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Fiasco Barbecue is my barbecue food truck. And I'm the owner and pitmaster. I am literally the only employee. I'm the only one who works here. The vast, vast majority of my career is on the wine side and the beverage side. And it turns out I could make it all the way to the top becoming the beverage director for three-star Michelin restaurant called Jean-Georges. And then I took a step away from hospitality. Then when we moved to Austin, that's where I started teaching myself how to smoke meat. I opened Fiasco Barbecue because number one, I love barbecue. Number two, I love cooking barbecue for other people.
Number three, I love a challenge. And number four, I'm not afraid of it. Good morning. It's 4:25. My name is Eric and this is Fiasco Barbecue, my food truck in East Austin. First thing we have to do is get the fire lit so we can get the meats on the smoker by 5:00. Let's go. So I use post oak, which is very traditional in Central Texas. Little tip and trick for you folks at home, if you're having a hard time getting your fire lit, you get a leaf blower. Because you're adding oxygen to the firebox, which is what fire needs. And as you can see right now, this fire is going. It is 4:39 a.m. and the current temperature is 80° 81% humidity.
Yeah, I'm already sweating. I could start a little bit later, but then I'd be here later and I've got kids at home and I already get up at 3:30 in the morning to get here and get this started at 5:00. So I'd rather just get it over with. I want to make sure that I keep this door closed so I don't lose all the heat. Definitely still plenty enough space to get oxygen coming in to keep that fire going. Now we're going to go pull the meat out of the refrigerator and we're going to get ready to put on the smoker.
Brisket number one. Brisket number two. So, these briskets will be for tomorrow. I'm also cooking one rack of pork ribs for today. I never really have any way to know when people are coming, so I just make sure I got everything ready to go at 11:00. Now, I've got clean smoke coming out of my chimney. The smoke that you can barely see lets you know that you've got good smoke. They call it blue smoke. You right now you can't tell that it's blue, but later today you'll be able to see it. I'm going to give a quick check on the temp just to see what it's at. Right now, we're sitting at 250. Oh, I'm ready to put meat on now. Even if it was under 250, as long as I've got that clean smoke, I'm good to go. Yesterday, I
trimmed and seasoned the briskets to dry brine overnight. They really take on a lot of flavor. The longer you can season these things, the better off you are. This is the second brisket going on the smoker. We moved to Austin in 2020. That's where I started teaching myself how to smoke meat was in the parking lot of our apartment on a Weber kettle. If you look back in my Instagram, you can see untrimmed briskets and meat pointed in the wrong direction, but you know, I just kept going and trial and error and research and asking questions and brisket was not something I did a lot at home because I would have to start at basically 3:00 in the
morning with my smoker right outside the bedroom window. And last, but certainly not least, probably my favorite, the ribs. They're the first ones that I was able to do well consistently first. I like cooking them, I like eating them. So, this is the pit at Fiasco. It's a big offset smoker. The fire is in the firebox here, gets pulled through the smoker by the chimney. That's what makes this the warmest part of the smoker. I was incredibly lucky to find this smoker on Facebook Marketplace because it is in a trailer, fully enclosed, which is a requirement of the city of Austin, so the general public can't come up and touch it and get hurt. So, in the warmest chamber right here, I've got the briskets.
And in the middle chamber, I have the pork ribs. This chamber is more consistent in temperature. This chamber, it's hotter towards the back than it is towards the front. Every smoker is different. They all have their own idiosyncrasies, warm spots, cool spots. Very common practice is to get some Pillsbury biscuits in the can, pop it open, and fill your smoker with biscuits, and that will tell you where the warm spots are and the cool spots, depending on how those biscuits rise and if they start to burn. I'm going to head into the smoker trailer, and then we'll continue on with our day. All right, it's just after 7:00. So, we're in the Fiasco Barbecue food trailer. As you can see, it's not very big.
