OK, what is a brisket and what method for first time smoker??

[classicrockgriller]

After reaching your desired temp, you wrap in dbl foil, wrap in dble layer of towels, and put inside a room warmed cooler.

[classicrockgriller]

here is a link to some of the FAQ on the forum.

FAQ
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?t=481

[Caneyscud]

"What is a brisket and why do I hear so much about it on this site??"

THE question, just sitting there, begging for an answer on the level of exactness as the moonshot.  I can't take it any longer, I have TO!

Sorry, guys, but he asked about brisket and all you could come up with was "Brisket is a cut of meat from the front of a cow."  How mundane, how disrespectful  to the epicurean epitome of the gastronomic world!   For me, it is the true king of barbecue.  Anyone who knows barbecue knows brisket. It is truly the big daddy of barbecue.  Heaven sent food for discriminating mortals!  Universally accepted as the Finest Food in the World – well at least on this forum – by some people like me!  ;D ;D  One of the eight primal cuts of meat cooked in/on a variety of contraptions, at a low temperature (200-250 deg.), while being kissed and caressed by thin blue, sublimely wonderful and flavorful smoke, eventually intertwining with its savory tendrils of luscious mouthwatering deliciousness into oneness, the result of this marriage rendered as succulent, moist, meltingly tender morsels of eating heaven.  The end result is meat so deliciously tender that it melts like chocolate in your mouth.  Rooted deep in the culture of the Southern states, you can bet your bottom dollar that for authentic, meticulously prepared Southern cuisine you will find juicy, succulent brisket to be number one on my list! Because I was blessed to be born and raised in Texas, I can assure you that brisket, when cooked to perfection, IS the perfect comfort food.  The apogee is the umpteen-hour Smoked Brisket, a meat monster, dry-rubbed and smoked until excruciatingly tender. The brisket should served naked on  the plate (or butcher paper in Texas)  like an homage to bestial glory: commanding, bark dark as night, leaking pools of fatty juice and with the rapturous whiff of hardwood smoke and spices. Gutsy, confident, cooking, making you wish you rode this bull all the time.  Once that brisket hits 185 degrees, you will fall in lock step with Pavlov's pooches in the salivation department, just anxious to get that meat out of the smoker and into your belly! 

You may have eaten plenty of barbecue before, so if we served you brisket today you might be expecting the usual—something tasty but not transcendent—when all of a sudden your mouth is filled with a perfectly balanced bite of meat, fat, smoke, and fire. The elements almost evaporating before you have a chance to chew.  Slow-cooked juicy slices of heaven disintegrating and erupting with flavor when you take a bite.  You take another bite, then torment until another, gluttonly chasing the taste—there is something magical in the tenderness of the brisket - once absent now there.  You keep going back for just a little more and a little more until ... Your mind dances with the Seven Deadly Sins for just a moment, but then sits her down and grabs the hand of beautiful HUNGER!  Take her hand, draw her close, slowly breathe in, savor that desirous scent of smoke and beef.  Inhale it through every pore, sense it through every nerve ending, feel it's tenderness, enjoy it's juiciness, it tempts your longing.  The greatest longing may be felt for complete union, when satiation is so near and yet so far, when brisket, salt, pepper, spices, smoke unite into one.  It seduces your mind with first the smoke, then the tenderness, and finally the taste.  Your tastebuds caress the sensations, aspiring to the satiation of the only thing on your mind, the hunger that can only be satisfied by brisket.  If you knew how to draw a femme fatale out of 1's, "s 0s and d's you would award it to the memory of your first brisket experience.

Brisket, I'm told only comes in Select, Choice, and Prime.  Unless you are buying on-line, you will probably not see a prime brisket.  The grade a piece of meat receives is in large a decision based on the amount of fat marbling the piece .  You will notice the amount of fat on one.  Not a shortage there - that is why the lower grades of standard, commercial, and utility can't be found - they don't exist.  Some cooks seek out Prime, but I haven't seen much difference.  A brisket is a piece of meat that is large, tough, but packing a load of fat.   Picking a really good brisket is largely a matter of luck.  A good rule of thumb is not to pick the biggest.  The thinking goes like this: the larger the brisket-the larger the cow, the larger the cow - the older the cow, the older the cow - the tougher the meat from that cow.  Some drape the brisket over their hand, over the side of the grocery cart, or over the edge of the cooler.  The greater the bend/bow, the more tender the meat - or so it is said.  The cryovacced briskets that are the "norm" for most places make it even harder to choose.  You can't see the amount of marbling, and the cryovac packing interferes with the "bend" test.  So I try to select smaller briskets, with an evenness of thickness, containing whiter fat, and hope for the best. 

