Aaron Franklin Secret Ingredient Is....Beef Tallow?

ECB said:

https://youtu.be/xENXHjKa2wc?t=873

Sure looks like brisket to me. As mentioned, he literally says “tallow”

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I clicked on the link above and a commercial for Aaron Franklins Masterclass came up. In the commercial it shows him squirting some sort of oil on the butcher paper. Here’s the link:

https://youtu.be/IKpnD2BnwOU

It happened around 50 seconds in....

That is butcher paper to start his fire. He said what it is and it’s grape seed oil, but also mentions due to having scraps that sometimes he will use the leftover rendered fat (beef tallow) to start his fire. The profit margins aren’t massive, so restaurant owners try to reuse whatever they can. He goes into the profit margins on that ReOpen docuseries.

In his masterclass he sprays his paper with ACV and states it is helpful to wet the paper a little bit but not enough to steam it

There is definitely something there.

If Franklin was going to go to the trouble of having employees under NDA to protect trade secrets, I highly doubt he's going to be caught on video doing the exact things he's trying to protect. Multiple times...

I'll chime in to say hi first and foremost, I'm Italian as well and representin'.

Mauro wouldn't say «tallow» if tallow wasn't involved in some way. I agree with what Jeremy said: if there's tallow anywhere in the process, it's the last 1% of what makes Franklin's briskets Franklin's briskets. Hell, long time ago I've used olive oil myself before wrapping when the bottom looked a bit too dry, as I hadn't rendered out the fat that time, and it does help the mouthfeel.

Cheers!

Found this on another forum:

The Cen-Tex SmokerThe Cen-Tex Smoker
February 13
Interesting but they do not re-wrap and add beef tallow to the briskets at franklin. These briskets sit in high humidity warmers for 11-14 hours before service (they come off the pits at midnight and they open at 11 am). The briskets will absolutely soak through the paper while waiting for service.

The Cen-Tex SmokerThe Cen-Tex Smoker
February 13
My thought is if you have to add more fat to brisket, you aren't buying the right brisket and you aren't cooking it right either. Brisket is almost too fatty as it is. The thought of adding even more fat makes me a little queasy.


TEXASBGE2018TEXASBGE2018
February 15 edited February 15
His secret isn't beef tallow, it's what Cen-Tex said. I went into the pit area and kitchen and talked to Aaron and his then GM Benji about it when I was at Franklin a couple years or so back. He uses humidity controlled warmers and lets the briskets sit and basically self baste at 140 or so for around 8-10 hours. But short of owning a $5,000 humidity controlled warming oven ya, beef tallow might help.

What mother in law (who used to own a BBQ business) would do is get an aluminum sheet tray and fill it with hot water and then throw it in the bottom of a Cambro cooler. Then stack her briskets wrapped in butcher paper inside trays and let it steam them until ready to serve. That worked really well

With all this discussion about tallow, I am for sure going to do my own experiments and also start using my brisket scraps for tallow. If I don’t like the “secret” ingredient then at least I can use it for tortillas, seasoning my pit and many other wonderful things.

So I started a choice packer from Sprouts about 8pm last night intending to try the tallow thing.

I severely underestimated how wet my splits were after the snow/rain we've had in Texas over the last few weeks, though, and after fighting temps for about 4 hours I pulled the brisket. I put it in a foil pan and covered it with foil to move to the oven inside. I figured if it was a mess, I could at least shred it for quesadillas or something.

About 12 hours at 250 in the oven got it to 203 and jiggly. Normally I just wrap and shove in a cooler full of towels for a few hours after pulling it off the smoker, but since I was already using the oven I just turned it off and left it resting in there until it hit 140, probably another 6 hours.

It ended up being one of the best briskets I've cooked in a long time. Great texture that seemed to hold its elasticity longer than normal. My home cook complaint is usually that brisket may be great when I slice it, but 5 minutes later it's cold and hardens. This didn't do that. It went into the foil without great color, but ended up with the same dark bark I get when it stays in the offset. Smoke didn't seem to be affected, either, even at 4 hours.

Pleasant surprise that reinforced a lot of what was said in here about the holding environment.

