A Taste of Central Texas, with Jack’s BBQ’s Jack Timmons

American barbecue: one of the few culinary creations that the United States can call their own. At a national level, it’s beef and pork cuts smoked over American wood, and usually served with a sauce. But the nuances pile up as soon as you drive a hundred miles in any direction. The Carolinas are vinegary with their sauces, Memphis pulls more pork than anywhere. And just within Texas, immigration and geography have developed Eastern, Southern, Western, and Central styles.

If you’re in Seattle and want to talk Central Texas barbecue, go find Jack Timmons of Jack’s BBQ. Jack’s been to Texas A&M’s barbecue summer camp, toured the historic barbecue temples of Central Texas, regularly attends the Foodways Texas Annual Symposium, and reads up on the settlement of Texas in his spare time.

When he started the “Seattle Brisket Experience” in 2012, Jack joined Aaron Franklin and other Texas legends in perfecting the Texas Trinity: brisket, ribs and sausage. In our conversation Jack discussed how the Texas Trinity came to be, the best way to measure a barbecue joint, and the future of Texas barbecue.

What makes Central Texas barbecue different from the rest of Texas and how did that come to be?

There’s four different barbecue styles in Texas. Maybe a fifth one if you include the new urban style of barbecue fusion.

In South Texas they bury things in the ground like barbacoa. They get a steer head or other cheap cuts and cook it in the ground, then put it in tacos. In West Texas they have less wood so they cook it directly over the fire. It’s a little faster – they do briskets in four or five hours instead of eight or twelve. East Texas is a little more like the American South in that they use more barbecue sauce on cheaper cuts of meat. But in Central Texas, it’s just about the meat.

In the 1800s Czechs, Hungarians and a huge German migration settled the Central Texas area around Austin. They had an investment group in Germany that sponsored a bunch of families to move over there to settle the new country. They were joining the Comanches, Spanish immigrants, and other Americans who moved to Texas from states like Tennessee.

The Germans moved in and they opened butcher shops. If cuts of meat didn’t sell, they’d smoke them to make them last longer. And they had none of this sauce going on. It was just salt and pepper on beef. Then they made pork ribs and they made sausage, which today makes up the Texas Trinity: Brisket, sausage and ribs. But it was all about the butcher shop, and there are still a lot of Texas barbecue places that look like that.

Nowadays if there is sauce, it’s served on the side and almost like a jus. It’s a super watered down barbecue sauce for dipping a piece of meat. So I tell people eating here that it’s like going to a steakhouse. I like sauce – I grew up in East Texas. But you don’t bury your steak in Bernaise. You eat the steak for a while and then you dip it in a little sauce.

What non-barbecue foods are significant in Central Texas?

Since Central Texas was settled by Czechs as well, there are some little Czech towns where they make kolaches, which are these filled pastries. You usually stop at one of these bakeries on the drive between Dallas and Austin. Some have sausages and cheese, some have strawberries or other fruits. They’re a big deal there.

Is sitting down and eating typical at a barbecue joint in Texas?

Well barbecue has always been to-go food. Like fried chicken, it’s one of those Sunday suppers you buy and take home.

And I think it’s because it takes so long to do it. I had a barbecue pit in my backyard for twenty-something years and I’d do it every single weekend. But we’d spend twelve or fourteen hours on a brisket which is a big time investment.

You can’t hurry a brisket, but you can go pick up a pound of it for twenty bucks. It’s kind of like dim sum: you could make twenty-six different little dumpling dishes, or you could just go buy it and enjoy it all without the work.

Then you compare barbecue with a steakhouse. You can buy a steak and cook it as well as they do, unless you’re into the 100-day aged steaks they have now. But it’s more about the experience. They have the service where you sit down and they bring you a cocktail, and they’re bending over backward to make sure everything is taken care of.

But no one’s going to spend a hundred bucks to get a steak, drive home for 20 minutes, then open it up and expect the same quality and experience. Compare that with brisket which just gets better with time, so barbecue makes more sense to-go.

For someone who’s been introduced to barbecue, but wants to try the central texas style, what would you recommend they try first?

Well brisket is how you measure the skill of a barbecue joint. Everybody can do ribs and pulled pork, but brisket is the hardest meat to smoke.

Brisket is two overlapping muscles in the chest of a big steer and they don’t have collar bones so those muscles work really hard. They have thick muscle fibers wrapped in a netting of collagen which melts and becomes tender when you smoke it for a very long period of time. But those two muscles have different personalities: the flat is more lean and the point is more moist and fatty.

They’re cooked together and served so that there’s some of each on your plate. And if both of those pieces come out nicely then you know you’re eating really good barbecue.

On my plate I like to get the fatty as well as the lean pieces, and some pickles and onions on the side. Then I eat the meat by itself to really taste it. And once I’ve done that I’ll add the sauce for fun.

What side dishes would be good to try?

A lot of people like coleslaw – some people like it tangy and some people like it super creamy.

Texas caviar is a unique one. It’s a chilled black eyed pea salad with a million kinds of peppers and pimentos and it’s just delicious. My family would eat it with chips and watch the football game.

Ranch-style beans are super delicious. They’re savory, not sugary like baked beans. They’ve got tomatoes and different herbs chopped up in there with pinto beans. I like mixing them in with my chili every now and then, but I don’t tell anybody because that’s against the rules. Texas chili is supposed to just be meat.

There are so many barbecue restaurants where they’re all about the meat, so they get the coleslaw and potato salad from Costco. They’re famous places too, but the sides just suck. I eat so much barbecue that the sides are more interesting to me than the meats nowadays.

What’s the state of Central Texas barbecue today? And what’s next?

Central Texas barbecue is taking over nationally. There’s been a war of words between the Central Texas barbecue people and the Southern barbecue because the Central Texas style is invading the Southern areas. In Charleston one of the guys that worked with Aaron Franklin opened up Lewis Barbecue and it’s been doing really well. So everyone is like, “Hey don’t be invading our barbecue with your Texas-style”.

Central Texas barbecue places are opening in France and Sweden and it’s part of the whole Aaron Franklin movement. Now Netflix has the Chef’s Table BBQ special highlighting Tootsie Tomanetz and all the other important pitmasters. People are realizing that Central Texas-style is authentic and it’s the right way to do it.

So I think Central Texas barbecue’s taking over. Maybe in the future, there’ll be more mashups. There are mashups in Texas and LA with Korean and Texas barbecue. We’ve done pho with brisket and we’ve done brisket enchiladas. There’s a guy that makes sushi down the street and we did a surf and turf roll. It was a Dungeness crab roll with a piece of fatty brisket on top with wasabi mayo. And it was really fucking good.

But at some point you can mash up anything and what’s really the point? As I get older I realize it doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be made with good ingredients.

To experience Central Texas through its storied barbecue cuisine, visit Jack’s BBQ at one of four greater Seattle locations. If you’ve got a backyard smoker and want to learn the Central Texas style of barbecue, sign up for classes on the Jack’s BBQ website.