DALLAS – With the weather warming up, everyone is firing up the grill. But ever wonder why your barbeque never tastes as good as the professionals’?
Everyone from locals to food connoisseurs have dropped by the original Sonny Bryan’s BBQ, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary, and today I’m learning what makes it so famous. Brent Harman, President of Sonny Bryan’s is teaching me the ropes and I’m sharing their secrets with you so you can also make great BBQ at home!
Brent says the first key is staring with the right cut, “We buy a brisket with the deckle on, which is hard to tell from here, but there’s an extra piece of fat on the bottom there. It’s one of the key elements to making brisket so juicy and tender.” And then, he says you have to have patience, ” I think one thing folks do at home is cook it too high of a temperature and too fast. It needs to be slow smoked, we cook it at somewhere around 200 degrees.”
I ask Brent, “The most famous thing about Sonny Bryan’s is the sauce right? Any secret you can share?” He says, “Yes, I have one secret between us, and everyone else and that is Sonny took drippings from the brisket and put it in the bbq sauce, it gives it a little extra flavor.” it’s used on the ribs too, which are first smoked, cooled and cut. Brent says, “When we reheat them we put them on the grill really slow,constantly basting them in sauce.” it creates a grilled, carmelized coating that makes them crunchy, charred and delicious/ After all that hard work, it’s time for some indulgence, including the huge onion rings! And with the tangy, sweet bbq sauce still served out of coronas, and tables made out of old school desks, it’s no wonder that they still sell out, sometimes within hours.
