How It’s Made: Dexter’s Meat Doughnut

Dexter has done what every restaurant hopes to: create an iconic dish that has punters lining up, Instagrams at the ready. The Preston barbeque joint sells at least 100 Meat Doughnuts each service, and well over 1000 each week. Some groups arrive solely for the brisket-filled spheres. “We've had a few boys smash six, get double sets, and we're like, ‘There is other stuff to try’,” says Sam Peasnell, who co-owns the restaurant with two chefs, his brother Tom and mate Adam Goldblatt.

The Inspiration

Tom and Goldblatt refined their pitmaster skills at Pitt Cue, one of London’s best-known spots for American-style barbeque. But it was at the restaurant’s trailer on the River Thames that the guys were able to test more out-there dishes. They were eating a lot of fat rascals, a scone-like cake from Yorkshire, plus the pillowy, open-sided Chinese dumplings known as bao. “The Asian steamed buns are pretty much the same way we construct [the doughnut], although instead of letting it prove and steam, we let it prove then fry it,” Tom explains.

The Smoke

Work begins days before the meat doughnuts are slid inside their paper bags for service. First, Dexter’s chefs smoke grain-fed brisket overnight. The marble score has to be between three and five. “If we go anything over that, the brisket holds too much fat and it leeches into the dough,” Tom says. Once it’s suitably tender, the point end is carved off and reserved for mains portions. The flap section and burnt ends are destined for the doughnuts. All the drippings from the smoker are collected, rendered and turned into a demi-glaze to deliver that extra beefiness.

The Dough

The most temperamental component of a doughnut is, obviously, the dough. Dexter’s is made twice a day, using baker’s flour with 10-per-cent protein, yeast, water, salt, butter and milk from Saint David Dairy. It’s kneaded only lightly, to stop the “nuts from turning chewy”. Depending on the time of year, it then proves for anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour. It’s in the proving the fluffy magic happens – that or disaster. “If you're not proving them right, they’ll just turn to stone, essentially,” says Tom. “Or if you over prove it, the meat mixture will heat up, and it will explode the doughnut, so you've done all the work for nothing.”

The Stuffing

Getting the hot meat into the proven dough is unexpectedly complex. It has to be done fast – 1000 a week, remember? – but still be a pleasing shape. “Adam thought we knew how to do them, but we were taking ages to do one,” Tom says. Then along came Korean-born chef Rick Kim, who previously worked at high-end restaurants in Asia. In a move straight out of the dumpling playbook, Kim rests a golfball-sized piece of dough in his hand and uses his thumb to make it more or less concave. The smoked meat is spooned in, and he pinches the sides together with his free hand. It’s important to close up all the seams, or the ball will explode in a shower of beef and oil inside the fryer. Kim is employed full-time just to make doughnuts – but Sam and Tom reckon they probably need a second person.

The Frying

The fryer is filled with 100 per cent grapeseed oil, which has an extremely high smoking temperature and imparts minimal taste to the finished product. “We tried rendered beef fat, and stuff like that, but it changes the colour of the dough too much,” Tom says. “When someone bites into it, we want it to be white and fluffy.” Unlike some restaurants, Dexter changes the oil daily. “It's a bit of a cost, but it's just one of those things,” says Tom. “It's pretty important when you're submerging a food in oil that you're not putting it in something shit.”

The Sugar

Despite all the yakka that goes into constructing the doughnut, it’s the simple act of rolling it in sugar and paprika that brings the dish to life. “Once they come out of the fryer, we always try one without the sugar anyway, just because someone's hungry, or someone will pick it up and eat it, but it's nowhere near as good. It sort of just tastes like a – I don't know, really uninspiring,” Tom says. “But then when you add the sugar, it just balances it all out beautifully. The sugar's what brings it all together.”