The Most Exciting BBQ Joint in Texas is Egyptian

[upbeat bright blues rock music]

I moved here from Cairo, Egypt

to learn how to cook barbecue.

I trained with a lot of pit masters here

and finally taking the moment and the chance

to bring my own flavors, my own culture here to Austin.

Every day, we smoke about 400 pounds of meat.

Managing fire is one of the most important things

in becoming a pit master.

This is a craft that requires a lot

of time and a lot of patience.

My personal definition of barbecue

is anything cooked over a live fire.

I'm fusing and marrying the bright and fresh

and crisp flavors of the Middle East

with this old tradition of Texas barbecue.

This is the best decision I've ever made in my life.

[door slams] [birds chirp]

Morning, y'all.

This is Kareem from KG Barbecue in Austin, Texas.

6:00 AM on a Thursday is our first day of the week,

so it's time to get the smokers started.

Let's get going.

This is King Tut right here.

We decided to name each one of our smokers

after Egyptian kings.

This is our 1,000-gallon

primitive pits barbecue smoker here.

This is made out of a reused propane tank, actually.

It's pretty cool.

Since we haven't been cooking for the last four days,

we're gonna throw a bag of charcoal

and kind of get the process going.

We use wood from Chief Firewood,

a local company that actually supplies

almost every barbecue restaurant in town.

We use post oak wood.

It's interesting with barbecue

that you have to cook with seasoned wood.

So the wood has to be aged for at least a year or two.

So it kind of dries out, and your fire is clean and crisp,

not smoky and dirty, and also,

oak is like Texas's blessing to be honest. [laughs]

I'm trying to pick some of the smaller pieces here

to get the fire going.

It's so therapeutic,

especially starting on early mornings like this.

Such an amazing craft, Texas barbecue.

I literally changed my entire life for it.

[upbeat music]

Now it's time for the fun part.

[flame whooshes]

Isn't it so nice to start a blazing fire

in the summer of Texas?

I'm already sweating. [laughs]

So we're opening the smokestack here.

[metal creaks]

That's gonna create that draw and the airflow.

It's gonna help the fire get going.

We're also gonna open the last door,

also to get more airflow going,

and as soon as I do that, if we check the fire again,

you're gonna already see how it's drawn inside.

The higher and bigger the smokestack,

the better because it creates more airflow and more draw,

and you have a cleaner fire.

Like you eat barbecue and it kind of sits with you,

that means that it has been cooked on a dirty fire.

Whether the wood is not seasoned enough,

it's not dry enough,

or there's not enough airflow in the fire,

so that creates this darker smoke,

and that goes on the meat.

It's gonna take us about 20, 25 minutes

for this fire to get the whole smoker

up to temperature at 275, which is our desired temperature.

This is kind of like your gas pedal right now.

So if I open the door, it's gonna get more airflow in.

It's gonna also increase the temperature,

but it lowers the temperature, in fact,

because you're letting the heat escape this way.

This is kind of like my sweet spot right here.

I like to keep it a little bit cracked.

So that's gonna keep the heat sucked in,

and it's gonna go the other way.

All right, 6:30. We need to get the meats on right now.

[mid-tempo blues rock music]

We have briskets seasoned overnight,

and then we have our lamb bacon ribs,

and then we have our lamb shoulder.

So let's move on.

All right, it's time to get started.

These cuts take the longest time to cook,

so that's why we're loading up the smoker.

Usually with the longest thing that takes time first.

You'll see as time gets closer to opening,

we're gonna start adding more things

that take way less time, like sausage and lamb chops.

What we're cooking today is gonna be served the next day.

So first thing, we got the grates here clean, brushed.

The biggest reason why we clean the grates

is because it gives it a cleaner sear.

The first thing you gotta do when you start cooking

on a new smoker is really to figure out

where your hot zones are and your middle and your low zones.

Like here, we have cuts that take a long time,

so I can't really cook it on a hot zone

because it's gonna burn, it's gonna char,

and it's not gonna be done.

We're gonna go ahead and start loading briskets,

and they take the longest time to cook.

This is the thermometer probe that is Bluetooth.

It's a handheld thermometer that we're gonna be using

throughout the day so we don't have to come out here

and check the temperature on the smoker all the time.

On our smoker here, our hottest zone is closest to the fire,

and it's interesting because this is also a hot zone.

I think it's just the way the air flows,

and it kind of goes and draws

up the chimney or the smokestack.

So this right here is our smoked lamb shoulder.

This is currently my favorite meat on the menu right now.

So this looks just like a pork butt or a pork shoulder,

but it's lamb.

We use a lot of lamb in Egypt.