So I gave the tallow experiment a shot this weekend. Started with a 10.5# prime from Costco. Rendered the trimmings down and used that in the wrap. Flavor-wise it's amazing. A really nice beefy flavor is similar to what you get from Waygu. It was a little too greasy and unfortunately, the texture is off. The bark was soft and mushy. I didn't rewrap before the rest which might make a difference but I dunno. My wife rated it a 6. The texture ruined it.

I may try this again using less tallow, I used a little under 1/4 of a cup this time. But at this time I do not believe that tallow is the key.

a7las thanks for running the experiment and reporting back. A shame it didn't come out better because you clearly have some excellent brisket making skills.

jdtTX said:

So I started a choice packer from Sprouts about 8pm last night intending to try the tallow thing.

I severely underestimated how wet my splits were after the snow/rain we've had in Texas over the last few weeks, though, and after fighting temps for about 4 hours I pulled the brisket. I put it in a foil pan and covered it with foil to move to the oven inside. I figured if it was a mess, I could at least shred it for quesadillas or something.

About 12 hours at 250 in the oven got it to 203 and jiggly. Normally I just wrap and shove in a cooler full of towels for a few hours after pulling it off the smoker, but since I was already using the oven I just turned it off and left it resting in there until it hit 140, probably another 6 hours.

It ended up being one of the best briskets I've cooked in a long time. Great texture that seemed to hold its elasticity longer than normal. My home cook complaint is usually that brisket may be great when I slice it, but 5 minutes later it's cold and hardens. This didn't do that. It went into the foil without great color, but ended up with the same dark bark I get when it stays in the offset. Smoke didn't seem to be affected, either, even at 4 hours.

Pleasant surprise that reinforced a lot of what was said in here about the holding environment.

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With brisket, alot of the "it dries & hardens" a couple minutes after being cut has to do with the temperature when it's sliced. Slicing between 140-150 is ideal...and you were right in there. That keeps the moistness inside the meat instead of flowing out of a hot brisket. If it's steaming, then it's probably way too hot to be slicing. So you did excellent there! Remember that for your future briskets...it truly is one of the "trade secrets" that really isn't a secret.

That long, slow hold is another "secret" that folks just want to ignore. But, as you now know, it really is THE technique for an excellent end product.

It sounds as though you learned alot by implementing two of what I consider the fundamentals of consistent, quality brisket. Nice work!

a7las said:

So I gave the tallow experiment a shot this weekend. Started with a 10.5# prime from Costco. Rendered the trimmings down and used that in the wrap. Flavor-wise it's amazing. A really nice beefy flavor is similar to what you get from Waygu. It was a little too greasy and unfortunately, the texture is off. The bark was soft and mushy. I didn't rewrap before the rest which might make a difference but I dunno. My wife rated it a 6. The texture ruined it.

I may try this again using less tallow, I used a little under 1/4 of a cup this time. But at this time I do not believe that tallow is the key.

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I'm not saying tallow is the key...I don't think you actually need it...but it is a tool for the chest in my opinion.

My question is...when did you add it to the brisket? If it was while it's still cooking, I would have guessed that the heat would have allowed it to run off and into the bottom of the paper where the flat is located. It's my experience that this still allows the top of the slices to have a nice bark...although I'm one who doesn't think bark should be crunchy.

Otherwise, I've seen tallow simply added to the paper itself to help seal off the moisture loss during holding. As an alternative, you could skip the tallow and wrap the entire paper wrapped brisket in foil for the hold...this accomplishes the same thing.

For my tastes, I just don't think tallow would ruin the bark texture for me...again, I'll reemphasize that I don't like crunchy bark. If I feared that, I would never ever want to try the beef cheeks at LeRoy & Lewis...and I'm jonesing for some of that!

Cook said:

I'm not saying tallow is the key...I don't think you actually need it...but it is a tool for the chest in my opinion.

My question is...when did you add it to the brisket? If it was while it's still cooking, I would have guessed that the heat would have allowed it to run off and into the bottom of the paper where the flat is located. It's my experience that this still allows the top of the slices to have a nice bark...although I'm one who doesn't think bark should be crunchy.

