Ingredients

• Beef chuck roast, 2½ to 3 pounds
• Kosher Salt
• Coarsely ground black pepper
• Garlic powder
• ¼ cup light brown sugar
• Aaron Franklin's Regular Sauce (Click here for recipe)

Instructions

1. Prepare your smoker for a 250°F indirect smoke using hickory smoking chunks.

2. Sprinkle both sides of the meat with the garlic powder, kosher salt and coarse ground pepper.
   

   A 2½-pound chuck roast ready for making Poor Man's Burnt Ends.

   
   

3. Place the meat on the smoker and let it smoke until it reaches an internal temperature of 165°F. (It took our 2½-pound piece of chuck 5 hours and 37 minutes to reach 165°F.)
   

   The chuck roast at 165°F, ready for wrapping in peach paper.

   
   

4. Remove the meat from the smoker and wrap with peach paper (pink butcher paper) or foil. Return the meat to the cooker and allow it to cook until the internal temperature reaches 195°F. (The chuck took 2 hours and 6 minutes to reach 195°F.)
   

   The chuck roast wrapped in peach paper and back on the smoker.

   
   

5. Remove the meat from the smoker, let it rest for 10 minutes and then unwrap it. Cut the meat into cubes around ¾ to 1-inch in size. Transfer the cubes to a foil pan and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Add enough of the sauce so that you can toss the cubes and get them all liberally coated with sauce.
   

   We have started slicing the chuck roast into cubes.

   
   

6. Place the pan in your smoker and continue smoking the meat for another 1½ to 2 hours, until the meat is very tender. Add another chunk of smoking wood to your fire if needed to keep bathing the meat in smoke.
   

   The sauced cubes of chuck sauced and in the cooker for the final smoke.

Notes

1. Quality counts when picking your meat for this recipe. You want as much marbling as you can get. You aren't looking for big blocks of intermuscular fat. You are looking for thin streaks of fat in the meat itself.

2. If you have never done a long smoke before, keep in mind that you are cooking to temperature. The times we have provided are just to give you an idea of how long it might take. Cook the meat until it reaches the target internal temperature, regardless of how long it takes. You will most likely experience a stall, where the meat temperature stops rising for a significant period of time. Just wait it out and let the smoker do its thing. The meat's temperature will start rising again. This graph shows how our meat stalled in the low 140's and eventually picked up again:
   

   
   

3. To serve, you can either have them as a meat with sides on your barbecue platter, or you can make sandwiches with cheap hamburger buns and pickles and thinly sliced onions on the side. Just be sure to serve them warm to preserve their tenderness and juiciness.