Michael Ditter stood patiently in line with dozens of hungry campers as lunch was about to be served.
“I’m hoping I can have some beans,” Ditter said.
Beans seemed an unusual choice, until Ditter explained that he is an ovo-pescatarian.
“It means I eat eggs and fish but I am otherwise a vegetarian,” he quickly added seeing the confused looks being returned his way.
The confusion lay not in what an ovo-pescatarian meant, but in what he was doing there in the first place.
Ditter paid several hundred dollars and travelled from Stanford, Connecticut to College Station, Texas to attend “Camp Brisket.” Camp Brisket is a two day seminar on all things brisket put on by the Texas A&M meat science department and a non-profit from Austin called Foodways Texas.
It turns out that Ditter and his two brothers paid for their Dad to attend the camp as part of his 60th birthday gift. It just took four years to win a seat in the lottery to get to actually attend. So even though Ditter gave up mean in the interim between first signing up and actually attending, he still wanted to come to be there with his father and brothers.
“Even for someone whose usual grilling involves the occasional eggplant steak, I found plenty to enjoy and learn,” Ditter said. “Stuff like smoke and seasoning is transferrable to grilling other types of protein.”
That it can take up to five years to get a seat at Camp Brisket is just another anecdotal piece of evidence that brisket, that the truly Texan BBQ delicacy, has exploded in worldwide popularity beyond anything our forefathers plying the counters of Central Texas meat markets could have imagined.
“I grew up and my Dad and my grandfather, it was a job for them,” said Bryan Bracewell, the third generation owner of Southside Market & Barbecue, the Elgin, Texas BBQ joint that claims to be the oldest in Texas. “I’m not saying they didn’t like it, they loved what they did, but it was a job. I feel like now, it’s the industry. The craft has been raised on a pedestal.”
As a result of the popularity of Texas brisket, Bracewell has traveled around the world cooking BBQ and teaching others how Texans use wood, fire, spices, time, patience and perseverance to turn a tough cut of meat into a delicacy.
“Wherever I go in the world whether it’s South Korea, Taiwain, Bermuda, places like that, it doesn’t matter where people are from, what country, what nationality, what ethnicity – when they smell smoke in the air, they come up,” said Bracewell.
Texas BBQ brings them up in droves and when you’re talking about Texas BBQ, you’re talking about brisket.
Dr. Jeff Savell, the Dean of Texas A&M’s Agriculture and Life Sciences department, and the creator of Camp Brisket.
“Brisket is the hardest thing to do,” Savell said. “You’re measured by in barbecue, at least in the Texas barbecue world, you’re measured by the success or failure of being able to consistently prepare and serve brisket. And if you can do that, you’re celebrated.
“In Texas there’s three great foods barbecue, Tex-Mex and chicken fried steak,” Savell continued. “And nobody’s standing in line for Tex-Mex,”
They still line up outside of Franklin BBQ in Austin.
But the popularity that Mr. Franklin himself helped usher in also has a downside.
What used to be the food that was enjoyed by cowboys on the range is now being enjoyed by Michelin judges.
“In the old days, in small town Elgin, Texas, we had a Sonic beside our business,” Bracewell said. “We competed with Sonic for the lunch dollar. They could have a hamburger or cheeseburger or they could come over here and have a plate of barbecue, they were similarly priced. Now we’re competing with steakhouses and that’s a totally different dynamic.”
As barbecue’s popularity has soared, so have the prices. Ten years ago, brisket sold at wholesale for $3.52 a pound (per the USDA). Today, the beef council shows briskets wholesaling for $4.88 a pound.
The increased prices are having a real impact on customers and pitmasters alike.
“The number one factor of me closing my BBQ food truck was the price of the proteins themselves; brisket, beef ribs, spare ribs, turkey breasts, chicken,” Joe Martinez of ‘Smokin’ Joe’s Pitt BBQ in El Paso said on his YouTube channel after closing his truck last July. “Everything just kept going up and up and there was no sign of it getting any better.”
The number one driver of increased protein prices is brisket.
Restauranters have two choices, either make the brisket even more expensive to cover the costs of the other meats or raise the prices on the other meats to cover the cost of the brisket. Both choices result in the same thing – getting a tray of BBQ costs more now than it ever has before.
Photo: Austin American-Statesman
“Brisket is the biggest nemesis we have,” Bracewell said. “We love it and hate at the same time. We have to be able to do it well, or we’re judged that we can’t do anything well.”
Bracewell says he once attempted to open a barbecue restaurant in Smithville, Texas that served everything but brisket.
“I wanted to have a value barbecue joint that still did everything right and did everything smoked, but it didn’t allow people to buy brisket,” said Bracewell. “That was the whole business plan, the whole model, everything.
“I went to the community, some of the influencers in that community, and I told them my idea of no brisket, and they’re like, ‘you’re crazy. You can’t do that in Texas. People were going to come to you for the brisket.’ And so I chickened out.”
Two weeks after opening, brisket was on the menu.
Sunny Moberg. Photo: Moberg Smokers
Sunny Moberg, the fabricator and owner of Moberg Smokers, worries that barbecue may have hit its peak.
“Can barbecue, get much better,” Moberg asked himself. “Probably not, because barbecue is barbecue at that point, craft or not.”
But he adds that he is still busy building new pits for customers. And he says he has seen some exciting innovations in the restaurant scene.
“The cool thing about barbecue is all of these collaborations and culinary combinations that they have now,” said Moberg. “You know just when you think they’ve hit the plateau, ‘let’s mix it with this, and let’s do this.’ And there’s other generations coming and different nationalities that are putting their own twist on it, which I think is really cool.
“So have we hit the peak yet? I mean, crap barbecue? I think we have. But the creativeness of how to make it into a different dish, the fusion, we haven’t seen all of that.”
At some point, there may come a time when the price of BBQ drives enough customers away and businesses start to close that we will see a significant reduce in demand for brisket and other cuts of BBQ. But we don’t appear to be to that point yet. Which means that if you’re planning to go buy some BBQ to help celebrate Independence Day, just know that you’re going to have to shell out a lot of money to get your tray. But you should also know, the BBQ you’re enjoying now is better than it has ever been before.
