I am Hilah, and welcome to Hilah Cooking on a special adventure today.

We’re up here at the at the original Louie Mueller BBQ in Taylor, Texas.

It is 5:30 a.m.

We’ve been up since four.

The guys that work here have been up even longer than that, so we’re going to go inside,

we’re going to see what they do, and we’re going to watch them smoke some brisket, rub

some brisket, make some sausage.

I don’t know what they have in store, so let’s go inside and say “Hi!”

[MUSIC]

[Louie Mueller BBQ Tour]

>> HILAH: Here I am with Wayne Mueller who is the third generation.

. .

>>WAYNE: Right.

>> HILAH: Owner of the Louie Mueller BBQ restaurant.

>>WAYNE: Well we’ve been around since 1949.

Our beginnings are somewhat humble.

We started in an alleyway behind my grandfather’s grocery store.

He had a meat market, and back in the 40s refrigeration wasn’t as ubiquitous as it

is today, so they had to find other ways of preserving and storing meat.

One of the ways to do that was to smoke it and cure it.

My grandfather found that there was a demand for prepared meats at lunchtime, so he began,

he put a pit together, and kind of found a place in the alleyway that he started experimenting

with some different cuts from the meat market, and really kind of developed his barbeque

business from that humble beginning.

Dad took over from grandpa in ’74.

>> HILAH: Umm hmmm

>>WAYNE: I started here cleaning bathrooms, sweeping floors, cleaning tables, washing

dishes, taking out trash.

I had probably about 11 years of experience here before I left to go to school, to go

to college.

I took a 25 year sabbatical and have come back in the last few years when my father

was ready to retire, so I divested myself of my company and came home.

But I’ve really come to find over the last few years is that even though I am saving

some of my history, everybody how comes through these doors, that has come through these doors

over the past 63 years is left a piece of themselves here, and they have as fond of

memories of this place as I do.

Our holy trinity is really comprised of beef ribs, short beef ribs, beef brisket, and all

beef sausage, and that’s the foundation from which I think Texas barbeque is really

known for, specifically central Texas barbeque.

You know, before the big Austin push for barbeque in the last two or three years, most all of

the heralded barbeque spots in central Texas were outside of Austin, and so you find them

Luling, and Llano and Lockhart, and Taylor.

These small little places, and they all did it in a very similar fashion, very simple

rubs, little to no sauce.

There’s no mopping really.

It’s beef driven, and a lot of salt and pepper, smoke and thyme.

>> HILAH: Well I am going to help you out with some brisket and some sausage today,

so let’s go do that.

[MUSIC]

>> WAYNE: This is what’s called “the flap.”

This is the lean, the dense, lean.

>> HILAH: Uh huh, where you can really see the grain going through it.

>> WAYNE: And when you look at the grain from profile, you can see there is no marbling

really that goes on, so this is the thicker, more like steak consistency.

>> HILAH: Okay.

>> WAYNE: Lean, and this is the marbled section which is also called “the point.”

>> HILAH: Okay.

>> WAYNE: For the reason that it comes sort of to a point.

For us it sort of looks like a foot.

>> HILAH: Yep, like a big foot.

>> WAYNE: Yep, so we’ll call this the toe and the heel.

And the first thing we need to do is trim them out.

We have a lot of excess fat that’s on the brisket that we really need to remove from

the system because it overloads the system with excess grease, and so we’ll trim off

our top layer.

There’s a heel underneath the bottom that we’ll also remove, and once we have those

portions trimmed out, some of that will go into our sausage mix, and then we’ll add

our rub mix to it, and we’ll rub it down tremendously, and then it’s good to go.

The hardest thing we do, the most artisan part of what we do is to learn to be a human

thermostat.

Just like that.

>> HILAH: Okay, see ya in 18 hours little brisket.

>> WAYNE: [laughs]

>> TONY: I grew up in Mississippi, in rural Mississippi, and from there I moved to Chicago

and went to culinary school.

I did my time in Chicago working in hotels and fine dining restaurants, and from there

I moved to Nashville where I took a sous chef position.

After spending about three years there, I moved to Austin.

In moving to Austin, tried to enter the barbeque world and got lucky and ended up at Louie

Mueller BBQ.

Most culinary programs are based on a French system.

I think with barbeque you see something that’s this is American history, it’s United States

history.

It’s especially in central Texas you see, I mean, I consider Louie and Bobby Mueller

to be central Texas barbeque’s version of Escoffier, you know, and all those guys.

It’s been around for generations, and just set forth a specific cuisine that’s different

from anywhere else in this country, and really in anywhere else in the world.

>> HILAH: You seem to really enjoy this.

>> TONY: I love it.

I absolutely love it.

>> HILAH: [laughs]

>> WAYNE: You know, they say there’s three things that you don’t talk about in mixed

company in Texas that’s guaranteed to get you into a fight.

One is religion, two is politics, and three is barbeque.

Like, Hilah, if you feel this one right here, you can start to see how this one is starting

to give out a bit.

>> HILAH: Yeah.

>> WAYNE: And starting to feel a bit more pillowy.

>> HILAH: Uh huh, yeah pillowy is a good word.

>> WAYNE: Yeah, this one is well on its way.

>> HILAH: Yeah.

>> WAYNE: And it’s funny because, you know, we’ll pull a brisket to carve and everybody

will be standing around, and when it comes out of the paper, when it comes out of the

wrapping, and it just hits the table, it just sort of jiggles in a certain way, and everybody

just kind of goes “ohhhhhh,” and the first instinct of everybody is, “Oh, I want to

touch it.”

You know, and it’s just you know, it’s just one of those things, and everybody is

just like “ohhhhh,” and as soon as you feel it peoples’ eyes roll back.

It’s like I know what’s that going to be like.

That’s going to be awesome!

>> HILAH: [laughs]