How One of The Best Texas BBQ Joints Makes 1,400lbs of Brisket a Day

[upbeat country music]

Truth BBQ is very traditional

Central Texas-style barbecue, like, to a tee.

As a pitmaster, one of my proudest accolades

is currently being number three

on Texas Monthly's top barbecue restaurants in Texas.

Most people come here for brisket, ribs, and sausage.

I don't want anything to ever come out perfect,

because once it's perfect, it's gone.

You're never gonna get any better than perfect.

So, what we try to tell our staff is,

we gotta get better every day,

that they're almost perfect,

so they have something to chase.

My name is Leonard Botello.

I'm the owner and pitmaster of Truth BBQ in Houston, Texas.

It's about 5:30 this morning.

Rib guys have been here since about midnight last night,

so we're gonna go check on them

and get the briskets loaded and get ready for the day.

So, this is all of our bakery counter,

all our pastries and everything.

This is our front line.

This is where service goes through.

This is my favorite part.

This is our pit room.

We got five 1,000-gallon pits.

We got another one outside.

Outside is probably my favorite one.

We're gonna go get the 1,000-gallon mill scale set up.

That's kind of our overflow pit.

[energetic country music]

Basically, we just took some live coals

from one of our other pits

to get this bad boy fired up.

You can use blowtorch,

but it's pretty harsh when you're lighting the fire.

Those logs will become, like, jet, jet black

and they'll put off a lot of smoke.

We use 100% post oak out of Central Texas,

a place in Smithville.

All of this wood is aged for about 12 to 14 months

and has about 12 to 15% moisture reading in there.

And the only time that these pits die

are Sunday during service, around 3:00 to 4:00 PM,

because we're closed on Monday,

and then they get fired back up

at 5:00 on Monday morning.

So there's only really a 12-hour timeline

of when the logs aren't burning.

So, this is our burn barrel.

This is just a little box of hell, if you will.

It is loaded down with logs.

They're gonna break down through these grates,

and what's gonna fall down there

is basically natural charcoal.

So, we're gonna use this guy right here.

This is our hog cooker.

This is only fueled with charcoal.

So we're not burning any flames like this.

It's just coming off the radiant heat from the charcoal.

So, two different styles of cooking.

This is more Carolina-style.

And this is our overflow pit.

I think they have about 120 briskets all around

on top of beef ribs and pork butts going today.

I personally like to cook outside more than I do inside,

because the inside is very much more controlled

and it cooks like a lab versus cooking outside

and you're just fighting the natural environment.

So, we're gonna head inside right now.

We're gonna go get the speed rack

and we're gonna start loading these briskets on.

Will, you busy?

Will is 14 years old.

He's our fastest learner.

I'm 23. He's a child prodigy.

[Leonard laughs] [indistinct]

He embarrassed me about a month ago.

Elliot asked him what a comfortable number

of amount of rack of ribs one person could handle

and Will said 125.

125 racks by yourself is not easy,

because that's pretty much all these pits filled up.

Yeah, five pits

going full blast. Yeah.

That's difficult for me, but it was easy for him.

It's doable.

Not easy, it's doable. [videographer laughs]

So, these got seasoned yesterday.

They're trimmed up probably the day before.

We slather it up with mustard, we use our seasoning.

Putting it in the cooler the night before

actually helps that seasoning adhere a little bit better

and it helps speed up the bark building process.

So, it's about 6:30 right now.

These are gonna go on,

and they're gonna probably finish off in about 14, 16 hours.

Let's hope that it's not gonna be extended

and it's not gonna start raining on us,

'cause that definitely will affect the temperatures in here.

It takes about nine to ten people

to crank out about 120 briskets a day.

At least that many people touching 'em

that have some effect on this cook.

Briskets are about 12 to 14 pounds and 120 across the board.

About 1,500, 1,600 pounds.

The main reason that we like

these 1000-gallon propane tanks

is because since they're cylinder,

when the air flow comes in from the fire box,

it starts to make this vortex and it starts to make

this really, really natural convection.

So, it keeps all these briskets at the end very uniform

with the ones at the front.

So, it's basically live fire,

natural convection oven, if that makes sense.

That's all we're doing here.

I like to rock two water pans in the front.

We add moisture into our pit,

'cause heat and smoke is attracted to moisture.

And if there's no moisture inside of the pit,

it's gonna take it straight outta the protein.

So your briskets are gonna dry up.

It's about seven o'clock, we're gonna go grab the pig,

we're gonna get this bad boy on.

