Knife selection puts some barbecue joints a cut above the rest
In the beginning, there were cleavers. Before meatpacking companies would send prebutchered, ready-to-sell cuts of meat to markets and barbecue joints (known as “boxed beef ”), butchers would break down larger cuts, called sub-primals, into retail cuts like New York strips or porterhouse steaks.
The tool of choice for cutting through sinew and soft bone was the cleaver, a rather crude tool used to hack away smaller pieces of meat from a larger one.
When meat markets in Central Texas transitioned from selling raw meat to cooked barbecue, the cleaver made the jump to the cutting block, where barbecue was prepared. Cleavers are great for making chopped beef, which may explain their continued popularity in the Texas barbecue world.
Nowadays, barbecue joints use many types of knives to cut the glistening, Instagram-worthy slices of brisket and other meats that grace our threemeat plates. The next time you step up to the counter at a new-to-you barbecue joint, keep an eye out for the type of knife the cutter uses to prepare your order. It will often give you a clue about the style of barbecue served.
The most common knife you will see used to cut brisket is variously called a scalloped knife, serrated knife, or bread knife. This has a plastic handle with a long, straight, metal blade with either teeth-like or curved indentations on the bottom.
Sometimes the blade will be nonserrated but have oval indentations pressed into the side. These are called Grantonedge or kullenschliff-edge knives. This design minimizes the surface tension between the blade and the meat, making for cleaner cuts.
Scalloped or serrated knives are the knife of choice for craft barbecue joints. Popularized by Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, these knives are long enough (12 inches) to cut through a whole brisket with only a few pulls of the knife. Franklin became so famous for using these knives that he now sells his own branded version at H-E-B stores and other outlets.
Another knife you will see on the cutting block is the classic 10-inch chef ’s knife. As expected, pitmasters with a trained culinary background will often use these. Chef and pitmaster Ara Malekian of Harlem Road Texas BBQ in Richmond uses custom-made chef ’s knives from local knifemaker Houston Edge Works.
If you’re ever at one of the classic meat market-style barbecue joints in Lockhart, you will see the cutters using a scimitar-style knife, also called a curved-tip knife. Like the name suggests, these are long, thin, sword-like knives. Pitmaster Roy Perez famously wields this type of knife as he roams the cavernous pit room at
Kreuz Market.
Another knife you will occasionally see is an electric knife. Yes, the knife your dad uses to shred apart a perfectly good turkey every Thanksgiving will occasionally show up in a barbecue joint, the most famous of which is Snow’s BBQ in Lexington.
Snow’s has been tapped as the best joint in the state, so barbecue aficionados will often be taken aback by the electric knife used to cut pitmaster Tootsie Tomanetz’s brisket. Indeed, the brisket slices here are more “rustic” compared to the pristine cuts at other craft barbecue spots.
And what of the lowly cleaver that started it all? You’ll occasionally see them used to make chopped beef. One of the oldest of the old-school Texas barbecue joints, Pat Gee’s Barbecue near Tyler, still uses a cleaver for preparing orders.