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The Texas Crutch — Why and How to Use This Technique When Smoking The Texas crutch is used to help keep meat moist during very long cooks, and also to speed up cooking time by pushing through the stall instead of waiting. You lose some crunch in the bark, but the extra tender meat more than makes up for it. In this post, we’ll explain the many benefits of this simple method, also discuss a couple of pitfalls, so you can avoid them, and give you an easy step-by-step guide on how to use the Texas crutch next time you grill. In Spain, folks typically eat dinner around 10 or 11 pm. This didn’t go down so well at my house.
On that fateful night, the beautiful beef brisket I’d imagined wowing my friends and family with? It took a lousy three extra hours to cook. When you’re smoking or slow roasting a big hunk of meat over low heat, this simple technique can help speed up the cooking process and get dinner on the table at the right time. And let me tell you, this is important! There are only so many hours you can fill in with chips and beer.
What is the Texas Crutch, and Why Use it? What are the Pros and Cons of the Texas Crutch? What Kind of Meat Can I use Texas Crutch With? Texas crutch is a simple step in the process of slow-cooking or smoking large pieces of meat like pork butt or beef brisket. During the cook, once the meat has enough time to take on a great smoke flavor and has developed a beautiful, tasty bark, the meat is taken off the grill, wrapped tightly in heavy-duty aluminum foil, and put back on the grill to finish cooking.
It’s a bit like braising in a Dutch oven. When grilling over low heat, the temperature of the meat rises slowly for the first few hours of cooking, but will then hit a plateau. The stall happens because, as the meat’s temperature rises, it releases moisture which then evaporates from the surface and cools the meat even as it’s cooking. Kinda sounds like a contradiction, heating and cooling at the same time? But at low temperatures, this is exactly what happens, and the result is a deadlock on the grill. It’s the same evaporative cooling that happens on our skin when we sweat.
All the heat is trapped, and the meat’s temperature will continue to rise towards your target finishing temperature. This simple step can save hours of cooking time. In the Texas crutch world, especially when it comes to brisket, nobody knows their stuff better than pit-master Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas. Watch the master at work in this video to learn how you too can create the perfect slow-smoked melt-in-the-mouth brisket as he does every day for hundreds of devoted fans. Yup folks, that’s 1,800lbs of brisket per day! Like using water pans and 2-zone grilling, the Texas crutch is another tool to help you control the grilling process.
Used smartly, it will help you tweak cook times, color, texture and taste. Competition pit-masters will often make use of this method, but the key is to get the balance right. I’d be the first to say you can’t rush good barbecue, but sometimes you just don’t have 16 hours to wait for the perfect cook. With the Texas crutch, you can push through some of those slow hours and get dinner on the table faster, still with excellent results.