Jared's gonna be with us today.

He's basically our hog guy and all around everything else.

He was off today, but he knew that we were cooking a pig

and he wanted to come and cook a pig.

Definitely.

Surprisingly, it's better to use commodity pigs,

because they don't have nearly as much fat in them.

Pig by itself already has a ton of fat in it,

and if it's a heritage pig that ate acorns

and flowers the entire time,

you're gonna risk this thing lighting up like napalm.

'cause the entire time, it's rendering fat

from all of these areas the entire time,

and it's just dripping on top of the coals,

and there are times

where those coals will just flare up and they'll ignite.

So, it is a completely different style of cooking

and people in Texas are not used to it.

So, when we did it originally,

people were just ordering pulled pork still.

So, we kinda took that away from them

and forced them to eat whole hog,

because I wanted them to experience that.

And the reason I put that water on there

was just so this table salt could adhere to that.

It's not gonna add any flavor

and it's not gonna make it super, super salty.

All it's going to do is take the moisture outta the skin,

so it'll crisp up super, super fast

once it gets flipped over

and we start hammering it with those coals.

Every time I post this on Instagram, everybody is like,

That pig is way too salty.

But it doesn't actually go into the skin.

So, it's about eight o'clock, we got some coals going,

we're gonna coast this guy.

The coals usually last about 45 minutes to an hour

and then we're just gonna have to replenish.

I really wanted to cook pigs,

because I wanted a product that was a little bit cheaper

and pigs fluctuate from a dollar something

to two something a pound for a whole pig,

but what I didn't realize was,

you're not really getting the initial burn

like you are on the brisket cook,

but on the pig, we get the end part of the wood,

and that's it.

So, it's gonna last a lot less

and you're gonna have to go through a ton more wood.

So, this is cooking 24, 25 briskets right now.

This is getting ready to cook one pig,

and this is all day long just, like,

full of wood the entire time.

Probably, it'd be more fun

to burn dollar bills at that point.

We're gonna close everything up.

We're gonna let the salt do all its magic

and just keep on shoveling coals in there.

[lively music]

So, it's 10:00 AM.

So, these have been on about three,

three and a half hours.

Sometimes, you'll see this puddling up.

It's just the moisture coming up

from the muscle and the fat rendering.

We always tip 'em over, drain all that stuff out.

If you leave that moisture in there,

what'll happen is all that bark will wash out

and we spend 12 plus hours trying

to build that bark on theirs.

I don't know if you notice the size

of the briskets when we put 'em on

versus the size of them now

and they've only been on for about three and a half hours.

They're starting to slowly shrink up.

So, all we're doing is basically adding an extra layer

of protection to even all those muscles out,

and that's what we're gonna do right now.

These are actually cheat sheets.

They're made for baked potatoes,

but they're perfect for briskets.

After this, they're gonna wait another hour

and then they're gonna start to rotate all those briskets

in that in and out weave that we were talking about.

So, we got sausage on pit number one.

Again, they were cold smoked so they got a little bit

of color on there already,

or they have a little bit of brunette on here,

pepper jack, house, jalapeno cheddar.

This is for the beginning part of service

and they're gonna fire another batch,

and another batch, and another batch.

It's about 10:45 right now.

You can already feel the heat from the burn barrel

all the way over here.

You can kinda see the mirage of heat

that's coming off of it.

We are running up on pre-shift time.

The best advice that I ever got was from Pat Martin

and he was like,

Leonard, if you don't start the day right,

it is the equivalent to going onto the football field

and not having your ankles taped up.

You risk everything.

Pre-shift is basically us taping up our ankles

and getting ready for war today, tomorrow, and the next day,

and the rest of the existence of Truth BBQ,

but we do it every single day.

All right, big round of applause.

Dylan was here five minutes before his shift today.

[crew cheering] [crew applauding]

Has anybody sent any plates down recently?

Ashley sent a plate down.

You sent a plate down?

All right, everybody give Ashley a round of applause.

[crew cheering] [crew applauding]

That is the attention to detail

that it's not a big deal.

If it doesn't look like you would spend your money on it,

send it back.

It is okay.

Sometimes, we get bogged down

and we're going, going, going, going, going

and we just miss a step, send it back,

so we can get those steps corrected.

All right, guys?

Let's have an awesome day.

[crew cheering] [crew applauding]

When we were talking about sending a plate down,

cashier, even though she's not touching the meat

or cutting the meat, she's just important as the person

that is cutting the meat,

because she's expoing it for the most part.