It's big enough for me. Once I have another employee, we'll have to see how that works. When I got this food trailer, this was the only shelf in here. So, I added these shelves here. I added this shelf here, and I added this shelf here. So, right here is my protein refrigerator. All my protein goes in here, and then this is my basically produce cooler over here, where the sides and the pickled things come from. The warmer is one of the most important pieces of equipment for barbecue, because what it does is it allows you to hold the meat at 140° to 150°. That way, it keeps it out of the temperature danger zone for bacterial growth, but it
doesn't continue to cook the meat. The only downside is this door swings this way, but [snorts] I've been able to navigate that without any real issue. At this point, what I'm going to do is pull the turkey out of the refrigerator, get it seasoned and ready to go on the smoker in about 10 minutes. I love having a on my menu because it's smoked really well. It's probably the most popular meat that I serve. I think that turkey is gaining a larger footprint in barbecue. It's great to have a lighter option for a smoked meat. It is great to have something that is just jam-packed with protein and very lean for people that are more conscious about what they're ingesting. I just love how tender it is, how great it
takes smoke flavor, but never seems overwhelmingly smoky, and how it absorbs the flavor of the rub. Proteins with low fat content will tend to cook a little bit faster because we don't need to worry about rendering the fat. So, what we're going to do now is season the turkey. This is a fairly simple rub, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, couple of other ingredients I won't share. The purpose of the rub on the turkey is not to create a bark. What it is just to provide some seasoning for the turkey itself. A bark on proteins takes hours of smoke contact. This is only going to get an hour and a half, and then it's
going to get wrapped up, basically like finishing in the oven at a low temperature. Because it's a little bit cooler, I want to put the turkey on the middle chamber. This also gives us an opportunity to look at our ribs and brisket for the first time today. And I see that the ribs are looking really good. I'm going to hit it with a little apple cider vinegar just to keep the top moist, keep it from drying out. And I'm now Oh, these are heavy. Going to check those briskets for the first time. I can see that our temperature's dipped a little bit, so I need to add some more fuel to the fire. But, these are looking really good for only 2 and 1/2 hours. There is uh some
thought that adding apple cider vinegar helps develop the bark because the smoke will stick to it. So, the downtime is starting to reach its end for the day. We're going to start getting some of the sides prepped, and we're going to get going and ready for service at 11:00. All right, 8:40 in the morning, I'm going to start prepping my potato salad. For all of you actual chefs and line cooks out there, avert your eyes. And these are sides that are built on lightness, freshness, and acidity. Instead of using mayonnaise or sour cream, we dress it with Greek yogurt. These recipes were developed over weeks of tinkering and trial and
error and what was going to be something that would be reasonable for a one-person barbecue food truck to execute on a daily basis because these are made fresh every day. So basically how I get my supplies right now for the most part is by shopping on my own. I have a larger vendor that I use, but the order minimums are often times larger than what I require. My brisket, I buy it at Costco. It's less expensive than what you can find from a food vendor. Literally everything for this business I do by myself. Because not only am I the pitmaster and the prep cook and the cashier and the dishwasher and the porter, I'm also the purchaser. I'm also the accountant. What happens on Monday is I
got to balance my books. Tuesday I am back at the truck to see what I need to order for the weekend. And then on Wednesday I'll go pick up my briskets. And then on Thursday I'll get everything else whether I'm picking it up or it's delivered. And then I start prep for the weekend. There's no rest for the wicked in this business. All right, it's 9:00 a.m. now. It's a perfect time to put a pin in the potato salad. We're going to go wrap the ribs and the turkey. So now the turkey's been on for an hour and a half. I'm going to wrap it up right now. It's taken on about as much smoke as it's really going to take on and I don't want the exterior of the turkey to get too firm. So I'm going to
wrap it. When it's wrapped it retains moisture so it doesn't start to dry out. This turkey is not going to take on any more smoke. It's just basically going to finish like it's cooking in an oven. And now we'll get set up to wrap our rack of ribs. So, the ribs take a little few more steps to wrap because we're going to add a glaze to them. I'm going to pull the rack out. I'm going to lay down some brown sugar. The brown sugar will caramelize and add a really nice texture. It'll give it a little more sweetness, but that's not really what it's for. And then using the barbecue sauce will enhance the color of the rack
of ribs as well. So, it's going to give it more concentrated sort of deep red color with the glaze. It is a ketchup-based sauce like most barbecue sauces with black pepper, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder. Again, a little cayenne because I like a touch of heat. I don't want the meat to pull too far from the bone, but I want that process to have started because if it's pulling too far back, that means it's getting really close to being done. And at that point, I might have to make the decision to just finish the ribs unwrapped. But, that also means that at least for today, I don't have the glaze that I want to use because I didn't have the time to do it. So, that's wrapped up, ready. You
can see it's already starting to bend. That's a good sign that it still has more cooking time to go. And I'm just going to put it back in the smoker meat side down. All right, it's 10:00. Time to get the burgers on the smoker. There's five of them. I make them by hand every day. I only make five every day. They're magically delicious. But, I'm not trying to be a burger joint. What I love about a smoked burger is just the absolute juicy, tender, smoky flavor and texture. It's not grilled over high heat or seared.
