No matter how much the statements found in the menus of the New York Burger chain stores in Madrid and Barcelona are reviewed, no one will find the smash burger crushed that are currently causing a furor in many places. Far from trends, they contain unmistakably American specialties that include barbecued ribs, pork tacos with melted cheese, chicken fingersa selection of New York sandwiches, more than 10 hamburgers with different sauces and garnishes and – most significantly – smoked meats, among which two gourmet range stand out: the pastrami sandwich (16.50 euros) and the burger brisket (15.95 euros).
Unlike other anonymously managed fast food chains, behind this firm is an intuitive chef, Pablo Colmenares, 35 years old, who for four seasons worked alongside Dabiz Muñoz at the DiverXO restaurant. Entrepreneurial professional who, after joining his parents’ hamburger restaurant, has promoted the evolution of an expanding company in the hands of the same family.
Between the pastrami sandwiches at the busy Katz’s Delicatessen, on New York’s Lower East Side, and those at New York Burger, in Madrid, the affinities outweigh the differences. I love the pastrami sandwiches between rye breads with smoked meat in the company of pickles and sauces with pungent notes from the New York enclave. No less tasty than brisket burger from this Spanish chain, type rolls Brioche sweet crumb, filled with honeyed meat cut into pieces. And by derivation, his great brisket tower 2.0, the well-known breed cow breast black angus from Nebraska that is smoked for 12 hours with hickory wood and drizzled with roasted tomato aioli, pickles and barbecue sauce.
I located Colmenares in the central kitchens it manages in San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid), where it processes the meats for the 11 stores it keeps open with the same name between the two capitals.
What is the secret of your pastrami? What are the differences between pastrami and brisket?, I questioned him shortly after meeting. “They both come from the same cut, the chest muscle or brisket of beef cattle, a hard piece, inedible if cooked on the grill or grill, which after undergoing a slow roasting and smoking system becomes a gelatinous, juicy piece, exceptional due to the collagen it contains,” he answered me. “It is a wonderful protein that must be handled with patience to obtain the best results. At home we recreate the formulas of the southern United States. We cook the meats slowly at a low temperature in the smoker, which we acquired in Texas, identical to the one used by the best restaurants in that area.”
As I passed through its facilities, the effluvia of smoke, combustion and meat in the process of roasting warned me of the proximity of its secluded machine room presided over by a large oven. A kind of cabinet-artifact equipped with an interior wheel with slowly rotating trays where it is roasted and smoked at the same time. In an adjoining, but separate, corner, burning wood crackled with a fireplace connected to the grill. “From here we send all the roasts to our premises. We are extremely picky. Breed beef breasts Angus We receive them from Nebraska, the same as the American walnut logs, expensive and difficult to obtain woods that give us unique nuances. The oak and beech ones are too powerful for us; walnut is more elegant. Meat is not cheap either. Nothing is economical or easy for us, but if we want to be the best in the city (the best in the city) we have to arm ourselves with reasons,” he told me convinced.
How have you managed to reproduce the North American roasting method? I continued. “I have traveled frequently to Austin, Dallas, Houston and New York, where I have been imbued with this technique of Jewish origin whose nerve center is located in the State of Texas. I contacted Aaron Franklin, the owner of Franklin BBQ, the barbecue mecca, and with Daniel Vaughn, editor-in-chief of the magazine Texas Monthly, equivalent to The World 50 Best of Restaurants. The same one that publishes lists of the best American barbecue places every year. With the help of both of them I managed to locate the suppliers that supply us with meat and wood.”
What are your roasts based on? In the products, in the recipe and in the oven with which we work, a device that in Spain, except for error, no one has. We receive the pieces refrigerated and vacuum packed, we wash and bleed them, dry and clean them with absorbent paper and season them with salt and pepper. Then we remove the thick layer of fat that covers them, leaving only a centimeter to protect them. We roast and smoke them whole for 12 to 14 hours at 120° C, using hickory wood to a certain point, before wrapping them in aluminum foil to prevent them from drying out and darkening their interior. Then, we continue with the smoking. Brisquet is roasted and smoked without curing and acquires the texture of a honeyed, roasted meat. The opposite of pastrami, which is cured before roasting and is close to a cold cut.
What do you mean when you talk about curing the pieces? “In the process of introducing them in a brine for 7 or 10 days, a solution to which we add chili pepper, bay leaf, black pepper and white peppercorns, cloves, cinnamon sticks, fresh garlic and sugar, apart from salt with nitrites, a product that lengthens its preservation and gives pastrami its characteristic pink tone. “A traditional system that Jewish emigrants observed from its origins.”
At the foot of the oven, Colmenares cut a piece of brisket and improvised a great hamburger brisket tower 2.0. The knife sank into the meat like a lump of butter while the cut revealed meat with a shaky texture that expelled juices onto the board. “All the pieces have two different cuts, the flat and the point, which is the mellowest and the one our clientele likes the most.” At what price do you sell this unique burger? At 15.95 euros each. Very cheap if you take into account the quality of the products and the time required to prepare them. We have no choice but to be competitive.”
Before saying goodbye we remembered in passing the stories that accompany Texan barbecue. We are talking about the migratory flows of Romanian Jews to New York in the 19th century, where they were born, which would later reach the State of Texas, an enclave with immense cattle herds. And I reminded him of my past experiences in Hometown Barbeque in Brooklyn, a recommended place in the area of the Big Apple. By necessity, what was initially a form of preservation (pastra-pastrami, in Romanian) of one of the marginal and most economical parts, the breast or brisket, succulent recipes emerged. History and culture of some range roasts gourmet that today remain hidden in fast food windows.
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