San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
With a backyard pit, barbacoa not just for special occasions
Your neighborhood barbecue joint probably has a weekend special, and it’s likely to be barbacoa.
The Mexican delicacy is traditionally made with lamb, but here in the United States, beef cheeks are usually used. The meat doesn’t require the long cooking time of a brisket, but it does a fantastic job of picking up the smoky flavor that produces a savory bite. Add a little cilantro, some chopped onion and salsa, and it’s one of the best flavors in the taco kingdom.
“It’s one of those things where the more smoke you get into it, the better it is,” said Ernest Servantes,
co-owner of the Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin. “But it also has to be a special thing, something that you look forward to.”
Burnt Bean offers barbacoa as a Sunday-exclusive breakfast option. But if you don’t want to exercise that much patience, here’s how to to do it yourself on a backyard pit.
Beef cheeks are readily available at area grocery markets for about $5 per pound.
I call them mini-briskets because they look similar, but cheeks weigh in at about 3 pounds compared to a 12-pound brisket. They also have a similar fat ratio. But beef cheeks’ smaller size means they can be done in six to nine hours with the smoker set to 225 or 250 degrees instead of the 12 to 15 hours to smoke a brisket. And they are very forgiving, because you can be off on your cooking time by a large
margin and the meat will remain moist.
Servantes keeps his barbacoa simple by seasoning it just with salt.
“I want it to taste like barbacoa, where the flavor of the meat takes center stage over the seasoning,” he said. “You can season it like a brisket and it will taste good, but I look at it like a marriage with the tortilla, cilantro, onions and the meat so no ingredient overshadows the other. It needs to be a complete experience.”
A few things about cheeks require some attention: Because they’re loaded with fat and require some trimming before they’re ready for the pit, you have to buy about twice as much
as you think you will eat.
“We will get 200 pounds of
cheeks to produce 100 pounds of finished meat,” Servantes said. “People will say they got 2 or 3 pounds of meat, and I’m like, well, that’s enough for three or four tacos.”
As for the trimming, use the finger test. If you press into the fat and it gives, it can stay. If it feels like a firm eraser, it should be removed; hard fat will not render.
Wood selection depends on your personal preference, but you can’t go wrong with the bolder flavors of hickory, oak, pecan or mesquite. Because of cheeks’ high-fat content, it’s a good idea to place a drip pan under the meat. Not only will it keep your pit cleaner, those juices can be used for dipping.
Once the cheeks are placed on the smoker, there’s not much to do but wait. I’m a spritzer by nature and like to give the meat a good spray of beef broth in hourly increments to make sure it doesn’t dry out. Depending on your butcher, cheeks can either be cut up into smaller pieces or served whole.
Cook the cheeks to an internal temperature of 203 degrees — a very specific temperature but for good reason. At that temperature, the meat gets tender enough to pull apart with your gloved hands, ready to serve.
The first bites I go for are the ones that have charred, smoky bark and rendered fat all incorporated into the cheeks. They make for a brilliant marriage of flavors, and you don’t have to wait until Sunday to make it happen.