Capital Camps’ Kosher Brisket BBQ Competition on Oct. 12 and 13 attracted chefs from all over the region for a smoky and delicious battle in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, but it was a novice brisket smoker from Charm City who ultimately came out on top.
Ruth Adelstein is experienced in smoking meats, but working with a whole brisket is relatively new to her.
“This is probably the second or third brisket, truly, that I’ve smoked,” she said. “I enjoy smoking meat. It’s a hobby. I haven’t done it a ton professionally, but it’s a nice craft, and I’ve always enjoyed it.”
Adelstein has worked many jobs in the food industry, and it is a world she always knew she wanted to be a part of. Soon, she will start work at a new restaurant in Baltimore, and she just came back from her usual summer position at a camp and retreat center in Maine. This competition was the perfect time for her to step outside her comfort zone and try something new.
And it ended up going better than she could have ever dreamed it would.
“We went through the people’s choice winner and then third place and second place. I’m competitive. I really just wanted to place. I didn’t think I was going to win, but after finding out who was in second place, I was feeling pretty excited. And then my team name was announced, and I was very, very happy,” Adelstein said.
Adelstein’s team — the Brisket Broads — was originally going to be a duo, but her partner dropped out not long before the competition kicked off. That meant that Adelstein was left to work solo, which wasn’t easy, even for an experienced chef.
Adelstein arrived at the competition at 11 a.m., before meeting the competition staff and selecting her brisket. She began to prepare the meat at 2 p.m., not putting it on the smoker until 10 that night. Adelstein wanted to smoke the meat for a full 12 hours, so she timed the process so that it would conclude the next morning.
But that doesn’t mean that she got a full night’s rest while the meat cooked. Throughout the night, she was checking on the smoker every few hours, which wasn’t as simple as just reading a thermometer. While it cooked, Adelstein also sprayed the brisket with apple juice to keep it moist.
“With the smoker, you have to manually close the air holes or open them as much as you can, which allows the air to flow and basically increase the temperature of your smoker. Depending on how you want to do it, you can go low and slow, or you can go fast and hot. [There is] maintenance throughout the process, like adding more charcoal and wood to create that smoke throughout the time as well,” Adelstein said.
The win can be attributed in part to the care and attention that Adelstein paid to the meat, but also to the rub she created from scratch. She said she “stood in the aisle” at the grocery store for 40 minutes, looking through all the potential ingredients before deciding what combination to build.
Adelstein said that, while she isn’t usually a kosher chef, the constraints of the competition didn’t make things too much more difficult. She said that most of the things that one would use to flavor smoked brisket are kosher, which means that there wasn’t too much pivoting required.
While the end result was more similar to a southern barbecue brisket than an Ashkenazi brisket one might taste at a Rosh Hashanah meal, Adelstein said that her Judaism informs her work in the kitchen. She has a strong belief that Jewish cuisine is delicious.
“I think I have an awesome latke recipe, and I also love Passover cooking — making chopped liver, matzo ball soup. I definitely take my Jewish heritage, and I also have some Israeli heritage, into my cooking knowledge and how I flavor things,” she said.
Adelstein is proud to be the winner of the inaugural Capital Camps Kosher Brisket BBQ Competition, and she said it has inspired her to dive deeper into competition cooking and barbecue in general.
Her biggest takeaway from the experience is that one shouldn’t be afraid to take a chance.
“If you’re scared to do something, you should definitely try. I had a lot of nerves about this whole event, and I’m proud of myself for just even attempting, and then even just so much more stoked about the win. But I think a piece of advice [is] just go for it,” she said.
