Texas Barbecue and Culinary Culture

Man, back then, when I first started, we didn't have the internet. Yeah, that's what I mean. You go to the local library and just get a book, and that's it. And then my first weight set, I remember seven or eight, and I begged my parents for a barbell set for Christmas. So Santa brought me a barbell set. So it was like this weeder. It was a hollow bar, and it had concrete plates that were encased in plastic. And it came with a poster. So I just put the poster up and I just did that. And then, you know, there were guys in my very small town. There were dudes there that would smash weights and they were really fairly decent at it for country boys. And so, you know, we learned stuff from them. They're like, oh, this is cute. Little eight year old wants to lift weights. Cool. So that getting in the getting in the high school, starting powerlifting, really, really learning how to be strong. And we come from a place where it's all cornbread country boys. Everybody's strong. everybody because you're out working cattle and you're throwing hay and that's you're digging uh trenches and building farm farm strong what is it farm strong farm boy strong yeah your farm strength right so you go into power lifting if you if you want to make yourself feel bad go look at how strong texas high school powerlifters are and most people who think they're strong would be like just any american the american kids are fucked at the moment yeah and they're only going they're only getting stronger like it's actually absurd how strong the american kids are yeah it's It's just part of their culture It's just like Embed into the culture Of just like Weight training And the bench press And fucking It's crazy I went and Hired a coach A new coach Because I was with Bryce For four and a half years But I went through Joey Flex And I went on And I saw his coaches And I picked the youngest guy He's 22 years old And he totals 860 Yeah At 22 years old And I'm like He's going to be A fucking monster I jumped on his Instagram He's like Just squatting 300 Pulling 320 Like it's nothing Like RPE 6-7 shit Yeah And he's 22. Like our high school, we basically first place at every single meet we went to. And almost everybody went to state. Everybody was strong. But we had nothing to do in our hometown. It was like either fight, fuck, or power lift, or all the above. So there's literally nothing to do in our hometown. Smoking? Smoking meat. I was like, weed? Meth. Smoking barbecue. Barbecue. It's big in Texas. Yeah, American barbecue. Yeah, it is. Is there a fair bit of that going on? Tons. Most of the top ten barbecue places in all of America are in Texas. And they're all isolated around Austin, San Antonio area. Have you touched any barbecue in Australia that's come even remotely close to Texas quality? Yeah. I haven't had much here because I just make my own. Because I've got a Traeger and I'll just do that. And I'll cheat. I'll do sous vide. I'll sous vide. First get for like 36 hours And then I'll smoke it for three It's fucking Probably my favourite way Of doing it Second night Six hours Second night Charles You just put it in a Hot water It's like 60 degrees Or whatever So you don't have to do anything 36 hours Yeah That's Fuck Yeah Start prepping Saturday lunch Tuesday It's happening Actually one of the best I've had Is here in Melbourne Blue Bonnet Blue Bonnet was really good And then they moved to a new place And it's shit Oh You had us I was going to say Let's go I'll tell you, I'll tell you a funny blue bonnet story. So Jordan shallow and Ben Pekulski, they came in to do some things before COVID and they were like, Hey, do you want to come? We're going to have a similar, you want to come hang out? And I'm like, yeah, cool. So I came down here and they did the seminar and we all hung out. That was where I met you in the chicken nuggets. Oh yeah. The first day. So I said, Hey guys, let's go have some barbecue. I've got this great place. Right. So we go and it's me and Jordan and Ben and his wife and his kids. And we get there and Ben's like talking to the waitress. He goes, so do you guys have anything? You get gluten free? They're like, no. Do you have a kid's menu? No. And like everything he wanted, they didn't have. And he had looked at him. I've never seen him get irritated. And I, he got, had a look on his face. Like he was going to start murdering people. And I'm like, fuck, I've never seen Ben look like that. He's such a Zen bloke as well. He's super Zen, but he was getting super aggro. And I'm like, dude, we can go somewhere else. He goes, no, it's okay. I'm like, okay. All right, cool. At least don't walk out. Blue bonnet. Blue bonnet? I've never even heard of it no good don't go there where should we go then if we want to get a fucking crazy obviously Charlie come back to Queensland next time bomb beach next time It getting good man Australians are actually getting really good at the smoking Yeah It's just over the last few years, it's really accelerated here. It's gotten really impressive. Used to, I wouldn't touch it. Now it's getting better. You guys just got to get better at fucking Mexican food and Tex-Mex. You guys are still shit at that. Really? You like, you gringo fight everything. It's like, you know, you want a nice, you just have nice taco man. You just have nice seasoned meat. you just need onion maybe some cilantro and then it's really simple and you guys are like fuck it let's put sauces on everything and then you start adding a bunch of shit you