Texas legend notoriously attributes the slow smoking method to the early days of the Texas Cattle industry where German immigrants were used as the butchers and cooks along the trail.  During hard and long cattle drives, a steer was slaughtered to feed the hands but since every steer was worth money to the drive, every possible part of the meat was used.  Most meat was boiled, fried, or grilled over open flames and for most of the beef, this type of cooking produced excellent results in flavor and quickness of cooking.  The brisket presented a challenge with this type of cooking and produced a tough and almost inedible meal.  Skilled in butchering and culinary talent from their homeland the ingenious immigrants devised a pit with fire at one end and placed the brisket at the other letting the smoke immerse the meat and kept the actual heat around the brisket low and steady.  After many hours this once tough piece of meat turned into a melt in your mouth sensation that is now known as the smoked brisket. 


Ye Ode to the Brisket

How oft does want of Brisket doth torture my spirit
Slave of its delicious embrace nothing to do but tend
Like a melancholy malcontent, glistening eyes focused
Hours and times of my desire the plateau doth pass
Nothing but time and precious mesquite can I but offer
Low and slow doth my sweet love's beauty revealed
Sublime, rouse myself; and the weak wanton hunger
Shall from my bowels unloose its masculine restraint
Not at war, stomach at peace, content in fullness.
Oh mighty Brisket, penchant of memory, smoky perfection.
                                                          Shakespeare
                                                          The Bard of Hot Aire
                                                           Pontificator Extraordinaire'

[Old_Sarge]

Ode to Brisket

K, I like this guy.

[ronbeaux]

Makes me want to RUN not walk to the nearest butcher and buy me a brisket!!! I've eaten briskets for 35 years(also grew up in Texas) and I've always wondered what was going through my mind and why.

Caneyscud, can you make fajitas sound that good? I got some waiting for a really hot sear. I'll buy your book if you have one, if not write one.

[Hopefull Romantic]

I'll buy your book if you have one, if not write one.

I would buy that too.Your pumpkin sculptures as well if you ever market them.

HR

[Quarlow]

Ok,  you are just a little to intense there buddy. You need to eat some lobster or something. But get away from the BBQ for awhile.LOL.
I have to question the idea that they would spend that much time on a cattle drive cooking a brisket. They were usually lucky to have time to get a meal prepared what with having to set up and break down camp twice a day plus have something to feed at midday. ;D

[classicrockgriller]

Caney's Back!

Ode to Brisket

K, I like this guy.

We all LOVE this guy!

[Tenpoint5]

I see someone Rattled Caney's Cage and woke him up!!!

[Hopefull Romantic]

I see someone Rattled Caney's Cage and woke him up!!!

Dear Lord, I hope it wan not me.

[Pachanga]

Caneyscud,

You are truly a scad, cad or scud or something like that and yet a poet, artist, cook and cowboy; in other words, a true Texan.   I 'll bet you like "smoky old pool rooms and clear mountain mornings." 

I am thinking about printing and framing this work of art but if my wife reads it she may accuse me of picking it up in a topless bar and furthermore may not want me alone with a brisket for a while.

Tag it and bag it. This should be the standard board answer to “what is brisket?”

Written like a true Texican.  It makes me proud to be a native too.  Texas misses one of its true patriots, pontificators, poets, fly tying painters, pumpkin carvers and barbequers.  Get your talented self back to the Lone Star State where you belong.

I am popping open a Lone Star as I type and holding it up in a solemn salute.  There is something in my eye.  Yeah, that’s it, I’m wiping my eyes because there is something in them.

By the way, I think Ye Ode to the Brisket  is in the same little known work of Shakespeare I have quoted from in a previous manifesto; Campfire Cooking for the Traveler – Hamlet’s Guide to Smoked Road Kill.   (I Prefer to Smoke Totally Naked - A Brisket and Ribs Manifesto
http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=12455.0)


Good luck and proud to know you,

Pachanga

[classicrockgriller]

Panchanga, Texas does need for Caney to come back "HOME".

We can always ship Him off again. ;D

Caney your are a TALENTED man.

[_Bear_]

Holly crap..............I'll have what Caneyscud is having  :o. OK, you guys have talked me into it, if I can get the Jeep fired up I am going to the butchers to get a brisket and get smoking it. I guess we will see iff the Bradly can hold 220* in -30 weather  ;D

[Quarlow]

Oh man I think we need a "best of bradley" spot where we can place some of the best posts for infinitum. you guys crack me up.

[_Bear_]

Well, I went to the butcher shop and they had no fresh briskets, they had a few frozen ones, but I did not like the looks of them...................but they did have a NICE tenderloin that they were cutting as I was there  ;D. so it looks like I am going to smoke a tenderloin instead LOL. I had quite a chat with the butcher/owner, he is an avid smoker as well, he has his large smoke room in the back of the butcher shop, but he also has a Bradly at home. So he cut me this REALLY nice tenderloin, and he injected it for me with an mango extract/spice mixture, and gave me 35% off of the tenderloin, the hickory sticks, the pepperonie sticks and the beef jerkey, so it was all good. I think he is doing what a heroine dealer does with his junkies, gives them some free samples, then when they are hooked he hits them full price  ;D. Anyway, I told him I wanted a very nice fresh brisket for me to smoke for Newyears eve, he said he would have me a perfect one in, so we shall see.