Beef Tallow Butcher Paper Process for Brisket

[Chris Allingham]

Jumping off from this recent post: https://tvwbb.com/threads/brisket-injection.85732/

I'm not big on fads, but maybe you've noticed that the use of beef tallow when cooking brisket to promote moist meat seems to the current fad of the day. "Mad Scientist BBQ" on YouTube believes that the secret of Aaron Franklin's delicious brisket is the application of melted beef tallow to the pink butcher paper when the meat is wrapped for the last part of cooking in the pit, and then again when the brisket is rewrapped in fresh, beef tallowed pink butcher paper for the resting period before serving.

It's not my habit to watch other people's barbecue videos, but Harry Soo's first video on this subject popped up in my Facebook feed and I watched it, then I went back and watched the one from Mad Scientist BBQ. In the comment section of Mad Scientist BBQ's video, someone named John Pafford mentioned seeing an old episode of Andrew Zimmern's "Delicious Destinations" in which Zimmern visited Franklin BBQ. "Showed Aaron wrapping a brisket that was really wet and soaking through the paper and next to him was a steam table pan full of a light brown liquid that could only be beef tallow!"

I found that show on Xfinity On Demand and took these photos.



In this photo, you can see that the brisket looks moist, but there's not a lot of liquid on the butcher paper. Aaron's hands don't look oily.



In this photo, the paper is folded over the brisket and the paper is very damp. We see the steam table pan of brown liquid in the background with the lid removed and placed on top of the other pan. We don't see a brush or squirt bottle, and again Aaron's hands don't appear to be oily. There appears to be a yellow spray bottle in the bottom right corner of the picture.



When we zoom in, it looks like the outside surface of the paper has been wetted. Liquid is dripping down the outside edge of the paper and there are two oily streaks on the table.



And here we see the wrapped brisket going back into the smoker, with the butcher paper looking very wet.



So clearly there has been the application of something oily to the butcher paper during the wrapping process, and beef tallow seems to be the likely substance. And it's interesting to me that it appears to have been applied to the outside surface of the paper, not the inside as was done in the Mad Scientist BBQ video. Note that in Harry's video, he oils everything...the inside and outside surfaces of the paper, and he drizzles some directly onto the meat.

Based on my previous understanding of Franklin's process, I have been spraying the inside surface of the butcher paper with apple cider vinegar, the same stuff I've been spritzing the meat with during the initial part of the cooking process, then laying the brisket on the wet paper, wrapping it up, and placing it back into the WSM to finish cooking. So this use of tallow instead of ACV is news to me.

Why does this work? One theory is that the oiled paper acts more like aluminum foil than does dry butcher paper, keeping more moisture inside the paper package during cooking, and that rewrapping with a fresh piece of oiled paper after cooking for the resting period provides another shot of tallow to baste the meat and keep it moist before slicing and serving.

I know that Harry Soo is testing a bunch of variations on this process, and in one of his latest videos he feels that basting with tallow during cooking then wrapping in plain butcher paper gave a slightly better result than not basting with tallow and wrapping in tallowed butcher paper. The thought of basting a brisket with tallow during cooking reminds me of how we used to recommend placing strips of raw bacon on top of brisket flats to keep the meat moist. Or cooking a pork butt on the top grate and a brisket on the bottom grate in the hopes that the rendered pork fat would baste the brisket below. With all this fussing over brisket, you'd think we would realize it's a tough, ornery cut of meat and we'd be better off moving on to something else like a fatty chuck roast or rib roast!

Anyway, on my next brisket I will try to make my own melted beef tallow from the trimmed brisket fat and give this method a try. Am I about to fall for the latest "fad d'jour"? Maybe so. What do you think? Is this something you'd like to try or have already tried? How did it work out for you?

 

[Kevin K]

just so happens I did my first whole brisket in a while, inspired by both tallow videos you mentioned! I don't have a lot of experience with whole brisket, so take my notes with a grain of salt. wish I had done a better job with pictures and notes, but this is my recollection of the cook.

started with a whole 14# packer brisket from Sam's (which Harry says is less desirable than Costco!), and trimmed it sort of competition style - I'm not good at that part either. anatomy was a little goofy - point was kind of small and balled up. seasoned with SPG and let it sit just for aan hour or so.

while I was waiting, I took a mix of the trimmed fats (some hard, others soft), and put it on low heat to start the render. I've never made tallow before, so this was a first. I didn't know if I should use the "sausage fat", or if any would do. I had so much trimming I didn't use any that had meat on it. not sure how it was supposed to go, but after about an hour at very low heat (barely simmering), I had a pot of rendered fat, with some pig ear/chicharron looking pieces left in the pot. I didn't chop or grind the fat first, so it took a while to really start rendering. I could have added some water to start it off, or ground it up, but I had plenty of time! once I had a couple cups worth of golden, liquid tallow, I strained twice with a fine metal strainer, then once more through a coffee filter. the final product was clear and golden, and solidified in the fridge to a snow white cake. If Franklin is using just tallow, I wonder if it's just not as clarified (must not matter), or if it is instead doctored in some way.

