Brisket as a fairly recent trend

CarolinaQue said:

I'd say that in the world of BBQ that 5 hours to cook a piece of meat that size is pretty fast. And I'm not sure that $3 to $4 a lb for brisket is all that cheap...and that's on the low end for a quality grade in my neck of the woods.

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Depends on what part of the BBQ world you are in. Five hours is a pretty long time to cook BBQ brisket in several places in Lockhart, TX.

And, the fact that brisket is on the low end of quality but can be turned into a delicious dish after cooking it for hours is exactly why it's perfect for restaurants. Low direct material cost equals bigger profits. A restaurant can get brisket cheaper than $3 to $4 a pound, BBQ it and sell it for upwards of $16 to $18 a pound. That's not a bad deal.

A quarter pound brisket sandwich for $5.00 that cost the seller $1.00 in meat cost is pretty good. There are a lot of factors that go into the supply chain equation but the meat factor in that one is pretty low.

Chicken fried steak is another one of the low cost cuts turned into a delicious meal. The cheaper meat is pounded and/or tenderized using a jaccard, fried, slathered with gravy and people love it. It is cheap (compared to other alternatives) can be sold at an affordable price and leaves room for a profit.

When the great depression hit, businesses were struggling. They needed low cost and fair profits but they also had to sell products that people could afford. Then WWII hit and meat shortages were also an issue. Brisket is tough and, some feel, lacks flavor. But, BBQing it fixes those problems and created a low cost product.

I can also tell you that there is a direct relationship to the end of the practice of beef BBQ being mainly a whole animal cooked over coals in favor of smaller cuts of meat and the rise of the cattle industry in the United States. Before the cattle industry built a strong organization around the turn of the 20th century the majority of barbecue cooked was of whole cows/steers. As prices climed and fewer farmers could afford to either donate or sell at a low cost BBQ cooks turned to using inexpensive cuts and some even switched to burgers and hot dogs.

Then you have advances in refrigeration and better highways and transportation capability. That made the idea of shipping cuts of meat around the country a reality. Before those things, you had to transport or drive living cattle and the range was limited. All of those things helped to make brisket a popular BBQ meat and also what reduced the practice of BBQing whole animals.

You can't discount the economics of BBQ if you want to understand what shaped it in the 20th century.

Not really sure when the latest trend started but I've been eating brisket, ribs and sausage off of that pit for almost 50 years now.

I didn't discover brisket until 10 - 15 years ago. I thought I was just a blockhead . . . :twitch:

I've been eating Texas brisket for 59 years. Good to know that I'm "trendy" now.

In truth, a 4x multiplier on restaurant food is not going to make you rich. If you have $1 in food costs and sell for $5, then you are basically making a profit, maybe 50 cents per sale. Of course, one of those smokehouses might have lower server and labor costs, but, still, there is overhead and the costs do add up. If you have $4 per pound finished meat costs, then you need to be around $16 a pound minimum to show a profit.

You timing is off by a decade or more. Jetton is credited with switching from clods and quarter to brisket and it was much later. The packing industry had to consolidate before brisket was a large scale option.

You know, there is a reason I don't comment on Virginia BBQ, shizzle. :caked:

Boshizzle said:

Yep, brisket is a more recent cut of meat for BBQ. Remember back in the depression era, there was a demand for cheap cuts of meat that could be cooked into delicious meals and sold at a low price while still offering a margin for a profit. Pork ribs and beef brisket fit the bill. The only way to make ribs and brisket tender is to cook them for long periods of time. Well to do people didn't want them. So, that made them cheap and very desirable to a person running a BBQ restaurant. Low cost meat cooked to perfection passed on to a customer base without a lot of money but still wanting to eat something delicious that was also affordable. Those meats fit the bill very well.

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I'm sure some reastaurants were cooking brisket before the depression but it and WWII were big drivers. Edgar Black, Jr. said that when he started cooking BBQ for his Dad after WWII there weren't as many as half a dozen other BBQ places in Texas serving it.

Also, the book Republic of Barbecue - Stories beyond the Brisket has some interviews from old time TX BBQ cooks where they discuss brisket.

For example, Vencil Mares is quoted as stating that back in the 1940's "Them days, they didn't hardly ever cook briskets. They didn't know what to do with them. I remember when they was thirty-nine cents and people didn't even want them."

Bobby Mueller said that he couldn't get boneless briskets until the 1960s.

So, economics and supply capability did play a big part in popularizing brisket.

Pork belly, how about nori? Now I see people eating it everywhere.

Thanks! Just found another stop on our Texas vacation this Summer!

I was specifically mentioning that when you mentioned the depression you were, by your own evidence given in this post, several decades off. Like the original thread says, brisket (probably die to its availiability as a packer) was not popular rather recently..... really until the late 50's. Sure, you can find a place that has been serving a long while (Angelos in Fort Worth has always served it which opened in 1957) and Jetton only used it at the end of his carreer.

The depression was NOT contributor to the rise of brisket as an accessible cut to BBQ NOR would WWII be at all due to the rationing. After the War, it took a great while for the economy to get moving again and the rise of the BBQ resturant would have to wait until the mid 1950s. Right after that the meat packers began the consolidation changes that have brought us to what we have now. In order for something to catch on like the OP is suggesting (which denotes it was not poplar before) the cut has to be easier to get than just butcher shop..... and that came with the rise of suburbia and the death of the meat markets. The product was always cheap... but it took the packing process to evolve a little better (where you could order, say, 40 briskets every day and get delivered nothing else) for the cut to be the staple of beef bbq its known as today.