Very few barbecue joints here in Texas cook lamb,

and I really thought this was a great thing to do here

because you can grind it, you can skewer it.

We have actually four different lamb options on the menu.

The second lamb option we have is the lamb bacon ribs.

This is basically like the pork spare ribs but from lamb.

So you can see it has a lot of that nice belly fat on it,

and it gets really nice and crispy on the outside,

and it's super tender and fatty on the inside.

We probably have about 150 pounds of meat on the smoker.

Just another day in Texas.

All right, we're gonna come back later to wrap them.

We gotta get some more pork ribs seasoned,

and then we gotta get briskets and lamb bacon seasoned

for tomorrow, so let's get going.

[mid-tempo bluesy rock music] [door creaks]

[brisket thuds]

Here we got a brisket.

The brisket is actually the chest muscle of the cow.

It's a pretty big, hunky piece of meat.

It actually has two different muscles,

and that is one of the reasons why it's a little bit

of a challenging cut to cook.

It has the point and the flat or the moist and the lean,

and they are both separated by the fat deckle,

which starts here and comes out the other way right here.

I'm using a six-inch boning knife and a honing steel.

I always keep it sharp.

In the summer, the quality kind of drops

because the cows don't eat as much as the winter time.

So you can see like briskets get kind of smaller,

and that's why we just keep changing

and we keep talking to our suppliers in how we

can make our product even better, especially the brisket.

The brisket, it has a lot of fat on it.

Like I said,

this is gonna be the first thing that I tackle here.

This is the deckle of fat.

That's really, really good for making sausage, actually.

So we save almost the entire trimmings

and cleanings to make the skewed koftas.

We season it and we add onion, garlic, spices, nutmeg,

coriander, fenugreek, and then we grind it

and skew it and cook it on the smoker.

And then for the pork ribs,

the trimmings we use to make our homemade sausage as well.

So I'm gonna start kind of taking all that silver skin.

So this is the only thing that we don't really use,

the silver skin.

This is fascia.

This is what controls the muscles

and kind of gives it the spasm or makes it move around.

If you cook a thin rib eye steak or a New York strip steak

and it curls up on you in the skillet,

it's because of that fascia.

So as you can see,

I'm really not shy when I'm trimming here.

We trim and we tie and we truss meats

because they're not necessarily shaped

so that they cook most evenly.

There's also the other reason of trying to make all

of the briskets on the smoker kind of uniform

to where they all cook at the same time,

and then the second part is just making sure

that we have the right amount of fat on top of the brisket.

Probably about like quarter, third of an inch of fat

that should be all over the entire brisket.

All right, so moving on, we got our next meat here.

This is the lamb bacon ribs.

It's the rib cage, and it also has the belly on it,

and it's been flying off the shelf right now.

All right, so the trimming the lamb bacon ribs

is a little tricky here.

We're trying to take the bone off, actually.

So I'm gonna go in with my knife right here.

One of my stops here in Austin

to learn from the masters in Texas,

I worked at Salt & Thyme Butcher Shop.

I learned one of these cool random things here

that this grip is called the pistol grip,

and this is kind of like,

it's the best grip that you can use

to kind of like maneuver your way around bones.

So I'm gonna make a score this way,

and you have no idea the amount of people and the number

of people that show up to the food truck and be like,

Oh, I have never tried lamb before.

I was like, Great, you'll like. Come here, I got you.

The lamb chops have about seven different spices on it,

and then we smoke it,

and so it takes away all that gaminess.

It's cooked to medium or medium rare.

It's a great introduction for people here.

I'm gonna go ahead and take all of the meat off here.

This is all usable meats. Moving on.

[upbeat soulful music]

So now we're done with the lamb bacon ribs.

So you can see, it's all nice and clean,

and then we're gonna season everything.

We're gonna start by seasoning the brisket.

I always like to season everything presentation side last,

so I will always cook brisket fat side up.

We're gonna use a mustard slather.

This doesn't do anything to the flavor at all.

It just provides us with this nice, tacky,

moist surface that that dry seasonings can stick on better.

So here we have our brisket rub.

Our brisket rub is pretty simple and basic.

In Central Texas, it's all about salt pepper.

We add a little bit of garlic and oregano.

So I'm gonna start seasoning the sides first,

and the way that I do that, you kind of like almost see me

like season my hand and tap it in the brisket.

The brisket is the only thing on our menu

that is more traditional.

So you'll see a lot of different spices

on the pork ribs and the lamb.

Everybody tells me, Like what makes KG Barbecue different?

What makes it Egyptian?

I always like point to the spice racks, but with brisket,

I like to keep it as traditional as possible

because I wanna pay my dues to respect this cut

that I've moved across the entire world for.

