It’s a quintessential Minnesota spring, the weather is teasing us. 70 degrees one day and 30 the next day with snow. But those sparse warm days are enough to have us watching the forecast and planning when we break out the smoker! Although we grill throughout the winter, it’s a lot harder to do a low and slow smoke for a large cut of meat. You can do it but you burn a heck of a lot more fuel.
One of my favorite smoked meats is brisket and now that we’ve finally got our method down, this has become one of my favorite briskets. The one that I compare BBQ joints against – well except for one we had in Kansas City but those are a bit out of reach for a general meal out and I have yet to eat a real Texas brisket in Texas.
Whenever we make a brisket, we buy a whole brisket also called a packer brisket. It doesn’t matter if it’s just the two of us – it freezes great and makes for easy meals down the road. Or if we’re having a group of friends over – we had a wonderful barbecue feast with some of our close friends a year ago. That year the Minnesota spring brought unexpected overnight rain causing us to create a redneck tarp set up to keep our smoker dry. But boy was the food good. In fact, the pictures from this recipe were actually taken from that meal!
If you can find it, I recommend buying a prime brisket. It will cost a little bit more per pound but for the extra juiciness and succulence you get, I think it’s worth it. There is a bit more marbled fat in the meat in prime over choice. If you can’t find more than choice, buy that. That’s what we used to develop this method before we discovered the difference and started seeking out prime.
Now cooking a full brisket requires a bit of pre-planning, not only does it cook for several hours (8 to 15 hours maybe more), but you will be salting it for 24 hours before you start cooking and you’ll also want to plan for it to rest for two hours or so in a faux Cambro before you slice it. It’s very hard to give an exact time because it will be done when it’s done. We usually plan to smoke it overnight, so that means the night before we smoke, we get it salted.
The first thing you want to do with your brisket is trim the fat to about a quarter of an inch. It’s ok if a little bit of meat peaks through when you’re done.
Why did I bother to show a picture of all of the fat scraps? Because, I want you to see how much you cut off and BEG you not to waste it. In my next post, I’ll show you how to render it down into beef tallow.
Salt the brisket with ½ t of kosher salt per untrimmed pound of meat.
Take note while you are salting it what the brisket looks like – it will come in handy later when slicing it. A whole brisket is 2 different muscles one long flat muscle along the bottom called the “flat” and a fatter, pointer piece on top called the “point”. The grain runs in different directions on these pieces.
Then wrap the brisket. You can wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and then put it in a large bag (at least 2.5 gallons.) In this case, I chose to use the expandable bags (#EarnsCommissions) and my vacuum sealer.
When you are ready to cook, it’s time to put the rub on the brisket. I find that because we’ve salted it in advance there is typically enough moisture on the meat to allow the rub to adhere but a common trick is to use a little yellow mustard as a binder if you like.
We’re using the Big Bad Beef Rub from one of my favorite cookbooks, Meathead (#EarnsCommissions). It’s a mixture of fresh ground black pepper, sugar, onion powder, dry mustard, garlic powder, ancho chili powder and chipotle or cayenne powder. You can also find it on his website AmazingRibs. I do highly recommend his book, its very educational about smoking but in an approachable and not too technical manner. If you prefer to geek out and read a Brisket Manifesto, I’d recommend Franklin Barbecue (#EarnsCommissions)
For an 18 lb brisket, which is what I’m making today, we used a little over a half cup.
Now it’s time to put the meat on the smoker. Put your meat on a cold smoker – put the fat cap down. Insert probes for a thermometer (Signals by Thermoworks is the one I use), and then create a water bath using foil pans. You can see that we were also smoking some pork butt for pulled pork at the same time.
We use a pellet cooker, specifically a Traeger, which gives us the ability to cook with smoke and very low heat in the beginning. If you have a different type of smoker, start right at 225.
I start the meat in a cold smoker because cold meat absorbs smoke better. We turn the smoker onto smoke and let it smoke for about an hour before turning the heat up to 180 for another hour and finally to 225 degrees. This is a low and slow cook.
