You’ve heard the phrase “this one’s the bomb.” When it comes to barbecue, you could be speaking figuratively or literally.
As Texas Monthly barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn discovered, there’s a guy in Brazil whose barbecue pits are so good, many Texas pitmasters will go to great lengths just to get a chance to cook on one. The name of Murilo Mello’s fabled, fabricated monstrosity? The True Bomb smoker.
Vaughn joined the Standard with the story.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about the bomb. Is it made from a literal bomb? I was looking at some pictures here. It sure looks like it.
Daniel Vaughn: The True Bomb smoker is the invention of Murilo Mello, who is a Brazilian engineer. And yeah, he strangely enough decided that he was going to design a barbecue pit for really no one, because there isn’t really much of a market for these giant offset smokers in Brazil.
Now, that raised the question for me as I was going through this story. Made in Brazil for Texas pitmasters or for more local smoking? I mean, I’ve gone to these churrascarias in Brazil and they’re absolutely incredible. And they’ve got some incredible meats there, too.
And I thought, hey, this is an interesting way to bring a little bit of that Texas heat to Brazil. And I wondered if that was what he was trying to do.
Yeah, you know, Brazil has its own style of barbecue. Most of it is thinner cuts, some steaks. The picanha is the beef cut that is well known in Brazil. Most of its cooked over direct heat, though, directly over hot coals.
But there is that strong barbecue culture and that love of meat with the char on it. And so that’s what Murilo is really trying to harness here. He’s trying to build these contraptions, these offset smokers that we’re all so familiar with here in Texas and get the Brazilians excited about them and maybe want to experiment a little bit more with Texas-style barbecue.
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As I understand it, he was sort of inspired by a movie that featured Austin’s Franklin Barbecue, is that right?
Yeah, yeah, he was watching the “Chef” movie, and Franklin Barbecue is featured on that. And he was studying the smoker really closely as Jon Favreau, who played the lead character in “Chef,” was opening the smokers and Aaron Franklin right next to him explaining how it worked.
And he saw this black bark on the brisket and he’s just like, that looks wrong, but evidently people love this.
So he was really intrigued by it and wanted to kind of see if he could make a make a version himself?
Yeah, he didn’t know where to get one, but he wanted to make this brisket that he’d seen on the movie.
And the only way he could figure out how to do it is make a smoker of his own, build it himself, and be able to then use it to recreate that brisket that he had seen on the movies.
So is he a chef himself or some kind of the equivalent of a pitmaster down in Brazil, or was he more coming at it as a metal fabricator or what?
Yeah, metal fabricating. He was not much of a cook at all. His background is engineering. And his day job is actually to repair the metal parts on these giant crushers for rubber tires. He’s dealing with heavy machinery for sure.
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So how did this device become so legendary, so beloved among Texas pitmasters who were in the know?
Well, the first couple that he built and designed were really similar to what you see in Texas with the offset smoker, with the firebox on the side that’s a little lower.
Then he decided that he was gonna really change things up and focus tremendously on airflow. And in doing so, he moved the firebox up to be in line with the cooking chamber. And then instead of the movement of the air being from the low side to the high side, he wanted to really envelop the entire cooking chamber.
So he basically put a disk between that firebox and the cooking chamber to really evenly distribute the heat and the smoke around the briskets.
Sounds like a lot of science going into this. How expensive are they, and are there many of these in Texas?
Well, the one I was able to see, I went out to Tate Farms in Rockwall, just outside of Dallas. And Murilo Mello had come over and visited with Evan Tate.
And they spent a couple of weeks actually building one here in Texas so that Evan could have one for Tate Farms and so that he could use it as a smoker to really show off to any American or Texas pitmasters who wanted to come see it up close.
And the hope is that Murilo would come up and maybe build more of these or train some folks to be able to have a Texas version of his workshop down in Brazil.