This is considered a dry brine here.

We let that sit overnight.

You see me when I pick it up,

nothing falls off because of the mustard binder.

We host brisket classes here once a month at the food truck.

Just giving back what I've learned

and sharing this knowledge and this food

with the people is what I live for, really.

You know, I tried barbecue over 10 years ago now.

2012 was my first experience, and back then,

I was working in corporate finance.

I was working as a banker in Cairo.

I loved cooking barbecue,

but barbecue is very different in the Middle East.

It's all about hot and fast cooking.

But then I came here and I tried barbecue,

and I was blown away by the experience,

and I went back to Cairo,

and I couldn't stop thinking about it. [laughs]

I couldn't stop thinking about specifically brisket, though.

I wanted more. I needed more.

So I decided that I wanna quit my job and move to Texas

and learn from the pros here in Austin.

All right, so now we're gonna season the lamb shoulder.

[pleasant acoustic guitar music]

We always use coarse spices because that

is what creates the crispy bark on the outside.

In Egypt, almost everything is marinated

because everything is grilled, but when on a smoker,

you almost need a dry rub because if you put marinated meat

on the smoker, it's a wet surface.

So it's not gonna have a good nice crust on the outside.

Grabbing our pork ribs here.

These are pomegranate glazed pork ribs.

Doing a sriracha slather.

Unlike the mustard, sriracha does add flavor,

color, and a little bit of heat.

Legally, you can't sell pork in Egypt.

You can buy it privately.

It's almost like you have to know a guy

to get some pork in Egypt.

The majority of Egypt is like 90% Muslim right now,

and pork is not something that Muslims eat.

So once the pork ribs are wrapped and cooked on the smoker,

once we unwrap them,

we glaze them with our pomegranate barbecue sauce,

which is what we're about to make right now.

Let's get to it.

[mid-tempo soft bluesy guitar music]

So we got our [speaks indistinctly] here.

This is pomegranate juice.

So the pomegranate barbecue sauce

is kinda like everything we do here is a Texas style,

ketchup-based barbecue sauce.

So we start with pomegranate juice, and then to that,

we're gonna add the pomegranate molasses.

This is one of the best ingredients.

It has this like sour pomegranate tanginess to it.

So now we're gonna add the spice mix here.

To kind of facilitate our processes here in the food truck,

we love making kits for everything.

So we have our spice that has salt, lots of brown sugar,

and it has garlic, onion, sumac, cinnamon,

and then apple cider vinegar, Dijon mustard,

Worcestershire, I hope I said it right this time,

and sriracha in here.

All these ingredients are kind of classic things

that you add to barbecue sauce,

and it adds a little bit of consistency,

like more a little bit more thicker body to the sauce.

[laughs]

And then we just boil it for maybe five minutes,

and then we'll turn off the heat,

and this will probably last us in less than two days.

Every day, we have to make a batch.

We're about to double that up

so that we're just making it twice a week

'cause things are getting busier every day.

All right, it's 8:30 now.

I'm gonna go check on the smoker,

add a couple more logs on fire,

and then we're gonna come back

and get the line ready for service.

[upbeat twangy music]

Right now, we have to maintain the fire at 275,

so we kind of give it some love.

Every time I come out here,

I just kind of make sure that the fire looks good.

I now kind of got it to a system where I can tell

how hot the fire is when I open the door, actually.

It gets more resistance when it's hot.

Like pretty good right now,

but I'm gonna go ahead and add a couple more logs.

We're gonna go and kind of rearrange the coals here.

So you can see me kind of breaking down the older logs

that have been turning into coals already.

I'm gonna put the two big ones on the side

and my smallest one is gonna go in the middle.

I don't want it to be sunken and buried in the coals.

I would need airflow.

Now we're gonna add probably just one more log

would be good.

So this is the part where you take a deep breath

and close your eyes just to get that on.

And we're about to add some of our hot cooking items

like the chicken, the kofta, and the sausage.

This is what we call the hell door.

This door gets really, really, really hot.

So now Danny is loading up our smoked chicken thighs.

It's one of our meats that have just a little bit

of a spice kick to it.

The smoke can be really hard to work with,

but contacts are like magic.

Just wear your contacts every day. [laughs]

[gentle pleasant guitar music]

It's about time to glaze the ribs.

They've been on the smoker,

and we wrap them up, and now they are done.

I'm gonna come in here and open it up.

The classic 3-2-1 method.

They have been cooking for three hours.

We wrapped them for two hours until they're tender and soft.

The way we check for the doneness here, I can show you.

