The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Missouri · Main

Missouri Burnt Ends

  • Advanced
  • 10 h
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

smoky · sweet-edged · charred · gently hot Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, a sweet edge rounding the corners, with warmth in the tail.

Ingredients

  • 2kg beef brisket point
  • 3 tbsp brown sugar
  • 2 tbsp paprika
  • 1 tbsp salt
  • 1 tbsp black pepper
  • 1 tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 tsp cayenne
  • 250ml barbecue sauce
  • 2 tbsp honey

Equipment

Thermometer · Smoker

The skills inside

Low & slow smoking

The words inside

Brisket (Point vs. Flat)

Allergen screen

None found among the 14 screened.

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Rub the brisket point all over with the mixed sugar and spices.
  2. Smoke at 110C over hickory 6-7 hours until the internal temperature reaches 90C and the bark is dark. 420 min
  3. Cut the point into 3cm cubes.
  4. Toss the cubes with the barbecue sauce and honey and return them to the smoker in a pan.
  5. Smoke 1-2 hours more until the sauce caramelizes and the cubes turn sticky and tender. 120 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Low & slow smoking 12 recipes

  • The smoke coming off is thin and blue, not white and rolling. White smoke is unburnt fuel and it deposits soot and acrid phenols; a fire drawing enough air to burn its own smoke is what perfumes rather than tars.
  • The chamber held its temperature within a narrow band for the whole cook, adjusted with the air intake rather than by adding fuel in armfuls. A pit swinging fifty degrees cooks the outside twice and the middle once.
  • The stall was expected and waited out or wrapped through deliberately, not chased with heat. A brisket that sits at 70C (158F) for three hours is losing exactly as much water as it needs to; the cook who turns the fire up renders it dry.
  • Doneness was judged by feel and by probe, never by the clock: the probe slides in with no resistance anywhere, and the number that matters is the one where the collagen has gone, not a time per kilo.
  • It rested long and warm, an hour or more, wrapped and out of any draught. Cut straight off the pit and the juice runs onto the board instead of staying in the slice.

Where it goes wrong The fire was fed for temperature rather than for combustion, so it smouldered: white smoke, a bitter deposit on the surface, and a swing in the chamber every time more fuel went on. Then the stall was read as a stall in progress rather than evaporation doing its work, the heat went up, and the meat finished dry with a hard grey band under the bark.

At the Table

The Pour
Zinfandel (old-vine)
Also Right
Shiraz or Malbec
From the Taps
Smoked porter
Zero-Proof
Cherry cola, honestly

Barbecue’s sweet-smoke wants jammy fruit that shakes hands with the sauce; dry austere reds argue with sugar and lose.

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

BBQ with Franklin: The Brisket ★ A canon film: verified This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Missouri Burnt Ends Technique: Low & slow smoking★ A canon film, verified Search YouTube: J. Kenji López-Alt on Missouri Burnt Ends A YouTube search for J. Kenji López-Alt and this dish. No affiliation.