don't need so it's like Australian Mexican food and it's a really weird thing Ozmex Ozmex Oz Tex-Mex it's so weird to me yeah we've been watching videos I had a whole bunch of people around to my house two Fridays ago I think you and I were the only people that were really into what was on the TV I think me and you need to have an aisle of that just us two We were watching. It was like, fuck everyone else. We were watching some guys in Mississippi grill chicken thighs. And everyone's like, what the? It was competition thighs. That's it. Competition chicken thighs. And we were like, in this. And everyone's like, is this what we're watching? Like, yes. This is what we're watching. It was his recipe on how he does it for competition. They inject it. They inject the chicken thigh with some other. Tran. Oh, man. It's Mississippi. It's Mississippi. They're injecting it with racism. Come here, boy. Make me some chicken thigh. I've seen them inject stuff, though, before. They're like... Yeah, it's like a broth or something. Yeah, yeah. And it keeps it juicy. Because he wanted the judge. He goes, I want the judge to take the bite. He goes, they're going to bite from here first, so they get that explosion of flavour. I was like, crazy. It's a science, man. It's a real science. The physics of barbecues. Oh, bro. And we watched some other guy like charcoal barbecue for like 10 minutes. Yeah. It was like a live... It was unbelievable. What's your optimal temperature for smoking brisket? Smoking brisket? Celsius. Oh, God. Now I've got to do the converter. No, do Fahrenheit. We'll get it down. Can Charlie hire you as a brisket coach? I wish you hadn't asked me that because it's all written down in notes at my house. I don't actually have a brisket. That's what we need, bro. I've gotten lazy now because I've got the Traeger. What's a Traeger? Traeger's a pellet smoker. So it's all automatic. Oh, really? Yeah. So you extract the trend. And it's not a great smoker, but it does the trick, and you don't have to be there. You can just turn it on. I can control it from my phone. I can turn it on, go to the movies. Whoa. So it's not arm-wrestling. Put your USB sticks fucking to bed, mate. So how does the heat control? Because it's obviously not charcoal. So they've got on the side, they've got the pellet box, and then it slowly puts the pellets in, and there's a small fire unit in the bottom. so then the pellets go in there and it controls it and everything's controlled through the electronics so you don't actually have to do anything. So it's good. I mean, it's cheating. It's cheating, yeah. But it comes out perfect every fucking time. I think that's something that I've got to master the art form first before I can go to that. You don't go entry level into that. No, because you never develop the skill. No, I want to learn the skill. That's not the modern thing, though. You know, guys get in the bodybuilding, they immediately get on the gear. You should just immediately get into electronic smoking and say fuck. I just recently started getting into it. It's changed my eating at home because I'm actually getting excited. I'm not really bored with food. I felt like I was just cooking the same. I just felt like I was cooking the same shit every time. It was boring. Now it's like fucking. Your power left thing is to eat whatever the fuck you want. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. It's good. Yeah. Let's get juicy. The one thing I was going to ask before we wrap it up is you said Australians do Mexican food shit. what is what cuisine do we do well in Australia that you wouldn't typically get in America I was actually thinking about that well it's you get anything in America but do you get anything but is it good yeah well you gotta keep in mind America's so much different than Australia because if you go you go to Brisbane you go to Sydney you go to Melbourne it's everybody's pretty much the same just with some tweaks like a little more hipsters here and you know a little bit more rednecks in Queensland a little bit more pretentious $30,000 millionaires in Sydney. But everything's very homogenous here. Yeah, for sure. In America, you go to a different state and it's completely different. It's like a new country. It's like Europe of North America. It's crazy. Yeah. It's actually cool. But Texas is a good place for pretty much anything because it's such a diverse amount of people. But here, oddly enough, you guys probably disagree with me, but i think you guys mostly australians do greek food really well but there's a lot of greeks here so melbourne as well yeah the thing is you guys don't have any mexicans here so there's nobody to teach you that's what i was gonna say he's like especially in texas you got the borders right there so you've obviously got a lot of influence from them directly whereas yeah here a lot of italians greeks especially melbourne um asian like so you got the people bringing it from the yeah from the

The land. Yeah, 100%. The motherland. The wrecked. Yeah, that's right. We'll get on the Mexican. Prove on the Mexican. We'll find a... We'll do some research. We'll find a killer barbecue fucking place in Melbourne. And next time you're down, you can run a seminar here. And then we'll get barbecue. We'll get barbecue. And then the next day we'll do barbecue at mine. Fuck yeah. You can be the judge. All right. The special thighs. Competition thighs. I'll make some cattle pellets while you cook up the cattle. We're good. We're done. we're all finished then all done