So you wanna see this bend on the rack of ribs.

It's like feels a little more elastic,

and then you want to see this draw here.

The meat is drawing a little bit from the bones,

and it's kind of like soft to the touch.

So these look beautiful. We're about to glaze them.

Pomegranate barbecue sauce, a nice thick layer.

So the sugar in the molasses is gonna cook down

and give it a nice, sticky, dark, and vivid color.

I don't really even brush it.

And for the amateur cooks and the beginner barbecuers,

there's something that's called the stall,

and this is when the meat reaches well done temperature,

which is about 170 internal.

The moisture and the water starts to push out

and evaporate and then cool down the brisket,

and it's just like an hour of just 170.

It's not rising because of that evaporation and the cooling,

but for a cut like brisket,

you actually need to take it way past well done

at 200 degrees and then let it sit there

for a little bit before it's actually done.

We start to wrap to push through the stall

and kind of finish cooking without drying out the brisket,

and that really applies for all the meats, really.

About eight hours in when we wrap the brisket.

Right now, it's about three hours in.

All right, it's 9:30 right now.

Let's go get the line ready for service.

[door creaks] [mid-tempo bluesy rock music]

So over here, I can walk you through the line.

We have our hot box.

This is really where all the all the money is.

It's controlled temperature, and then it goes anywhere

from 80 degrees all the way up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

We use this hot box to rest the meats overnight

and have them ready in the morning,

and you need to rest the meat because of the reason

that all of the fibers and all of the juices

are kind of running around like crazy

once the meat comes off of the heat,

and your ideal time resting time is half the amount

of time that you took to cook the meat.

So first thing,

I wanna make some rice here in the rice cooker.

Our batch of rice is half a gallon of rice.

I'm gonna add half a cup of butter to that,

and then we have a rice kit.

This has salt, turmeric, cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves.

Each single grain needs to be coated

in the melted fat and then the spices as well,

and then it's super aromatic.

As soon as we open the rice pot when the rice is done,

you can smell that.

The most popular dish that we have right now

is the brisket rice bowl.

It has a bed of our Mediterranean rice,

and then it has the meat on it, Baladi salad,

which is bright, fresh cucumber, tomato,

onion, mint, creamy tahini sauce.

We top it off with candied toasted nuts,

and then last but not least,

my favorite ingredients, the pomegranate seeds.

So you get that nice, sweet, savory crunch.

Now it's time to get some water

for the rice to start cooking.

So one of the biggest struggles of working

out of a food truck is the water situation.

We have a fresh water tank down here,

and once it's empty, we have to fill it up.

So we have a gray water tank outside of the truck

that we have to empty it four to five times a day.

We now have a designated full-time dishwasher,

and he does that,

and after a lot of testing with the rice cooker,

we found that nine cups of water is the right measure.

Go ahead and turn this on.

Moving on,

and we're gonna put some water here in the steam well,

and maybe about 15 to 20 minutes before service,

we're gonna start chopping some brisket and some chicken

because we don't want it to sit too long before we serve it.

Now it's time to get the sandwich fridge here ready

for all of the sides.

[upbeat music]

So everything is coming off the smoker right now,

and it's gonna start to get stacked in the hot box.

So the dressing that I just added to the Baladi

is made from salt, vinegar, and cumin.

It's very basic, but it's very bright and fresh.

In my opinion, barbecue is amazing,

but it's also an hugely unbalanced meal.

Like it's a meal that where the sides

are even richer and heavier than the meats themselves,

and that's kind of what makes us different here

with how light and crisp and bright our flavors

and our sides are.

When it's busy, maybe every hour,

we'll make the same amount.

[upbeat music]

It's time to put on my service apron.

All right, as you can see,

we have a full house here in the truck right now.

Everybody's busy getting to work,

putting the final touches here on prep,

and we're about ready to start serving.

I'm gonna go check on the meats real quick.

All right, let's see what we got here.

Briskets are already looking amazing.

Got a nice bark going on.

The meat is pulling a little bit back from the bones,

so I would say probably in another 30 minutes or so,

we're gonna be about 10 to wrap the lamb bacon ribs.

Everything looks great. Let's start serving our customers.

[bright upbeat music]

It's gonna be 108 degrees today in Texas, so wish us luck.

[laughs]

So right now, we're in the middle of service.

We got tickets rolling in up here on the board.

Everybody's at work.

We're almost serving about 100 people an hour.

All right, y'all, it's getting really busy here,

so now it's time for me to say goodbye.

I hope you all enjoyed this

and you get an idea of how it's like

to run an Egyptian barbecue in Austin, Texas.

[speaks in foreign language] Peace. [laughs]