As a chef, I enjoy cooking things that take a little time, a little effort to make them
come out right.
The idea of cooking something that takes 12 hours and have it come out perfect is a challenge
to brine a brisket and cook it based on its size of 4, 5, or 6 hours.
The wood goes down at the bottom, the smoke goes up and around and it has a fan in and
around which circulates the smoke and keeps the smoke in the chamber before it goes out.
I use the molasses brine on the brisket and that started out life several years ago as
a pastrami brine.
I did pastrami for several years at another restaurant and then when I moved here, pastrami
doesn't exactly fit the southern barbecue theme so I took out a lot of the chemicals
and the pink salt and some of the other things and just made it a straight molasses salt
and sugar brine for the brisket and again with that sweetness, the meat and the smoke
it comes out really, really good and then so we made our sweeter barbecue sauce to go
with that flavor which is the honey, coriander, barbecue sauce and they go together phenomenally.
Smoke chicken that we use, I use Springer Mountain chicken and I brine it with a sweet
tea brine that I first, I believe, read about maybe 10 years ago and the idea of using tea
and a brine just stuck with me over the years and never did anything with it until a couple
years ago and then pulled it out of memory somewhere and made a very simple brine with
the tea, salt and sugar and some spices and it came out phenomenally.
First we just used it as a roasted chicken but then I put the chicken in the smoker and
it comes out, it's phenomenal.
Alright, so the chicken's cooked for about two hours.
They come out, the tea not only affects the flavor but it affects the color so they come
out with a really nice mahogany color.
Then the sauce we made to go with that is an Alabama style white barbecue sauce or an
ivory barbecue sauce and the interaction between the smoked chicken, the brine and that sauce
is amazing.
