Burnt Ends Z-Man
Kansas City has long been on my to-do list as a barbecue trip. I figured I'd just find myself there one day, but that never seemed to happen, so I made a purpose built trip last spring to finally visit the barbecue mecca. KC was just one stop in a longer road trip and I gave myself about 36 hours in the city, in which time I crammed in four different smoked meat joints. Joe's was my first and also delivered my favorite bite—the Z-man. This famous sandwich is usually sliced brisket topped with thick cut onion rings, provolone, and barbecue sauce on a kaiser roll and after finishing one of them myself, I knew I needed this creation in my life more often. So when I had a hankering for it this past spring, I included it on one of my Meatwave menus.
I actually didn't get the traditional Z-man, I swapped out the sliced brisket for burnt ends and the kaiser roll for Texas toast. I feel like both were good mods, but of the two, the burnt ends really made the sandwich for me, so I decided to keep that in my homemade version, but stuck with the traditional kaiser roll.
I used this opportunity to also improve upon my Kansas City barbecue sauce recipe, which is quite old and was always meant to be more of a starting point than one that I would make the same way over and over again. Having a lot more barbecue sauce knowledge under my belt let me craft something that was more in line with some my favs that I've tested over the years, although I still don't think my recipes are on par yet with what I consider the top ranks. There's so much already going on in this Z-man recipe that I decided to hold off on sharing my latest KC-style sauce and instead recommend just using your favorite sweet, tomato-based barbecue sauce, which makes the final recipe a bit more manageable.
For the burnt ends, I had to make some adjustments to what has become standard for me to make them more in line with what I had in Kansas City. That meant ditching the Texas-influenced salt and pepper rub for something with a bit more complexity and sweetness, adding sugars, chiles, and some other spices into the rub that coated the brisket point that I had detached from the flat.
I did utilize my tried-and-true smoking method which had me cooking the brisket over low and slow heat until it hit north of 180°F and settled into the stall. At that point a good bark had formed and I wrapped the brisket in butcher paper before placing it back in the smoker to hit my final target temperature of around 203°F.
For most burnt ends, I would then cube up the brisket, toss it with sauce, and place them back in the smoker. However, the burnt ends I got at multiple places in KC were not sauced in that manner, but did have a sauce on the exterior, so I merely removed the brisket from the butcher paper, brushed sauce all over, and let it continue to cook until the sauce set. I then rewrapped the brisket and let it sit in a warm oven for a few hours.
The biggest challenge for me in this recipe ended up being the onion rings. I do a lot of frying, so I figured I was going to have them down no problem, but when I employed the standard flour, egg, and panko breading, I was finding the onions were not getting completely covered. It was only after I felt a bit defeated once going through all the onions that I decided to watch a few YouTube videos to pick up tips for getting a more consistent coating, which I'll need to try out next time.
Despite some unevenness in the breading, the rings still fried up beautifully and the onions crisped and caramelized a bit in a good way in the areas were the coating may not have been fully sufficient. I ended up frying all the onions well before assembling the sandwiches, letting them keep warm in the oven along with the brisket.
When it came to serving time, I took the brisket out and sliced it up into roughly 3/4-inch cubes. I couldn't help but sneak more than a few pieces for myself, which let me know in no uncertain terms that these were incredibly delicious burnt ends that were very much in line with what I had in Kansas City.
I then halved and buttered the kaiser rolls. I purposefully looked for the softer type of kaiser rolls, which are the ones I mostly see in grocery stores instead of bakeries where kaisers tend to have a harder exterior. If I were making just a few sandwiches, I would have toasted the rolls in skillet, but since I was making them en masse here, I opted to load them up on a sheet pan, buttered side up, and place that under the broiler to quickly brown a lot of rolls at once.
I then removed the rolls from the pan and set piles of burnt ends in their place, topping each with a slice of provolone. Then back into the broiler the tray went, this time cooking just until the cheese was melted. Next I transferred those brisket piles to the rolls, added on some extra barbecue sauce, a couple onion rings, and served.
I knew these were going to be the hit of the day, and all my guests gobbled them up and I was back in the kitchen making another round in no time. It may not have been an exact facsimile of Joe's, but it hit the same satisfaction points for me. The burnt ends were rich, fatty, and had a ton of barbecue flavor. The cheese helped temper that barbecue intensity while the onion rings adding an amazing crunch and sweet onion flavor. I knew I couldn't let any of my guests go without having a Z-man, so I also made an almost equally awesome tofu version, which I'll share in the coming weeks along with that Kansas City barbecue sauce recipe in case you want to take the extra step in making everything from scratch like I did.
