Evening all. I ventured into the realm of brisket today. I found a place in town that carries the packer cut, and man, this thing is one big piece of meat!
What did I purchase? Packers Cut Whole Untrimmed Brisket
Weight: 11.5 LBS
Cooking temp: 210F-240F
Total cooking time: 21hrs
Wood used: 2 Hickory, 3 Cherry
Extra's needed: 1 very sharp 8" Chefs knife for carving, some extra counter space is great if you have it. You'll need it!
Rub: Best Odds Brisket Rub:
1/2 cup paprika
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons garlic powder
3 tablespoons onion powder
2 tablespoons oregano
http://bbq.about.com/od/rubrecipes/r/bl31115b.htm* I added some Cayenne and I think this is where I partially went wrong.I think I added to much. This did not taste very good at all to me. More about that later. I think next time I will go with just salt, pepper, and some granulated garlic.
How I prepared my brisket: Well.. what an adventure here! This meat was large. It was in a cyrovac package and unfrozen. I opened up the cryovac, drained all the fluid, pulled the brisket out and rinsed it under cold water for a few minutes. I then patted it dry with a wack of paper towel the put it on 3 cutting sheets on my counter. I told you this thing was big! A note to those who have never done a brisket, it is heavy, and awkward if you do not have enough counter space. I searched about the net to find out how to trim a brisket. Alot of text, not much in the way of pictures. I stumbled along this link
http://www.azbbqa.com/articles/brisket-trim.htm# and it was great. Even though it shows how to seperate the point from the flat, it gives a pretty good indication on what to trim. Also this link
http://virtualweberbullet.com/brisketselect.html was really helpful as well. Jsut a note, that no brisket will look the same. I had the brisket with a big point and the only picture close was one of the two briskets on the virtualweberbullet.com site.
Ok, so I trimmed about 2lbs of fat from my brisket. when cutting, you will see a fat vein. That fat vein is what seperates the point from the flat. If you followed it right down to the flat, you would seperate the two peices of meat. I trimmed about 1/4" and less in some spots on the flat and the point I left a little, but not alot of fat on it, as it has a ton of fat in it to keep it moist. The backside of the brisket needed very little trimming, just some here and there. I left most of it on, just the little saggy bits I trimmed off. So far so good. Thank god for a large knife and keeping it really sharp. Before you begin, sharpen your knife, as the squishy fat on the flat is really tricky to trim if it is not frozen, but chilled. Take your time. It took me about 45 minutes to figure out the brisket and the trimming. The flat is the part that runs below the point. Meaning that extra piece of meat on top is the point, and the long flat section, is the flat. It took me a long time to figure this out <it seems so straight forward now, I feel stupid I didn't understand the point from the flat, but I know now!> I had a large point compared to other brisket pictures so that is part of the reason why it took me so long to figure out what the hell I had!
So I mixed up the rub, put it all over my brisket, front and back, all around the sides, worked it into every nook and cranny. I then placed some saran wrap on the DBS rack and placed my brisket on there, and put it on a cookie sheet for easier transportation. I wrapped it all up in saran wrap from Thursday night to Friday night.
How I cooked my brisket:I rubbed the brisket on Thursday around 6pm and took it out on Friday around 7pm to come up to room temp. I wanted to start cooking it at about 8pm as I figured about 1.5hrs per lb and with about 2lbs off of my brisket, that would give me about 9-9.5 lbs of trimmed, ready to cook brisket. AT 1.5 hours I was looking at about 14.25hrs. That would have given me plenty of time to FTC the beast. I used 2 pucks of Hickory and 3 of cherry. No real reason per se for cherry. I had a lot of cherry pucks and only 2 hickory and my wifes cousin did pulled beef with cherry and it was really good. I decided to go out on a limb. I have also read that brisket will absorb smoke like a sponge and that it can easily get over smoked. Wife and I are still getting used to the smoke, so I figured that would be enough for now. I can always up the smoke next round.