around midnight, I fired up my 18.5" bullet using the minion method. used the wood chunks I had on hand, which was weber cherry and hickory, and propped the brisket fat down on a wrapped chunk of wood to shed any liquid. I'm in Hawaii, so my wood options are limited to what Amazon will send me.

went to sleep around 1am with the temp right around 250, both meat and lid temp being monitored by a thermoworks smoke unit. brisket temp ran up to 135-140 pretty quick, but I didn't touch through the night. went to sleep and woke up around 5am with the temp holding, and the meat still between 140 and 150. no alarms through the night, so I hit snooze for another hour.

here is where I thought I messed up. the cooker temp started to dip a little around 6am, so I went to spray with apple cider vinegar, and I opened my vents a little to stretch the charcoal I had going. right after I did that, the temp started shooting up, so I thought I had overcorrected. I closed my vents down, and waited a bit, but it kept rising, past 300. I kept watching, hoping this "flare up" was going to subside, but it wasn't until 7am that I realized that my water pan must be empty! went back, and sure enough it was dry - I could hear the fat dripping and sizzling before I even opened the lid. quickly added some water, and got the temps back down to around 250.

I really only sprayed one more time around 8am, then had to take care of some things. by 10am, meat was approaching 170, so I got ready to wrap. took my tallow out of the fridge, and put it on low heat. it melted super fast - I don't think this would be good by itself for candles! tore off a section of pink butcher paper, pulled the meat from the cooker, and did it up Harry Soo style. spread a think layer of tallow on the paper, and basted the meat side with some tallow (not soaking). flipped the brisket and spread some over the paper that would wrap over the top. finished the wrap, then put it fat up back on the heat. the paper was already shiny on the outside - not translucent, and still pink. we saved the rest of the tallow for other frying experiments!

meat temp was stalled as expected (probe through the paper into the flat), and around noon started to climb again. this was my second, and real mistake. as the meat was approaching 200, it already felt soft. I should have pulled it, even if it was "early", since we were planning on sandwiches. instead, I convinced myself to get closer to 205. pulled it around 2pm (~14 hrs), and put it in a warmer to sit until dinner at 6pm. paper at this point had changed color, and the glassy pink was now also more golden. probably a combination of whatever smoke was left, and the fat cooking the paper.

when I finally unwrapped it to slice, I did NOT have a ton of liquid in the paper like both Mad Scientist and Harry Soo had. I don't think it went back into the meat though - I think it may have been a combo of an aggressive trim, and the weird anatomy (small point).

brisket looked and smelled good. bark was well set and not burned. had a nice "jiggle" to it. when I sliced it, it was FULL of moisture, but probably overcooked and headed toward mushy. slices draped though and held together until lightly tugged, where it separated easily. smoke ring was present, but not that visible after slicing, but maybe because it was coming apart. slicing through the whole piece was a bit difficult because there wasn't a great place to turn. I ended up separating the point, and the seam fat was a THICK layer of jelly.

I was serving a group though, and no one complained, so mission accomplished(?)

so did the tallow do anything?!? I'm going to do a couple more soon to get better at brisket, and then maybe I can say. the biggest fear was dry brisket, and that did NOT happen, even with 14 hours on the smoker, funky shaped meat, and a temp spike in the middle of the cook. flavor was super beefy, with good smoke. texture was ok - probably should have pulled at 199 when it was just soft enough.

personally, I don't think Aaron Franklin has any secrets - he's got a good combination of technique and experience. even he says that you can only be so picky when you are ordering CASES of brisket to cook, and firing cords and cords of wood, with a set of different smokers. this could certainly be one of the little things he does. for me, it might be a safety crutch to keep things edible, but it wasn't a magic shortcut to award winning brisket.

at the very least, I got to have a nice chat with an old friend about it, and people asked me to do it again, so I'll keep practicing!

anyone else?

here are some pictures I took:

trimmed and seasoned


tallow factory

draped in the smoker

ready to wrap

cold tallow

warmed

wrapping


resting

sliced - I just realized this picture looks worse than it was. I ended up scraping the crumbled bits into the serving pan, so while it looks like it can't hold together, it's actually just the loose pieces on top. that first slice laying over is more like it was. you can see the jelly on the back end of the sliced flat where is was attached to the point (in the rear of the pan). had to slice it all at once since we were assembling sandwiches to distribute to manage health and safety due to COVID.

 

[Dustin Dorsey]

I've seen both videos. I'm not 100% sold on it but it's definitely worth trying. I think there's so much to how they cook brisket that there's no one magic thing that makes it. I think the biggest single thing is the quality of the beef. Creekstone Primes are excellent briskets. I used to be able to get them from my butcher but they became so popular because of Franklin that they are hard to come by. We have to make do with what we can get our hands on.

I think having the paper wet helps get a tighter wrap on the brisket.

