Why autumn is the time to start taking your barbecue seriously
Brisket you can only make with a 19-hour cooking session.
We pull the sun bleached cover off the barbecue when the first hot days arrive in November and the evenings start to lengthen. Barbecues are summer: cold beer, sizzling sausages, chops and steaks.
But when autumn's crisp cooler evenings arrive and the sun dips we reach for the polar fleece and the barbecue covers go back on for a hibernation.
This is a comfortable routine for many people. Summer is barbie season.
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Barbeque book author Chris Fortune says autumn ios a great time for serious barbecuing.
But sometimes you need to break cycles and routines. What if this autumn you left the covers off, and looked at the trusty barbecue in a different way. Instead of it being the centre of a hot day backyard party, how about focusing more on the food, flavours and warmth it can create?
Autumn rocks for barbecuing
The finished brisket - the toughest piece of beef has become the juiciest and most tender cut you can find.
Nelson-based chef Chris Fortune published Portable BBQ Book late last year.
He believes far too many people miss out on what a barbecue can create when it comes to lip-smacking memorable flavours and autumn is the perfect time to explore these new ideas.
"I think summer can be over-rated," he says. "Autumn is a season when a lot of produce is tastier. Like fennel, which is available - some vegetables are beautiful on the barbecue.
Lionel Bridger of Christchurch cooks a brisket on his barbecue over 19 hours.
Seafood is also fresher. He says that's because in warm months the fish go far out to find colder waters and there's more travelling time for fishing boats. In colder months they are closer to shore and get to us more quickly.
Autumn also brings fresh, full-flavoured wild mushrooms, and even beetroot roasted on the barbecue is beautiful.
But it's meat where an autumn barbecue could make the biggest difference to your appreciation of it.
Wakanui beef brisket which has been cooked and smoked for 16 hours at Bootleg BBQ restaurant in Christchurch. Ribs smoking in the cooker.
While summer barbecues are all about gathering around the hot plate or grill at the end of a hot day and celebrating a social occasion, autumn barbecues are a chance to focus more intently on the food and the flavours.
Long and slow does it better
It's a mindset change. Instead of hot, fast cooking, lining up at the grill with plates for blackened sausages and chicken and leathery charred steaks, think of long-slow cooking, with fall-apart tender meat, full of spice and smoke flavours. This the true art of barbecuing.
And it is an art. Fortune says it's about learning to control the barbecue and not the barbecue controlling you.
It's a lot like learning how to drive. There's a learning curve, a few mistakes, some close calls, but as time passes you get the hang of it and start to sense where the barbecue is going and what it is doing.
Many of our "blast the food at 5pm" barbecues can be used for long, slow cooking.
For gas barbecues, shut some of the burners off, turn the heat down and lower the hood with indirect heat. Set up resting areas on the grill plate.
For charcoal and briquette barbecues, it's about banking up the coals, then cutting back the airflow to lower the heat. Most barbecues don't tell you what temperature they are running at, so it can be a bit trial and error.
Barbecues like the ceramic Big Green Egg help give the control over heat that long, slow cooking requires.
Skip the pre-cooked sausies
Long, slow cooking that focuses on flavour will also require different foods. The you-in-control mindshift continues with now needing to know about the food you are cooking and how it responds to temperature and flavour enhancing.
"Whereas you might have faster cooking cuts in summer, now you want to go for different cuts of meat like flank, or skirt, or iron steak that need a bit more preparing," says Fortune.
This is also the style of cooking that suits bigger tougher cuts like brisket and shoulder and flanks, but which will also give you so much more back in flavour and tenderness. It's a style that includes brining, rubs, marinades, grinds, basting, and careful smoking. Slow cooking creates juicy tenderness.
The spiritual homeland of this barbecueing style is southern United States.
"In America, cooking with ceramic barbecues is the trend. Barbecues like the green egg are fashionable. It takes someone two, four, six hours to cook on these. It's long and slow. It's understanding what heat does to food, as opposed to four minutes getting it black on the outside and half cooked in the middle Kiwi style."
Charlie George owns Bootleg BBQ in Christchurch and his imported smoker/cooker is commercial option for getting the long slow-cooked taste.
And slowness carries on even after the cooking.
"The biggest, biggest, biggest fault I find with many barbecues is people don't rest their meats once they have been cooked. Either they haven't thought about it, or they haven't got enough space."