Ok, so I set the smoker to preheat for an hour at 230F and by 8pm it was ready. I put the brisket in, inserted my probe to as close to the middle of the flat as I could to get an "accurate" reading. The point I have read is hard to get an accurate temp on with all the fat in it. I set the brisket <more like wedged the brisket> on the 3rd rack with no meat touching the cabinet <that was a feat in itself!>. I set the temp on the box for 210F, stayed up until 12:30am to re-set the oven and smoker for 9:40 and change the water pan out. I had my vent about 1/3 of the way open. I took off any unused pucks from the smoker feed tube and cleaned that up just a bit. Some left over smoldering wood bitties. I really need some bubba pucks!
I got up to do some yard work with the wife and mother inlaw around 10ish on Saturday. I was outside checking on the brisket at about 9:30am to reset the timer again for 9:40 and to change the water bowl. MY wife checked it when she was up at 6:30am and told me it was 140F. It was 125F when I went to bed at 12:30am. At about 10am on Saturday it was hanging around 151F. I don't know how long it platued but it must have been a hell of long time. By noon it was only 157F so I am suspecting it had hit the platue at 6am ish to almost 11:30. I had put some of the fat from the trimmings above the brisket so the fat would drip on the brisket and keep it moist. I will not do that again as it got very smokey and gave the brisket a waxy, bitter taste (really bad taste, yuk!). I won't worry about it drying out. I sprayed the brisket once with apple juice but it never really needed to be hosed down, like my pork butt. I turned my oven up to 240F at about 2pm as the temp reached 170F where it hung out again for a few hours. I pulled it off at 187 at 5:30pm and it went up to 189 while it was FT for about 45 minutes.
I started this cook "early" as I thought for sure it would be 190F at about 3pm on Saturday. The night and the day were great for temp, last night there was zero wind, and it only was down to +7C for the over night low. I think 210 is a little low, as it seems that my cooking never gets to the "temp" by the time I figured. I am looking at 2.21 hours per pound with my brisket cook. Just as long as my butt cook. It could have probably taken the full 24hrs if I kept the box temp at 210 for the entire cook. Next time, I will put in on at 5pm the day before and see where I am at.
How I cut my brisket [/u]
I seperated the brisket into the flat and the point after I pulled it out of the FT. It almost pulled apart by hand and I only had to make one cut. Now I concetrated on the flat, as the point I saw was not done as I took one cut from it and I could still see all the unrendered fat in it. I wrapped it in tin foil and will make some burnt ends with it I think. I scraped very little fat off the flat, figured out the grain, and proceeded to cut against the grain. It had a very nice bark, and was easy to cut. It was moist, but got cold fast, and when it got cold it dried out a little bit too.
End Result[/u]
We put the leftover half of the flat in the freezer for supper on Wed night. The wife loved it, but agreed that it had a burnt taste to it from the fat above it and the rub wasn't just right. For my first brisket, it was a success, but of course needs some fine tuning. The following is what I will do next time:
*Use mustard on the brikset then apply my rub
*Will not put any fat above my brisket to keep it moist
*Will start a full 24hrs before I want to eat. Maybe even 26hrs so I can FTC for a few hours
*Will seperate the point from the flat before the cook, if I cannot find any brisket flats. I will make burnt ends from the point.
*I might try a higher cooking temp like 220F to see if I can get the same results but shorten my cooking time
*Use salt, pepper, and granulated garlic for a rub. Lets keep it simple.
I did not find this cut of meat very "beefy" tasting at all. Maybe I am used to farm beef, but I thought this was more mild than any steak I have had in the last few years. I was very worried about the "beefy" taste as my wife and I do like beef, but not so strong that you image a cow on your plate! We had the brisket with some new beer and chipotle bbq sauce we got from the store, and the homemade suace I made a few weeks ago. Once I scraped some of the bark off that had that bitter fat taste, the brisket was pretty good, imho.
Pics:
Cryovac 11.5lbs of Untrimmed Whole Brisket
Brisket Trimmed up ready to rub
Brisket rubbed and wrapped
Brisket shoe-horned into the 3rd rack of the DBS
Brisket at 12hrs of cooking
Brisket at 16hrs of cooking
Brisket pulled at 187F after 21.5hrs of cooking (before FT)
Brisket point seperated from flat
Brisket being cut
Some slices of the brisket
