The smoked hen at Mimsy’s Craft Barbecue, in Crockett, about two hours north of Houston, wanted an overhaul. For 2 years after the 2020 opening of their restaurant, homeowners Kathy and Wade Elkins heard complaints from just a few prospects that their marinated and smoked half hen appeared undercooked or that the pores and skin wasn’t crispy sufficient. The couple had a hunch {that a} deep fryer would possibly clear up each points. Proof that their concept was right lies within the juice that collects in your plate when you break by the new-and-improved hen’s crackling pores and skin.
“It actually revitalizes the product,” Wade says of the chook’s hot-oil tub. The preparation begins lengthy earlier than that step. Forty-eight hours earlier than the poultry goes into the smoker, the cooks submerge it in a brine of salt, sugar, water, and Lipton black tea. Wade isn’t certain if the tea provides a lot taste to the meat, however “as you’re smoking the hen, it provides a very nice coloration,” he says. The daring style comes from the “cowboy jerk” dry rub that’s utilized simply earlier than smoking; the mix contains the allspice, cinnamon, cumin, and nutmeg you’d usually discover in a jerk marinade, plus black and cayenne peppers.
The brined half hen is smoked till it reaches an inner temperature of 160 levels. It’s held in a hotter and, when an order is available in, dropped into the fryer for about two minutes. Then it’s brushed with a sauce of pureed cilantro, garlic, jalapeños, oil, toasted pink chile flakes, and vinegar. “We didn’t need to blow it out with the Scotch bonnets or habaneros,” Wade says of the recent peppers sometimes utilized in jerk sauce. They want this hen to be a crowd-pleaser: a enterprise can’t at all times survive on smoked meat by the pound.
Mimsy’s is one instance of how a craft-barbecue joint can work in a small city. “We now have to play to the viewers, and that is the place we’re dedicated,” Kathy says of their East Texas hamlet of 6,300. “You possibly can solely feed everyone in Crockett so many instances per week,” she says, so the Elkinses refresh the menu each few months—just lately giving the jerked-and-fried therapy to smoked spare ribs—they usually frequently provide nonbarbecue fare akin to burgers, steaks, and impressive appetizers akin to fried inexperienced tomatoes and a wedge salad.
Because of rising beef costs, Mimsy’s has needed to cost extra for its smoked brisket in current months, however “it’s nonetheless our primary vendor each single day,” Wade says. So even when new menus roll out, the barbecue isn’t going anyplace, and neither is the opposite buyer favourite—the jerk hen.
This text initially appeared within the September 2024 challenge of Texas Month-to-month with the headline “A Deep Fryer to the Rescue.” Subscribe today.