Brisket Is Worth the Wait.
As smoke from the oak-burning barbecue pits swirled around his head, Nestor Laracuente lit a Marlboro Red, inhaled hard and puffed out his own cumulus cloud. A pitmaster at Hometown Bar-B-Que in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Mr. Laracuente says nicotine and heavy metal help him through the marathon graveyard shifts he spends monitoring the combination of heat, meat and smoke that it takes to produce extraordinary barbecued brisket.
He prodded one plump, crusty hunk of beef with rubber-gloved fingers to feel where it was in its 11-to-14-hour cooking process. “You want it soft and balloon-like,” he said — not bouncy, like party balloons, but relaxed, like morning-after balloons.
During all the years when New York was a city of embarrassing or better-than-nothing barbecue, pork ribs and pulled pork were the most palatable options. Then along came the Texas Trinity — brisket, beef ribs and spicy beef sausage — turned out in authentic fashion at restaurants like Hill Country Barbecue Market and Fette Sau.
Now, suddenly, the spotlight — and the obsessive attention of cooks like Mr. Laracuente — has narrowed in on brisket alone. And New York is even starting to develop something new: a local style of serving it, in untraditional sandwiches or with more up-to-date side dishes.
“The brisket I’ve had in New York lately is better than a lot of places in Texas,” said Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor of Texas Monthly magazine.
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