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Texas Shoulder Clod (Barbecued Beef Shoulder)
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Mar 31, 2025
This is it folks, the biggest beef barbecue out there — it’s prized in Texas and virtually unknown everywhere else. A clod is a beef shoulder that’s 16 pounds of carnivorean pleasure. Beef clod is usually broken down into smaller steaks and ground up into hamburgers. If you do not have access to beef clod in your grocery store, you will have to special order it through your local butcher.
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0:00
Brisket is the beef Texans export
0:03
Shoulder clod, beef shoulder, is the barbecue they keep for themselves. You might think of our next dish
0:09
as a North Carolina pork shoulder on steroids. Step number one, the rub
0:14
It starts with coarse sea salt. To it, add cracked or freshly ground black pepper
0:22
and cayenne pepper. And mix the ingredients. I like to use my fingers to break up any clumps
0:30
Blend the ingredients until mixed. A beef clod is a whole beef shoulder
0:40
It's 25 pounds of pure, proteinaceous pleasure. What you want to do is sprinkle about half the rub on the meat side
0:51
And then you kind of massage it into the meat. That's why it's called a rub
0:58
Be sure and get the sides too. Then you want to turn the clod over
1:04
You see, I've left a good thick sheath of fat on top
1:10
That very important because the clod will cook for about 12 hours and as it cooks the fat will melt basting the meat Besides fat is where the flavor is
1:23
Now, claude is not the sort of cut of meat you'll find at your local supermarket
1:28
Make friends with your butcher and order it specially from him. Okay, you can cook the claude right away, or you can let it marinate overnight in the refrigerator
1:38
You get even more flavor if you do. There are a couple of options for cooking the clod
1:43
The traditional device in Texas would be an offset barrel smoker. It's made out of oil pipe, and it's called an offset smoker
1:51
because it has a firebox that is slightly offset from the main smoke chamber
1:58
Build a good bed of charcoal. Your heat will come from charcoal. The smoke will come from either soaked wood chunks
2:06
Soak them so they smolder rather than catch fire. and give you a nice hickory or pecan smoke
2:14
You can actually take small logs and throw logs right in the smoke chamber
2:19
Now, the business end of the smoker is the actual cook chamber
2:23
It's this upper portion here. You can see there are thermometers on either side to tell you the temperature
2:29
a damper at the top to help you control the heat counterweight to help you lift this door what you want to do is take your clod and place it fat side up in the smoke chamber This is a clod that been cooking
2:45
for about six hours. And then at this point, if your clod starts to darken too much, you wrap it
2:51
in foil. This will keep it from burning. I'll just close the grill lid. Now here's the second
2:57
option for cooking your clod. You can use a kettle grill. It's a classic indirect grill setup
3:04
Coles and mounds on the side, wood chips on the top. So this clod has been on for about 12 hours
3:11
and you can see it's so tender the meat is actually falling apart. But always a good idea
3:18
to use your instant read meat thermometer to check it. We're looking for about 190 degrees
3:24
Where are we? 186 close enough. First place I ever tasted Clod was a barbecue restaurant called the Kreitz Market in Lockhart, Texas
3:38
It started off as a butcher shop and grocery store, so the accompaniments were the items you would find at a grocery store
3:45
Now let's see how we did here on this Clod. We start to slice it And you forgive me I just Oh my God
3:59
This is so crusty and so smoky. It is just amazing. What's the one thing missing from this scene
4:09
Well, there's no barbecue sauce. When meat is this good and smoky, you don't need the sauce
4:18
I'll take a slice of white bread, a little cheese, and some jalapenos, pickles, onion, and a slice of clod
4:45
Mmm. It's just all about the beef and the smoke. When you can have Texas shoulder clod, who needs brisket
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