 

[J Hasselberger]

I ordered a whole brisket, rack of ribs and a whole turkey breast from Franklin about a year ago. I picked it up at around noon for a party at 5:00. They keep the meat in Cambros at 140° (you can see the temp readout), so I asked them for a recommendation on keeping it until party time. The helpful server said that they open up the paper and slather some melted butter on the meat and put it in a low oven when they get to the site. It worked fine for me. Their recommendation went for a rack of ribs and a turkey breast as well.

This discussion makes me wonder if they don't use butter instead of tallow at the restaurant.

Jeff

 

[Tony-Chicago]

Nice looking brisket. Congratulations! Well done.

 

[Al G-NJ]

I ordered a whole brisket, rack of ribs and a whole turkey breast from Franklin about a year ago. I picked it up at around noon for a party at 5:00. They keep the meat in Cambros at 140° (you can see the temp readout), so I asked them for a recommendation on keeping it until party time. The helpful server said that they open up the paper and slather some melted butter on the meat and put it in a low oven when they get to the site. It worked fine for me. Their recommendation went for a rack of ribs and a turkey breast as well.

This discussion makes me wonder if they don't use butter instead of tallow at the restaurant.

Jeff

Only reason I think they'd use tallow is because they already have all the brisket trimmings to hand, and - aside from what they use for sausage - it's probably cheaper than buying butter.

 

[Kemper Morris]

Jumping off from this recent post: https://tvwbb.com/threads/brisket-injection.85732/

I'm not big on fads, but maybe you've noticed that the use of beef tallow when cooking brisket to promote moist meat seems to the current fad of the day. "Mad Scientist BBQ" on YouTube believes that the secret of Aaron Franklin's delicious brisket is the application of melted beef tallow to the pink butcher paper when the meat is wrapped for the last part of cooking in the pit, and then again when the brisket is rewrapped in fresh, beef tallowed pink butcher paper for the resting period before serving.

It's not my habit to watch other people's barbecue videos, but Harry Soo's first video on this subject popped up in my Facebook feed and I watched it, then I went back and watched the one from Mad Scientist BBQ. In the comment section of Mad Scientist BBQ's video, someone named John Pafford mentioned seeing an old episode of Andrew Zimmern's "Delicious Destinations" in which Zimmern visited Franklin BBQ. "Showed Aaron wrapping a brisket that was really wet and soaking through the paper and next to him was a steam table pan full of a light brown liquid that could only be beef tallow!"

I found that show on Xfinity On Demand and took these photos.

View attachment 24707

In this photo, you can see that the brisket looks moist, but there's not a lot of liquid on the butcher paper. Aaron's hands don't look oily.

View attachment 24703

In this photo, the paper is folded over the brisket and the paper is very damp. We see the steam table pan of brown liquid in the background with the lid removed and placed on top of the other pan. We don't see a brush or squirt bottle, and again Aaron's hands don't appear to be oily. There appears to be a yellow spray bottle in the bottom right corner of the picture.

View attachment 24704

When we zoom in, it looks like the outside surface of the paper has been wetted. Liquid is dripping down the outside edge of the paper and there are two oily streaks on the table.

View attachment 24705

And here we see the wrapped brisket going back into the smoker, with the butcher paper looking very wet.

View attachment 24706

So clearly there has been the application of something oily to the butcher paper during the wrapping process, and beef tallow seems to be the likely substance. And it's interesting to me that it appears to have been applied to the outside surface of the paper, not the inside as was done in the Mad Scientist BBQ video. Note that in Harry's video, he oils everything...the inside and outside surfaces of the paper, and he drizzles some directly onto the meat.

Based on my previous understanding of Franklin's process, I have been spraying the inside surface of the butcher paper with apple cider vinegar, the same stuff I've been spritzing the meat with during the initial part of the cooking process, then laying the brisket on the wet paper, wrapping it up, and placing it back into the WSM to finish cooking. So this use of tallow instead of ACV is news to me.

Why does this work? One theory is that the oiled paper acts more like aluminum foil than does dry butcher paper, keeping more moisture inside the paper package during cooking, and that rewrapping with a fresh piece of oiled paper after cooking for the resting period provides another shot of tallow to baste the meat and keep it moist before slicing and serving.

I know that Harry Soo is testing a bunch of variations on this process, and in one of his latest videos he feels that basting with tallow during cooking then wrapping in plain butcher paper gave a slightly better result than not basting with tallow and wrapping in tallowed butcher paper. The thought of basting a brisket with tallow during cooking reminds me of how we used to recommend placing strips of raw bacon on top of brisket flats to keep the meat moist. Or cooking a pork butt on the top grate and a brisket on the bottom grate in the hopes that the rendered pork fat would baste the brisket below. With all this fussing over brisket, you'd think we would realize it's a tough, ornery cut of meat and we'd be better off moving on to something else like a fatty chuck roast or rib roast!

Anyway, on my next brisket I will try to make my own melted beef tallow from the trimmed brisket fat and give this method a try. Am I about to fall for the latest "fad d'jour"? Maybe so. What do you think? Is this something you'd like to try or have already tried? How did it work out for you?

I’m going to try it