Beefahontas

ahoy, I'll tell you - this is not a night-owl's business. Started the day at 5:30am, need to get the smokers going in time to meet the lunch rush. Luckily (kind of), I'm currently staying only a 9 iron from the restaurant, a propitious commute. If the meat's not on by 7:30, they risk heating up frozen, pre-cooked ribs - which, by the way, heat up in 30 minutes at 250 degrees, and they claim that little taste is lost - I've yet to try them that way.

Today, aside from the regular demand in the restaurant, there was a monstrous catering order for brisket - I seasoned them yesterday and plopped it into the fridge overnight and then today, loaded just under 200 briskets into two smokers. That's some beef.

Here's the process, to give you some idea of the work:

Briskets come in boxes individually wrapped in plastic. They're opened, seasoned with rub in sealable plastic crates (in a plastic bag), then kept overnight. In the morning, they're put in the smoker on the lowest racks (because those have the lowest temperature), and smoked for around two hours at around 260 degrees (time variation in lieu of brisket size is irrelevant, due to the total load size and accessibility to each brisket in the smoker). The briskets are then individually wrapped in foil and placed back in the smoker for another hour - remember there were 194 of these babies - averaging 6 pounds each. That's zen work if there ever was any.

Lastly, the briskets are loaded into cooling racks and rolled into the walk-in freezer for quick cooling. However, because of the sheer quantity of briskets (the heat emanating from the mass actually dropped the temperature of the moderated freezer by enough degrees that it couldn't do the trick!), it took longer than expected to cool those suckers. We had to move them into the other walk-in freezer, kept at a lower temperature.

Great day. My back hurts and I smell like smoke, the good kind.