THE COOKBOOK TEST #107: GOLDEE’S BAR-B-Q: A COOKBOOK

INSTALLMENT #107 (PAID) ON BRISKET / OLD SCHOOL + NEW SCHOOL / A 14-HOUR COOK / HADES VS. HADES 2

Dear Subscribers,

If barbecue is an art - and I’m strongly on the “yes, it is” side of that question - then beef brisket is one of the undeniably refined high points, the oil painting or symphony orchestra performance of smoked meat. Its sheer size, expense, and physical complexity makes it an Old Man and the Sea kind of battle to source, trim, prepare, smoke, finish, and serve.

There’s a new cookbook out from a new-school Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas legend called Goldee’s Bar-B-Q. This being Texas, brisket is at the front and center of the story. I’d originally planned to pit the Goldee’s method for brisket against my new favorite BBQ cookbook (The Art of BBQ), but the latter doesn’t even have a recipe for it, no doubt because the daunting nature of the task leaves no room for halfway measures.

So, for this week’s Cookbook Test, I take on a whale of a project using a whale of a recipe. Buckle up!

at your service,

James

GOLDEE’S BAR-B-Q: A COOKBOOK
JALEN HEARD, LANE MILNE, and JONNY WHITE WITH LISA FAIN AND PHOTOS BY WILL MILNE
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS | 2025 | $45

The Goldee’s Bar-B-Q cookbook is, in part, a story of the restaurant itself. It’s a new-school place run by young people who put curiosity, fun, and diversity at the top of their list of values but despite that - or because of that, perhaps - they’ve managed to win over traditionalists and reap piles of kudos for their work in one of the most competitive barbecue regions in the country. A writeup by Texas Monthly deemed them the #1 barbecue restaurant in the state, an honor that’s hard to top.

The cookbook has a handful of sides and desserts and such, but the bulk of the book concentrates on long, detailed methods for brisket, beef ribs, pork ribs, pork belly and the like. The Art of BBQ (reviewed here a couple weeks ago) was as much about grilling as smoking and managed to publish a recipe every two pages or two; Goldee’s Bar-B-Q: A Cookbook is for the slow-rolling smoke enthusiast, who wants to get into the weeds about every aspect of the alchemy that transforms raw slabs of meat into bark-clad poetry.

MEET THE MEAT

Over the course of reading and executing the book’s recipe for beef brisket, I found myself doing a complete 180. At first, I thought the method was massive overkill - page after page of descriptions and instructions, no easy-to-follow marching orders, piles of subjective background and a mass of text that was difficult to scan and use.

But once I got into the 14-hour odyssey of the cook, I came to appreciate all the cues and details. Giving each of the brisket’s four cook stages a temperature guide and a lengthy description is helpful and interesting when you’re in the middle of one of the 3-4 hour sub-processes that make up the brisket journey.

And by the time I finished the whole recipe, I had transformed $100 of beef into a delicious success: barked and smoke ringed, tender and moist but properly crispy on the exterior, ready to be sliced and enjoyed for meal after meal after meal.

In some regards, I ignored the book’s advice while making my brisket, but that isn’t a criticism of the advice itself. I didn’t use Lawry’s seasoning salt; I used a Butcher’s Blend spice mix that I’d whipped up for some kebabs from The Art of BBQ cookbook. I didn’t trim the brisket myself because the butcher at Everett’s Meats beat me to it once I told him what I was doing with the meat. (A lost learning opportunity for sure, but also pretty dang convenient.)