BRISKET BECOMING THE CAVIAR OF BEEF
High prices, barbecue renaissance not expected to flame out soon
As three-time world barbecue champion Danny Mikes sees it, barbecuing is “the next NASCAR” and Texas-style brisket has gone from backyard jalopy to the machine sitting in the pole position.
“I tell you, it’s just taken off and gone crazy,” said Mikes, who owns Fat Boys BBQ in Temple and is president of the Central Texas Barbecue Association. “And
they’re paying more for it. The demand for it just drives the price stupid.”
The price of brisket is surging, and Mikes’ explanation makes sense to David Anderson, a livestock economist at Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
Memorial Day weekend launched the summer grilling season with brisket prices up 19.4 percent from the same time a year ago to about $2.13 a pound, and nearly 10 percent higher than in the beginning of May’s about $1.94 per pound.
Prices for other cuts of beef didn’t see a similar increase.
“It’s brisket — it’s not necessarily everything else,” Anderson said. “So it really highlights that we have this demanddriven phenomenon going on for that one particular cut.”
What’s more, a cut that used to be harder to work with increasingly is coming from animals bred and fed to produce more tender prime or high-end choice ribs, steaks and tenderloin. And whether it’s to compete in the next fundraising
cookout or test out a fancy, new pellet smoker, consumers don’t seem to be blinking at the cost.
“It’s changed some of these price relationships,” Anderson said. “Brisket — we think of barbecue, and we do it that low and slow cooking and smoking. But we used to do that because it was a big tough piece of meat that really responds to that cooking style, and we used those to do that because they were cheap.”
These days, the brisket ranks the third most expensive part of the cow after the rib area and loin.
Mikes said the higher prices stem from a barbecue craze that’s stoked by television food shows, celebrity pit masters and an abundance of classes and YouTube videos. What once seemed an arduous, dayslong production now is within reach of those who didn’t grow up around Texas barbecue.
“Barbecue is a whole big world now, and it’s not just Texas anymore — it’s everywhere,” he said. “There are very, very good cooks everywhere that have really learned how to do brisket.”
Texas A&M meat scientist Jeff Savell sees the growing popularity in evidence at the two summer barbecue camps his department puts on along with Foodways Texas. Of late, the camps have drawn participants from around the nation and world.
“We talk about the Texas trinity being brisket, spare ribs and sausage, but the driving force in this barbecue renaissance today is the brisket,” Savell said. “It’s one that is being featured and celebrated.”
By Texas-style, Savell meant cooking low and slow with minimal seasoning — traditionally, salt, pepper and garlic. Even a few years ago, the average backyard cook would have to feed a fire and monitor temperature for hours on end to turn out something tender and flavorful. These days, one pretty much can let the smoker do the work.
“There are so many more options and smokers and tools to help monitor, wonderful thermometers that you hook up,” he said. “I think all that is symbolic of the quest to be able to do this on your own.”
San Antonio-based Bill Miller Barb-B-Q has been smoking briskets 16 to 18 hours since 1953. It now puts anywhere from 13,000 to 16,000 pounds of brisket a day on the pits, not only for barbecue plates but also for soup and carne guisada.
Company CEO Jim Guy Egbert said the chain of 74 barbecue stores can’t help but feel the price pain.
“It’s sky high,” Egbert said. “Right before the Fourth of July, we were paying basically almost a dollar a pound more for our briskets than we were a year ago at the same time, which is a significant impact to us.”
He added, “You know, 30 years ago, 35 years ago, 40 years ago, it was a cut of meat that was undesirable to most folks. Overall, the general population did not want to spend the 12 to 16 hours it takes to smoke a brisket.”
In addition to its proliferation of backyard cooks, Texas now is peppered with mom-and-pop joints that may smoke 10, 15 or 20 briskets a day and sell until they run out.
“It’s a popular, trendy thing with those single-unit operators and also with the large national chains, the Arby’s and Firehouse Subs,” Egbert said. “It’s got a lot of momentum right now that’s bumped the price.
Neville Craw, vice president of culinary innovation for Arby’s Restaurant Group, said the chain partnered with a third-generation, family-run Texas smokehouse to introduce its smokehouse brisket sandwich in 2013.
“We knew we had to figure out a way to bring brisket to our menu,” Craw said. “It was so popular we made it a full-time menu item in 2014.”
Joe Doria, market manager for San Antonio’s Bolner’s Meat Market, said this year’s brisket high season started early — a few weeks before Memorial Day — and still is going strong. He doesn’t expect sales to die down anytime soon.
“It’s a fad item, and I think it’s going to be a long-lived fad,” Doria said. “Unemployment’s down, everybody’s got more money, people are spending money. And so any time you have people spending money, you always get stuff that’s going to be a little higher in demand.
“Before, they would go, ‘Man, I wish I could afford that brisket.’ Now they can.”