It's definitely going to be much softer and more tender than anything like a smash burger because the idea behind that is sear the outside so you don't lose the fat. Whereas, what I'm trying to do is render some of that fat out and keeping it well integrated throughout all of the meat. Burger's not something you're going to find in every barbecue joint in Austin, but you can find them. I want to give somebody an option of something that's not barbecue. If they're in the neighborhood, they want to get a quick lunch, I can bang out a burger from the food truck in no time. So, they're still getting a great lunch, but it's not necessarily barbecue. So, the burgers will smoke for about 45 minutes. At
10:30, I'm going to flip them, and then I'll pull them at 10:45, and they'll go in the warmer. All right, it's 10:15. Now, I got to write my menu on my butcher paper, so I can get it posted up to social media, so people know what I got today. I don't have the same menu every weekend, because one of the sides changes. I always have the potato salad. Sometimes on Friday, I have brisket. Sometimes I don't. So, if I don't have brisket, I need to have something else. A lot of times, I'll do beef back ribs, but I'm fortunate enough to have some brisket today, so we're just going to get it set up. If I misspell any of these words, I'm I
got bigger problems. High-tech. Real high-tech. Like, this is legit fiasco. This guy's writing the menu every day. What a mess. It's not so much that things could go wrong at any moment, though of course they can. It's just more of it being a one-man operation, and everything that you've seen throughout the day, it's just kind of a fiasco doing it by yourself. But, uh I love it. All right, now I got to get a photo of that, so I can get it posted. All right. All right, 10:30. Time to start getting some meat off the smoker.
You've never seen me with a tray that doesn't have a foil wrap. That's because it saves a ton of time on ware washing at the end of the day. You don't want to be humped over a kitchen sink at the end of a long day scrubbing pans, when you can just wrap them in foil, and then throw that foil out. I am also the dishwasher. That is correct. First thing we're going to do is flip our burgers. Also gives me an opportunity to check on the briskets, which looks good. So, as you can see, you do start to get some grill marks on there just because this great has been sitting in the heat all day long. It's in no way caramelizing the meat, it's just some grill marks. All right, I know these are done. Ribs are off, they're
right here. Turkey's not quite ready yet, so we're going to leave that on the smoker for a little bit longer. The distance between the wood and the smoker is a new phenomenon, but that's where my wood's going to live for now. I bought a little cart to haul it back, but obviously I forgot about that. Now, I'm going to build my workstation. So, for most of this day, this has been a prep kitchen, but at this point we're 20 minutes from opening. I got to have everything ready to go at 11:00. Always thinking about working as cleanly as possible and having as little breakdown, so I will line this with plastic before I put the cutting boards on. It doesn't prevent me from having to wash it, but it generally prevents
juices from soaking into the cutting board. All right, 10:45, time to pull the burgers off the smoker and get the cheese on them, get them in the warmer so that cheese gets nice and melty. After 45 minutes between 265 and let's say 280, they come out about medium. They're going to go in the warmer, so they're going to cook up a little bit more, but they'll never get to well done. Good old American cheese, the best for cheeseburgers because it melts without splitting. All right, it's 11:00. We're going to pull that turkey off the smoker. It's where I want it to be at 150 and put it into the warmer. Well, if your turkey's dry, it's one of three things. You either cooked it too long, you cooked it too hot, or you didn't wrap it.
All the prep is done, the meats are off the smoker and in the warmer. Briskets are still cooking for tomorrow. I'll keep an eye on that, keep an eye on the fire. We'll wrap those a little bit later this afternoon, but as of now, I'm open for business. Just some blues rock and roll all day long. All right, y'all the lunch rush is over but I still got a lot of work to do. I got briskets on the smoker for tomorrow. I got to clean this place up. Thanks for spending the day with me. Now y'all got to go.