Fortune says in autumn everything slows down a bit. "Life slows down, you tend to focus more on the whole experience, not just feeding people. It's about the whole experience."
"My personal preference is playing with open fires. I love old school Webers, hot coals. I think part of it is the skill set and pleasure of poking things with sticks, poking your hot coals with sticks, burning things. Don't get me wrong, I'm a busy person and we always have a gas barbecue around, but when you have got time and you want serious eats then charcoal is the way to go."
Smoking is cool
Charcoal gives smoky flavours but that can be enhanced by chips of wood soaked in water, or well-soaked planks laid across the coals. Popular varieties include manuka, hickory, apple, cedar and peach.
Fortune often uses tea leaves. "We put a tin foil packet on top of the charcoal and in that you might have things like star anise, green tea, black tea, a little bit of rice. It smokes and burns and gives you a great flavour."
Brining is a technique that can make chicken moist and tender. "It's one of those things that people are not sure what to do or it feels too hard, but its just a liquid, salt and sugar, and immersing the meat in it for 20 minutes or 24 hours. When you eat it, it will be much more succulent."
PROFESSIONAL TOUCH
It's still possible to experience full flavoured, slow cooked barbecue cuts even if you can't be bothered to put in all the effort to do it yourself. That's when you head for a professional barbecue joint. They are dotted around the country including Bootleg BBQ in Christchurch, Uncle Mike's Kansas City BBQ in Wellington and Smith & McKenzie Chophouse in Hamilton.
At Bootleg BBQ, owner Charlie George uses an imported Southern Pride oven and smoker that takes 16 hours at to cook a rub-treated Wakanui brisket to juicy perfection. They smoke with green pear or apple wood and all the meat is free range. Pork shoulders take 14 hours and even ribs take 2½ hours.
ABOVE AND BEYOND
Lionel Bridger of Rangiora is one of an increasing number of Kiwis who go all out to get the barbecue flavour of the American deep south.
He bought a US-made Green Mountain Grill pellet-fired barbecue and this is how over 19 hours he creates the ultimate barbecued brisket that's juicy, tender, has a dark mahogany "bark", a crust with caramalised flavours of spicy rub, and an inner pink ring of smoke.
* On Monday he collects a pre-ordered 3-4kg brisket that's 5cm thick from his local butcher and puts it in the fridge.
* On Thursday he injects with beef stock infused with seasonings and trims fat if necessary.
* On Friday he covers it with homemade mustard, then covers with dry rub.
* On Friday at 11pm it goes in the grill running at 90-100 degrees Celsius.
* On Saturday, from 2am, it gets occasional sprays of apple juice to keep it moist and the internal temperature is checked. When it reaches 73C the brisket is wrapped in foil and put back for however long it takes to get the internal temperature up to 90deg. Then it is taken out, wrapped in a tea towel and put in a chilli bin to cool slowly. That might take 3 hours. It's ready to serve at about 6pm.
Bridger says a thick slice will pass the hang test if he did the job right. The slice is draped over a finger. If it breaks, it is too dry. If it hangs drooping on both sides, he's nailed it.
"I tell you what, you won't taste better meat," he says. Tasting some he prepared over the weekend, he's right. It was rich, juicy, beef flavoured with gentle spice and heat from the rub and a background layer of smoke. There's nothing like it.
BARBECUE RUB RECIPES FROM CHRIS FORTUNE'S PORTABLE BBQ BOOK.
RUB A DUB
Fortune says it's satisfying to rub flavours into raw meat and enjoy the benefits many hours later. "Using salt, spices, sugar and other ingredients you can unlock flavours you can't replicate any other way."
CAJUN RUB
Use this for poultry or pork cuts. Combine and rub into meat and leave for at least four hours, but preferably overnight before cooking.
4 tablespoons smoked paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons dried thyme
4 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons onion powder
RED MEAT MARINADE
This gives any piece of red meat an extra kick. Combine and cover meat for a minimum of 2 hours, turning it several times.
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon dark rum
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
2 tablespoons vinegar
Salt and pepper
GOOD MEATS FOR LONG, SLOW COOKING
Beef - Ribs, cheeks, flank, brisket
Pork - ribs, shanks, shoulders
Poultry - whole chickens, butterflied chickens, thighs.
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