So as I’m trimming the brisket last week, which, by the way, impressed me mightily. I can’t say it was my best, but easily in the top five, and I’m just cringing at the wastefulness of the process. Now granted, I use all of my trim. The fat will be rendered down and I’m going to butterfly and chicken fry the giant piece of the flat I removed in the interest of science. But as I’m watching all the brisket trimming videos from the “professionals” who hack away a helluva lot more than I do and some thoughts are starting to coalesce.

I just can’t abide wastefulness. Andre calls to me from the past, “Sell a chicken three times! More if you can.” The man had many obsessions, but the one that stands out right now was potato skins. He never got over potato skins being served as an appetizer, back when that trend was happening. He took it personally and with a great deal of what I can only call shame. “It’s food waste! They’re selling garbage!” and before you take those last two statements as the righteous indignation of a Certified Master Chef, when that term still had meaning, it would always be followed up with, “I should have been the one to think of that!”

He wasn’t wrong. That’s not something that has ever changed. It’s how you make money in the restaurant business. At least it used to be. I have no idea how it works now. Think about all the food items we buy that is nothing more than repurposed food waste.

Sausage, of course. Really, any forcemeat. Chicken nuggets. Tater tots. Hashbrown pucks. Most fruit purees. Grocery store prepared food. Any kind of protein salad. Heh. While I’m writing this, I just got spam from Misfit Market, who is making a fortune selling rejects. Hell, Spam for that matter. Variety meats are huge right now since the hipsters discovered and gentrified them. Honestly, Andre would be thrilled. Except that it wasn’t his idea, I mean.

Now I’m conditioned to hate food waste for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it’s disrespectful to the critter that died. Every bit of its body that can be, should be consumed. That’s my thing, of course. It doesn’t have to be yours. Even if I were going to judge you, I’m some nobody on the internet and what I might or might not think of you isn’t your problem. It needs pointing out, I think.

Second, I’m broke. I can’t afford to waste food. It costs too much in post Covid fiat paper.

Third, and I don’t understand this part of my psyche, it just feels decadent. Over the top consumption for consumption sake. Maybe it’s my hippy half interjecting itself, I dunno, but it just feels like a “wrongness”. I don’t personally believe in shame, because shame is a psychological weapon used to control people, not a real emotion. It’s an exploitation of guilt, which is a real emotion; the sensation of knowing you did something counter to your moral code, but shame is bullshit. And yet, wasting of food feels shameful, somehow.

The last reason ties into the previous reason, but isn’t shame related. It’s a missed opportunity. Not on the FOMO sense the young people bitch about, but in the “There’s too much on the plate and so you can’t taste anything because all you can taste is everything.” It’s a cheap trick to cover a lack of technique and expertise. Yeah, I can be a snob.

But these are my perspectives, as always. I like simple, honest flavors, without too much fuss. Maybe not in the prep, I can be very fussy, but in the tasting, the bit where the rubber meets the road.

Back to brisketry.

I wrote a big long thing about how I really don’t like to make brisket and I stand by it. Brisket invites dick measuring. It’s the enormous pick-up truck with the lift kit and matching aluminum bumpernuts of the culinary world. I dunno, it just kinda represents this desperate need to be better than everyone. To dominate others with your prowess. It’s why I don’t cook competitively. It’s wasteful. See how I tied that back in? And not just of food, but of existence and of real opportunity.

Anyway, I’m hacking the shit out of my brisket like I always do, my wife is running the camera, which there will be more of, and I’ve got all this shit, swirling around in my head and it’s all insecurity but it isn’t mine. I mean, I know what I’m doing. I know where I'm going. I get the results I want, consistently. So what the actual fuck?

Well, you know, your smoke ring could be better developed. You could trim off the mohawk for better aerodynamics and smoke penetration. You leave too much deckle fat. You should wrap it in plastic to retain the moisture not butcher paper of foil. Blah blah blah.

Whatever.

Then I happened across this video of this really old cook, a true working pitmaster, been doing it for 50 years at the same place and he’s doing chickens and pork butts and briskets and ribs and every one of them is being literally dipped into the same batch of rub, cross contamination be damned, and I note, that brisket hasn’t been trimmed at all.

50 years, people. And I don’t think it’s ever occurred to that man to have doubts. He’s just there, doing what he’s always done, his entire adult life. Selling barbecue from the same place, successfully for 50 years.

Could his food be better? I have no idea. I’ll never make it to his store. But 50 years of him doing it and people buying it is hard to argue with.

At the end of the day, all I want to be is competent, not competitive. To be competitive is to alter what you do, not for the good of what you are doing, but to dominate others according to the standards set by others. When I compare that to the man who’s done this his whole life for the love of doing it and, of course, to pay his bills, there is no competition. How could there be?

Tell me, competition douche, why are you better than that man? More importantly, why would you want to be? Why do you need to be? It all just comes across as desperation. “I have been declared the most devout of uniformity adherents by people who think they matter! Go me!”

Just think about it if you when you get a chance. Happy cooking, ya’ll.