Heart of the Mattar

Have you always been interested in cooking?

I’ve actually always hung out in the kitchen – probably since I was a child, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I would often watch my mom make Egyptian food and then I’d repurpose her meals the next day.

When I left for university, I didn’t worry about knowing how to really cook, as I was so excited at the thought of being able to eat whatever I wanted – especially junk food. But after three weeks, I had to call my mom asking her to teach me all she knew.

She did over Christmas break, and I managed to feed myself (and my crew) properly for four years. But this wasn’t because of any ‘love’ for cooking; I was just hungry and wanted to cook good, regular food. After I had my own family I’d say I experimented more in the kitchen.

What about barbecuing?

Growing up, I learnt how to barbecue from my dad – I mean you can’t say you’re an Arab man if you don’t know what you’re doing on the grill. But I hadn’t smoked anything before going to Texas in 2013, that’s when my passion kicked in.

What happened in Texas?

I had authentic barbecued brisket for the first time in Houston and I was like “What on earth is this?” It was so incredible. I ended up visiting the state several times after that first trip, always flying frozen, vacuum-packed meat back home with me. The guys at customs would always pull me over! Then, one day, I decided to just start smoking meat on my own.

How did you learn how to smoke meat?

I bought a lot of books and I also won a barbecue competition with Weber who were super cool – they brought in a proper smoker for me so I could start messing around with it in my backyard.

To begin with, I made hundreds of kilos of horrible meat! Successful smoking is all about getting your ingredients, fire and timing right. And trust me when I say it takes ages – I mean to smoke a regular brisket takes 18 hours and you’ll only know if what you did was right at the end of the cook.

So, can you imagine if you get one little thing wrong? Like too much salt, or too little paprika, or if you wrap the meat too early. By the time you realise what you’ve done it’s too late – you have to redo everything!

Sometimes I would have just added ½ tsp too much of something and it wouldn’t be right. My dogs ate like kings. So did my friends – you know, those guys with no palates. I played around for a long time, perfecting the meat to suit my taste buds, but I didn’t know if it was top-notch, so I decided to go back to Texas.

Where did you hone your skills?

I apprenticed at Southside Market & Barbecue. I asked the owner Bryan Bracewell, a third-generation pitmaster if he could teach me how to cook. His response was “When can you start?”. It was an awesome experience. I spent the summer with him and he took me under his wing. I hung out with everyone who worked with him and we’re all friends to this day. As clichéd as it sounds, that trip changed my life.

We hung out as people. And our common cause was barbecue. They didn’t care about my background or where I was from; I didn’t care about their politics. We were just hanging out and cooking meat – it was such a commonality of language to sit around a fire and talk. Barbecue is probably the most unpretentious cuisine. But it’s also the most unforgiving.

Why are you proud of what you’ve built?

Everything we do is done by hand – from mixing spices to selecting wood, to basting and barbecuing the meat. We use no artificial ingredients and only top-quality products – what goes on our family dinner table is what goes outside the kitchen.

Is there a ‘best’ wood for smoking that you can recommend?

Live fire cuisine allows for infinite possibilities. You can smoke with birch, oak, cherry, apple, hickory and acacia for example. But you can also smoke with leftover tea (works well with duck) or hay, which is great for cheese.

Would you say smoke is the most important ‘ingredient’ in the process?

Absolutely and people tend to forget this. You can’t add smoke late in the game either; it has to be done right from the beginning.

What’s one of the most unusual cuts of meat you’ve worked with?

I’ve smoked a whole camel! What a story that was. When we tried to pick it up, it just wouldn’t budge, so we had to climb inside the carcass and literally walk the camel into the smoker. Remember the nursery rhyme “Sally the Camel”? Yeah, I had that playing in my mind at the time!

Tell us about the recipes you’ve shared with us...

Pretty much everything we do is third-culture cuisine. We make the food we grew up eating using ingredients from places we’ve been and loved. So, our barbecued Portobello mushrooms are stuffed with smoked chicken and topped with cheese and caramelised onions. They’re super easy to make.

For the smoked beef and slaw sandwiches, the meat is rubbed with our spice mixture made from salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, coriander and a bit of cumin – that’s it. No secrets. This rub could work for any cut you’re wanting to put on the grill.

The whole smoked salmon will take time, but smoked cuisine, in general, is a question of patience. The fish needs to rest in a brine for two days. You then need to nail it to large piece of wood, build a calm fire on the ground − a foot and a half away from the plank and let the smoke waft towards the salmon. It’s a rustic way of cooking, which takes ages – but the results are worth it.

Interview by Tiffany Eslick; Photography by Aasiya Jagadeesh; Recipes by Hattem Mattar