We don't have an expo.

I always tell them,

If you look down at a plate

and you see how much it costs on the register,

would you spend that money on that?

And if not, send it back

to make it look like you would spend that money.

Each little detail of each person's job

actually has a huge impact on what we do.

It's not just this.

Ashley sending that plate back means lot to me.

So, it's cool to see them doing it.

It's about 11:30.

We like to do some QC up here on the line.

So, make sure that we can pivot

on the back end on the pits if we need to.

I just like to get visuals on what the brisket, rib,

sausage, everything looks like, and it's also fun

to interact with the customers.

Turkey?

Anything else?

Chopped or sliced?

Chopped. Chopped?

It's about right at two o'clock.

We're gonna check on this pig.

We're just gonna start knocking all these salts off.

This is just rebar.

We drop it on top of that.

If we were crisping the skin with the grate,

it wouldn't be able to pull all the way through.

So, this rebar helps it bubble up in between each rebar.

It's just a better way of getting

a little bit more heat to the skin.

That easy.

[relaxing music]

It's about 2:30.

We've gone through, I think, four rotations so far

on this pit.

We're gonna start wrapping these guys up.

You can use butcher paper, you can use foil.

With the paper,

it still allows smoke to penetrate the brisket

and some of that rendered fat will escape

from the paper, but not too much of it.

So, it's kind of like the sweet medium

between foil and no foil.

But there's no right or wrong way to cook a brisket.

At home, if you're cooking on a smaller pit,

nine times outta 10, foil's gonna do

a better job than butcher paper.

It's all about what works for the pit you're cooking on.

We continue to use apple cider vinegar when we wrap it up.

We can kinda see still got a little bit of life in it,

it's not gonna fall apart and it's nice and pillowy on top.

[spray spritzing]

The acidity and the vinegar is gonna keep it from sticking

to the paper when those fats are rendering down.

So, if you don't use any moisture,

add any moisture into your wrap,

what's gonna happen is,

those fats are gonna start to caramelize,

they're gonna stick to the paper,

and when you unwrap the brisket,

the bark is just gonna rip off,

and we've been working for 11 hours on this bark.

So, that's the last thing that we wanna do.

Make sure everything is nice and tight.

Fold that guy down, just like that.

We do it over, and over, and over again.

[spray spritzing]

It is about 5:00 PM.

Pig is about 188 to 190 in the shoulders and the hams.

You can see all this fat rendering out

and puddling up down here.

You see how constant the drip is.

It's like. [hissing]

It's very consistent.

So, that's, like, pretty good sign that we're ready to go

to start crisping this up.

And all this stuff that's accumulated here

and puddled up over here is what we're gonna have

to be really careful for.

I like this spade shovel for briskets,

because you can maneuver it around the logs

a little bit more.

Like this flat shovel for hog cooks,

because you can get more coals in there,

and then you can kind of go side to side

and be a little bit more strategic

about where you're placing your coals.

In between that, we're gonna go over to the offset

and we're gonna check the briskets,

because they should be just about ready to pull.

Yeah, these are definitely done.

What we're looking for is this nice saturation on paper.

You can see all that puddling up down there.

You wanna be able to push your finger into it,

but it still needs to have a nice bit

of resistance in there.

I would say it's almost like a filled water balloon.

You could probably definitely push your fingers

through there and it'll definitely pop.

When we're pulling all these briskets off,

a lot of people will say they need to rest

for one and a half to two hours or so.

I mean, that's what a lot of places on the internet say,

but we don't know if that brisket

was 10 pounds or 25 pounds.

So, the sweet spot is really 145 degrees.

So, we're gonna load 'em up on these speed racks,

and we're gonna have airflow going underneath them on top

of them so they can cool down at a normal rate

versus putting it on top of a table

and it's just re-conducting that heat.

And they can take anywhere from two to three hours

to get down to 145 degrees.

On this pig, we are 10 and a half hours in.

Smaller pig, quicker cook time.

We're ready to crisp.

We're gonna get some fresh coals and move it over the fat,

and it's going to blister it immediately.

Should be interesting.

There's a lot of fat puddled up down there.

So, you see it starting to puff up right here.

We have a ton of work ahead of us for the rest of the night.

So, we're gonna let this guy finish up,

pull the rest of these briskets,

and start prep for midnight shift and finish up for tonight.

I'd love for you guys to stay, but we got a ton to do.

So, I'm sorry, but you guys gotta get outta here.