is to get some Pillsbury biscuits...

[indistinct]

The can, pop it open, and fill your smoker with biscuits,

and that will tell you where the warm spots are

and the cool spots depending on how those biscuits rise

and if they start to burn.

I'm gonna head into the smoker trailer,

and then, we'll continue on with our day.

[upbeat drum music]

All right, it's just after seven o'clock,

so we're in the Fiasco BBQ food trailer,

as you can see, it's not very big.

It's big enough for me.

Once I have another employee,

we'll have to see how that works,

but when I got this food trailer

this was the only shelf in here,

so I added these shelves here,

I added this shelf here and I added this shelf here.

So right here is my protein refrigerator,

all my protein goes in here,

and then, this is my basically produce cooler over here

where the sides and the pickled things come from.

The warmer's one of the most important pieces of equipment

for barbecue, because what it does is it allows you

to hold the meat at 140 to 150 degrees,

that way, it keeps it out of the temperature danger zone

for bacterial growth,

but it doesn't continue to cook the meat.

The only downside is this door swings this way,

but I've been able to navigate that without any real issue.

At this point, what I'm gonna do

is pull the turkey out of the refrigerator,

get it seasoned and ready to go on the smoker

in about 10 minutes.

[relaxed rock music]

I love having turkey on my menu

because it smokes really well,

it's probably the most popular meat that I serve.

I think that turkey

is gaining a larger footprint in barbecue,

it's great to have a lighter option for a smoked meat,

it is great to have something

that is just jam-packed with protein

and very lean for people that are more conscious

about what they're ingesting.

I just love how tender it is,

how great it takes smoke flavor

but never seems overwhelmingly smokey,

and how it absorbs the flavor of the rub.

Proteins with low fat content

will tend to cook a little bit faster

because we don't need to worry about rendering the fat.

So what we're gonna do now is season the turkey.

This is a fairly simple rub,

salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne,

couple other ingredients I won't share.

The purpose of the rub on the turkey

is not to create a bark,

what it is is just to provide some seasoning

for the turkey itself.

A bark on proteins takes hours of smoke contact,

this is only gonna get an hour and a half,

and then, it's gonna get wrapped up,

basically, like, finishing in the oven at a low temperature.

Because it's a little bit cooler,

I wanna put the turkey on the middle chamber.

This also gives us our opportunity

to look at our ribs and brisket for the first time today,

and I see that the ribs are looking really good,

I'm gonna hit it with a little apple cider vinegar

just to keep the top moist, keep it from drying out,

and I'm now...

Oh, these are heavy.

Gonna check those briskets for the first time,

I can see that our temperature's dipped a little bit,

so I need to add some more fuel to the fire,

but these are looking really good

for only two and a half hours.

There is some thought

that adding apple cider vinegar helps develop the bark

because the smoke will stick to it.

So the downtime is starting to reach its end for the day,

we're gonna start getting some of the sides prepped,

and we're gonna get going and ready for service at 11:00.

[upbeat rock music]

All right, 8:40 in the morning,

I'm gonna start prepping my potato salad.

For all of you actual chefs and line cooks out there,

avert your eyes.

And these are sides that are built on lightness,

freshness and acidity.

Instead of using mayonnaise or sour cream,

we dress it with Greek yogurt.

These recipes were developed over weeks

of tinkering, and trial and error,

and what was going to be something that would be reasonable

for a one-person barbecue food truck

to execute on a daily basis,

because these are made fresh every day.

So basically how I get my supplies right now

for the most part is by shopping on my own.

I have a larger vendor that I use,

but the order minimums are often times larger

than what I require.

My brisket, I buy it at Costco,

it's less expensive than what you can find

from a food vendor.

Literally everything for this business I do by myself

because not only am I the pitmaster, and the prep cook,

and the cashier, and the dishwasher and the porter,

I'm also the purchaser, I'm also the accountant.

What happens on Monday is I gotta balance my books,

Tuesday I am back at the truck

to see what I need to order for the weekend,

and then, on Wednesday I'll go pick up my briskets,

and then, on Thursday I'll get everything else,

whether I'm picking it up or it's delivered,

and then, I start prep for the weekend.

There's no rest for the wicked in this business.

All right, it's 9:00 AM now, it's a perfect time

to put a pin in the potato salad,

we're gonna go wrap the ribs and the turkey.

[upbeat reggae music]

So now the turkey's been on for an hour and a half,

I'm gonna wrap it up right now.

It's taken on about as much smoke

as it's really gonna take on,

and I don't want the exterior of the turkey

to get too firm, so I'm gonna wrap it.

When it's wrapped, it retains moisture

so it doesn't start to dry out.

This turkey is not gonna take on any more smoke,

it's just basically gonna finish

like it's cooking in an oven.

And now, we'll get set up to wrap our rack of ribs.

So the ribs take a little...

A few more steps to wrap

because we're gonna add a glaze to them.

I'm gonna pull the rack out,

I'm gonna lay down some brown sugar.

The brown sugar will caramelize

and add a really nice texture.

It'll give it a little more sweetness,

but that's not really what it's for,

and then, using the barbecue sauce

will enhance the color of the rack of ribs as well,

so it's gonna give it more concentrated

sort of deep red color with the glaze.