Otherwise, I've seen tallow simply added to the paper itself to help seal off the moisture loss during holding. As an alternative, you could skip the tallow and wrap the entire paper wrapped brisket in foil for the hold...this accomplishes the same thing.

For my tastes, I just don't think tallow would ruin the bark texture for me...again, I'll reemphasize that I don't like crunchy bark. If I feared that, I would never ever want to try the beef cheeks at LeRoy & Lewis...and I'm jonesing for some of that!

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I added the tallow when I wrapped which was about 6 hours in. My smoker cooks bottom up so I smoke by brisket fat cap down so my presentation side is the flat. I also assumed the majority of the tallow would run to the bottom and protect the bark more than it did, but the paper was completely soaked through and still had a lot of juice/tallow in it.

If you're a fan of a real soft bark then this method will produce great results. Maybe ruined is a strong word to describe the end result, because it was fantastic flavor wise. However, my wife likes my traditional method so that's what i'll be doing

Just my 2 cents re: Franklin BBQ's briskets

1) Start with high quality prime briskets
2) Do not over trim the soft fat (my opinion is folks over trim their briskets)
3) Smokers that optimize airflow and heat distribution
4) Cooking dozens of briskets per cooker at a time
5) Optimal timing of the wrap
6) Optimal timing of removing briskets from the cooker(s)
7) Extended hold times in a controlled environment

The term optimal is obviously subjective , it has been determined through the process of cooking thousands of briskets.

I don't know if Franklin uses tallow or not however it seems to me a cost and labor step that is not necessary due to the above stated reasons. For the home cook that can not replicate Franklin's cooking method and environment then tallow my be one of many possible solutions to disappointing brisket.


FYI... for those without tallow there is always MAYO :wink:

I bought some tallow from Kroger, their own brand Private Selection. I've never done anything with tallow before. There's some of it that is solid and some that's more fluid like in the madscientist video. If I heat up the solid stuff does it melt down so I can put it in a squeeze bottle?

Sorry for the newb question.

jhwhite said:

I bought some tallow from Kroger, their own brand Private Selection. I've never done anything with tallow before. There's some of it that is solid and some that's more fluid like in the madscientist video. If I heat up the solid stuff does it melt down so I can put it in a squeeze bottle?

Sorry for the newb question.

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It should. I think beef tallow melts about 95 degrees F. It can be lower depending on purity and stuff.

frayedend said:

It should. I think beef tallow melts about 95 degrees F. It can be lower depending on purity and stuff.

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Thanks!

I just found a couple of videos of a Waygu brisket I cooked last summer. The butcher paper was soaked through completely. No tallow required.

Brisket with Beef Tallow / Borrowing from the Franklin Video.

Started out with a 12 1/2 pound brisket I purchased from Costco, prime meat.
Seasoned it the night before. Cut off more fat than most people probably would do. There’s only so much my cholesterol medication will do.

As far as seasoning goes I used Oakridge, Black Ops. Excellent! I use more rub than most people probably would put on a brisket. I know that if you put on too much rub you don’t as much smoke flavor come in, so I’ve been told, however I got a nice amount of smoke flavor.

Brisket came out of the fridge at 6:00 am. On the pellet smoker at 7:00 am. Wrapped at 185 after 6 hours. Applied a generous amount of the beef tallow that I watched from the video. Then back on the smoker, pulled off the brisket at 4:00 pm , Hitting an internal temperature of 208. Total cook time, 10 hours at 2:25 degrees. Wrapped it, the 2nd. time using beef tallow, again. Let it sit in the cooler with a large towel over it for 3 hours.


Overall flavor and taste was excellent.
I attribute a lot of the flavor and taste to the rub that I used. Not too salty!!! The Brisket was moist. The smoke flavor penetrated into the meat. I would use the Beef Tallow again.

Recap:
Season the night before.
1 hour out of the fridge before cooking
Wrapped at 185 degrees at 6 Hrs.
10 hours of total cook time at 225 Pulled it off the smoker at 208
3 hours of sitting in cooler
Wrapped in Beef Tallow 2 times