There is a dissertation on the strange rise on cost of the skirt steak in the late 70's and early 1980's that came out of Texas a and m that covers some of the concept as the author used the brisket as a model for comparision. This was doen because there was a mysterious rise on the cost of the skirt steak which was attributed to both the ability to get these separate and the rise of the "fajita" that begun around this period.

You should tweak your thesis statement..... to....."Since the way to make a tender brisket is a comparative constant regardless of era, and being that the cut has always been an economic cut, supply capability is the sole reason it has become popularized."

While the quote from Mares is certainly a primary source, we all know the brisket can be cooked at the same temp as a quarter or shoulder and be a thing of beauty.

Boshizzle said:

I'm sure some reastaurants were cooking brisket before the depression but it and WWII were big drivers. Edgar Black, Jr. said that when he started cooking BBQ for his Dad after WWII there weren't as many as half a dozen other BBQ places in Texas serving it.

Also, the book Republic of Barbecue - Stories beyond the Brisket has some interviews from old time TX BBQ cooks where they discuss brisket.

For example, Vencil Mares is quoted as stating that back in the 1940's "Them days, they didn't hardly ever cook briskets. They didn't know what to do with them. I remember when they was thirty-nine cents and people didn't even want them."

Bobby Mueller said that he couldn't get boneless briskets until the 1960s.

So, economics and supply capability did play a big part in popularizing brisket.

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Hook'n Bull said:

I've been eating Texas brisket for 59 years. Good to know that I'm "trendy" now.

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HE is from my neck of the woods. ANd if he has been in the deer park gulf region that long... let's see... heck... 1951 was the last actual cattle drive Gulf Shore (i am collecting for a book a friend of mine is doing about the gulf regions cattle ranching barons), he realizes there is a total disconnect from the reality and the rest of the world regarding our region's connection with beef BBQ. I mean like my Galveston Daily News article hinted at.... we had "Rental Freezer Boxes" back in the 50s and 60s. Almost unheard of anywhere else.

You need to write a book, bro! I'd buy it.

Pitmaster T said:

I was specifically mentioning that when you mentioned the depression you were, by your own evidence given in this post, several decades off. Like the original thread says, brisket (probably die to its availiability as a packer) was not popular rather recently..... really until the late 50's. Sure, you can find a place that has been serving a long while (Angelos in Fort Worth has always served it which opened in 1957) and Jetton only used it at the end of his carreer.

The depression was NOT contributor to the rise of brisket as an accessible cut to BBQ NOR would WWII be at all due to the rationing. After the War, it took a great while for the economy to get moving again and the rise of the BBQ resturant would have to wait until the mid 1950s. Right after that the meat packers began the consolidation changes that have brought us to what we have now. In order for something to catch on like the OP is suggesting (which denotes it was not poplar before) the cut has to be easier to get than just butcher shop..... and that came with the rise of suburbia and the death of the meat markets. The product was always cheap... but it took the packing process to evolve a little better (where you could order, say, 40 briskets every day and get delivered nothing else) for the cut to be the staple of beef bbq its known as today.

There is a dissertation on the strange rise on cost of the skirt steak in the late 70's and early 1980's that came out of Texas a and m that covers some of the concept as the author used the brisket as a model for comparision. This was doen because there was a mysterious rise on the cost of the skirt steak which was attributed to both the ability to get these separate and the rise of the "fajita" that begun around this period.

You should tweak your thesis statement..... to....."Since the way to make a tender brisket is a comparative constant regardless of era, and being that the cut has always been an economic cut, supply capability is the sole reason it has become popularized."

While the quote from Mares is certainly a primary source, we all know the brisket can be cooked at the same temp as a quarter or shoulder and be a thing of beauty.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, bro. Let me clarify, when I say the depression and WWII were drivers I mean that lean times caused by those events was a driver for restaurants to look for ways to cut costs, maintain a profit level, and sell at an affordable price. It is clear that those conditions are what drove restaurants and meat markets to seek out cuts like brisket and pork ribs as well as chicken fried steak.

It may have taken many a while to get there, but those things were drivers as well as the ability of suppliers to provide those cuts.

As the author of Republic of Barbecue states "brisket barbecue dates to the mid-twentieth century, when restaurants and meat markets struggled to emerge from the Great Depression and war rationinug. The economical brisket, available at cheap prices from national distributors and slaughterhouses, became the meat of choice."

Aiding that was the highway system, refigeration and large packing houses that didn't exist before those times.

I can tell you that when I grew up in the Coastal Bend area, the barbecue was a cross-over between barbacoa style, and what we know as pit roasted, in brick or block pits. I have more memories of backyard cooking in the 60's, and most of it was driven by cost. Chicken, brisket and goat was cheap in those days, so that's what folks cooked. We did have our own beef butchered....they opted for steaks, round steaks and sirloin steaks, so all the roasts came from the front end. The "Bar-B-Que" stands might have served some pork, but I don't recall ever having any,... they all served sausage, and the beef was just called beef, it was always sliced... not saucy BBQ beef or anything. You could get white bread, tortillas or saltine crackers, and either a jalapeno or a pickle, and of course every stand had beans. The seats were mostly all outside under an awning, or you just bought it to go.

In the Hill Country, most of the Mexican influence was gone. We called places up there joints, not stands, because you could go inside to sit. The sausages had different flavors, and I don't remember pork in those joints either, just sausage and beef. I remember the meats were more bland, not in a bad way.... just no chile powder or hot pepper spices. However the meats had more smoke flavor. Pickles were really common, and the food came with bread or crackers.