It is a ketchup-based sauce, like most barbecue sauces,

with black pepper, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder,

again, a little cayenne because I like a touch of heat.

I don't want the meat to pull too far from the bone,

but I want that process to have started

because if it's pulling too far back,

that means it's getting really close to being done,

and at that point, I might have to make the decision

to just finish the ribs unwrapped,

but that also means that, at least for today,

I don't have the glaze that I wanna use

because I didn't have the time to do it.

So that's wrapped up, ready,

you can see it's already starting to bend,

that's a good sign

that it still has more cooking time to go,

and I'm just gonna put it back in the smoker meat-side down.

[upbeat drum music]

All right, it's 10 o'clock,

time to get the burgers on the smoker.

There's five of them, I make 'em by hand every day.

I only make five every day.

They're magically delicious,

but I'm not trying to be a burger joint.

What I love about a smoked burger

is just the absolute juicy, tender,

smoky flavor and texture,

it's not grilled over high heat or seared,

it's definitely gonna be much softer

and more tender than anything like a smash burger,

because the idea behind that

is sear the outside so you don't lose the fat,

whereas what I'm trying to do is render some of that fat out

and keeping it well integrated

throughout all of the meat.

Burger's not something you're gonna find

in every barbecue joint in Austin, but you can find them.

I wanna give somebody an option

of something that's not barbecue.

If they're in the neighborhood,

they wanna get a quick lunch,

I can bang out a burger from the food truck in no time,

so they're still getting a great lunch,

but it's not necessarily barbecue.

So the burgers will smoke for about 45 minutes,

at 10:30, I'm gonna flip 'em,

and then, I'll pull 'em at 10:45

and they'll go in the warmer.

[upbeat drum music]

All right, it's 10:15,

now I gotta write my menu on my butcher paper

so I can get it posted up to social media

so people know what I got today.

I don't have the same menu every weekend

because one of the sides changes,

I always have the potato salad,

sometimes on Friday I have brisket, sometimes I don't,

so if I don't have brisket, I need to have something else,

a lot of times, I'll do beef back ribs,

but I'm fortunate enough to have some brisket today,

so we're just gonna get it set up.

If I misspell any of these words, I'm...

I got bigger problems.

High-tech, real high-tech.

Like, this is legit Fiasco.

This guy's writing a menu every day. What a mess.

It's not so much

that things could go wrong at any moment,

though of course, they can,

it's just more of it being a one-man operation

and everything that you've seen throughout the day,

it's just kind of a fiasco doing it by yourself,

but I love it.

All right, now, I gotta get a photo of that

so I can get it posted.

[upbeat rock music]

All right.

[camera snapping]

[upbeat rock music]

All right, 10:30, time to start

getting some meat off the smoker.

[upbeat rock music]

You never see me with a tray that doesn't have a foil wrap,

that's because it saves a ton of time

on wear washing at the end of the day.

You don't wanna be humped over a kitchen sink

at the end of a long day scrubbing pans

when you can just wrap 'em in foil,

and then, throw that foil out.

I am also the dishwasher, that is correct.

First thing we're gonna do is flip our burgers,

also gives me an opportunity

to check on the briskets, which looks good.

So as you can see, you do start

to get some grill marks on there just because this grate

has been sitting in the heat all day long,

it's in no way caramelizing the meat,

it's just some grill marks.

All right, and now, these are done,

ribs are off, they're right here,

turkey's not quite ready yet, so we're gonna leave that

on the smoker for a little bit longer.

The distance between the wood

and the smoker is a new phenomenon,

but that's where my wood's gonna live for now,

I bought a little cart to haul it back,

but obviously, I forgot about that.

Now I'm gonna build my workstation.

So for most of this day, this has been a prep kitchen,

but at this point, we're 20 minutes from opening,

I gotta have everything ready to go at 11 o'clock.

Always thinking about working as cleanly as possible

and having as little breakdown,

so I will line this with plastic

before I put the cutting boards on,

it doesn't prevent me from having to wash it,

but it generally prevents juices

from soaking into the cutting board.

All right, 10:45, time to pull the burgers off the smoker

and get the cheese on 'em,

get 'em in the warmer so that cheese gets nice and melty.

After 45 minutes between 265° and let's say 280°,

they come out about medium, they're gonna go in the warmer,

so they're gonna cook up a little bit more,

but they'll never get to well-done.

Good old American cheese.

The best for cheeseburgers

because it melts without splitting.

All right, it's 11 o'clock,

we're gonna pull that turkey off the smoker,

it's where I want it to be at 150°,

and put it into the warmer.

Well, if your turkey's dry, it's one of three things,

you either cooked it too long,

you cooked it too hot or you didn't wrap it.

All the prep is done,

the meats are off the smoker and in the warmer,

briskets are still cooking for tomorrow,

I'll keep an eye on that, keep an eye on the fire,

we'll wrap those a little bit later this afternoon,

but as of now, I'm open for business.

[upbeat rock music]

All right, let's get some tunes.

[upbeat rock music]

Just some blues rock and roll all day long.

[upbeat rock music]

[upbeat rock music continues]

All right, y'all, the lunch rush is over,

but I still got a lot of work to do,

I got briskets on the smoker for tomorrow,

I gotta clean this place up,

thanks for spending the day with me, now, y'all gotta go.

[upbeat rock music]