The meat will climb until it reaches the “stall” between 150-170 degrees. At this point, the temperature if you are monitoring with a probe thermometer will appear to stall and not climb much for several hours. To combat this and speed up the stall you can employ a method called “the crutch”. This means to wrap the meat and put it back on the smoker. We use 2 layers of heavy duty aluminum foil and then put a thermometer back in from the top so no juices escape.
At this point the meat has probably absorbed as much smoke as it’s going to, so we usually use crutch our brisket. If you don’t, prepare for it to stall for up to 5 hours before climbing again.
Pop it the crutched brisket back on the smoker.
Now let it cook until the meat reaches 203 degrees, the magic number for smoked meat. I check the temp with my Thermopen before pulling it off just to make sure my probe that I replaced through the foil wasn’t in a bad spot.
Now the low and slow cook has helped the fat in the brisket melt and the collagen soften becoming nice and tender. But what we’re going to do next is hold the meat in what’s called a faux Cambro for at least 2 hours. A faux Cambro is basically just a cooler that I fill up with towels, also wrapping the still foil wrapped meat with a towel to keep it warm. This will keep the meat well above a food safe temp of 160 while also allowing the heat to continue to melt the collagen further tenderizing the meat.
When we cooked this brisket we held it from 7 AM when it came off the smoker until 11:45 AM (almost 5 hours) and it was still well over 160 degrees.
Here’s what the faux Cambro looks like:
Now crutching the brisket and keeping it in the faux Cambro will have softened that beautiful crust you developed while smoking it.
So we’re going to firm the crust up again with a quick, hot sear on the grill. Gas or charcoal works but we preheated our gas grill on high and then cooked it fat side down for 5 minutes.
Look at that beautiful brisket. This will be hard but let it rest for 10 minutes before you slice it.
There are multiple methods to cut a brisket and the most important thing to do is cut across the grain. What we like to do is start at the flat end and cut across the grain toward the point. When you get to the point, rotate 45 degrees and slice in perpendicular slices to the cut side. The picture below is taken after we’ve rotated.
If we are feeding a lot of people, we will slice the whole brisket. Otherwise we will skip right to where the point and flat meet, cut the flat off, rotate the brisket and cut off those beautiful pieces where the point and flat meet to enjoy fresh.
We then cut the remaining brisket into chunks about the size of a meal for us, vacuum seal and freeze. Although not quite as good as fresh (but really what is?) this makes great chopped brisket sandwiches, topping for mac and cheese, barbecue salads, a nice brisket and potato hash on the flattop – leaning toward either breakfast of dinner or whatever else you can imagine. Except for the flattop scenario, we reheat the brisket in a 350 degree oven wrapped in foil with a little moisture to steam it. It takes about 15 minutes give or take depending on the size.
Enjoy!
- 1 whole packer cut brisket
- ½ t kosher salt per pound of meat
- Approx. ½ c Big Bad Beef Rub
- Trim the fat cap off the brisket, leaving about a ¼ inch (or a little less).
- Rub with kosher salt. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap or vacuum seal. Put in the fridge for approximately 24 hours.
- Rub brisket with Big Bad Beef Rub
- Place meat on a cold smoker, fat cap down. If you have one place a probe thermometer into the meat. Make a water bath by pouring water into a foil pan and placing next to the meat.
- Turn the smoker on to smoke and leave it there for about an hour. Turn the temperature up to 180 degrees for about another hour. Finally turn the temperature up to 225 degrees where it will stay.
- When the temperature of the brisket starts to plateau or stall, somewhere between 150 and 170, remove the brisket from the smoker. Wrap in a double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil. Reinsert the thermometer probe from the top of the foil.
- Place the meat back on the smoker and continue cooking until the meat reaches 203 degrees.
- Wrap the meat in a towel and place in a cooker. Allow to remain in the cooker for at least 2 hours.
- Heat a grill on high heat. Unwrap the brisket and cook on the grill for 5 minutes to crisp the bark.
- Remove from grill and allow to rest for 10 minutes before slicing.
- Slice across the grain.
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