Does a more tender/fattier cut stall earlier? Later? The same???

[realdocBBQ]

Cooking an 18 lb brisket today. Sam's Club Prime. I remember when I picked this one up, it was S00000PER floppy and I was excited! Decided to wet age it in the cryovac in my fridge. Date on the package was April 7, 2024, it's been 'suggested' that this is probably 2 weeks from its packing date.

So, with that in mind, today is probably somewhere like 75 days since packaging, and it's been wet aging in the bottom of my fridge.

When I took it out of the package, it was unbelievably floppy. SOOOO EXCITING! Normal smelling brisket, didn't have the slight 'funk' I've sometimes gotten when I've aged 'em a long time, it was perfectly normal, as far as I could tell.

But the muscle fibers in the point particularly were separating much easier, the fat cap was much softer overall - even way more than my previously 90-day and 120-day wet aged briskets - and the flat was just sooooo soft and pliable and still pretty thick, not even any real thin parts that needed cut off. "Oh man," I'm thinking to myself, "this is gonna be GOOOOOD!"

I was also shocked at how little trimming I had to do - no large mohawk to take down, the deckle was smaller than previous 18-19 lb briskets I'd done. I think my yield on this one is going to be pretty good. I bet I didn't trim off 2 lbs total.

So interestingly, as soft and pliable as this thing is, it looks like it's gone into the stall WAY earlier than I expected. I mean, the temp curve started flattening out in the high 120s, definitely by mid-130s and into the mid-140s it looks like it is completely in the stall. My Fireboard decided to start a completely new session on me at 3h14m in, no idea why, and it looked like it was stalled even then. Temps have been in the 275 range, essentially most of the time. Cooking on mostly cherry with an occasional hunk of maple. Bark is looking awesome, spritzed occ with 50/50 H2O/ACV.

I'm just wondering... does the fact this is an exceptionally tender brisket (seemingly) affect it and make it stall earlier? Am I going to run into a second stall, say in the 180s, which has happened before and is incredibly frustrating.

My plan is foil boat once it gets out of the stall, was anticipating 170-180, somewhere in that range. Take it to 190ish, then put it in the toaster oven or in my Camp Chef propane smoker overnight to hold at 150 or so. Wife is out of town, so this will be for late lunch/early dinner tomorrow when she gets home.

[DaveD]

Well, I have never wet-aged anything, so have nothing on that. To the extent that a stall represents approximate equilibrium between heat loss from evaporation and heat gain from the cooker, it's conceivable that a fattier cut could produce more liquid to evaporate earlier, all else being equal. What about the shape? If it's got an extensive flat surface, that can allow liquid to pool whether it's extra fatty or not. More sloped surfaces would promote runoff, lessening the stall effect. Show us some pics!!

Meanwhile... I've certainly experienced two stalls often enough that I felt compelled to go make this:

[LA Pork Butt]

My understanding is that the evaporation of moisture causes the cooling effect in the stall. That being said if more moisture is in the fat or meat contributing to tenderness the answer is yes, otherwise I guess it is no.

[Mosca]

My last brisket, 2 weeks ago, was a Sam’s but smaller; 11-12 pounds. It was prime, and looked and felt like you described. There were some irregularities in how it presented itself: the fat cap was mostly already trimmed, and there were some strange gashes in the flat; but it looked and felt like a really nice piece of brisket.

It didn’t stall at all. I got up early to have it on the heat by 5AM, and it was done around 1PM.

Go figure. It was a damn good brisket though.

[realdocBBQ]

Well, it was an interesting cook yesterday.



As I noted before, a very minimal trim, no real prominent 'mohawk' to trim off. However, as it cooked the far section of the point where it would normally be did plump up and stick out quite a bit, so there WAS a mohawk, apparently. My guess is this brisket was so tender and soft the portion that normally sticks up like that and usually gets trimmed off to flatten things, it sort of 'melded in' with the rest of the point. Then, under heat, it did puff up and stick up like a mohawk. Not a major problem, when I put it in the foil boat, I made an additional foil 'cap' about 4x6" and sort of folded it over that portion to keep it from getting too crispy and getting dried out.

The cook went well overall - warmed up quickly, running up to the 130s and flattening out, was fully into the stall by 145 at like 3.5 hours in. Cooking temps around 275 avg, mostly cherry wood with a few pieces of maple thrown in for good measure.

My Fireboard randomly decided to start a new session at 3h14m, don't ask me why. It's been running since that time without another real hiccup.

I've had trouble with my 6 y/o Fireboard not allowing me to add pics to a cook - then yesterday I realized if I kill the app on my phone, then restart it, it would let me put in a pic. Go figure.

Worked its way through the stall by 160F, too it up over 170 to about 175 and then put it in the foil boat, along with the aforementioned foil 'cap' on the top of the point.

I'll add a little tip here...

On occasion, I've tried to foil boat it before completely finishing the stall, thinking to try to power through a little bit, and then pushing temps a little to get done quicker. 14+ hour cooks are not my favorite. The problem with this (I think) is that putting it in a foil boat before the stall is finished leaves too much juice in it, which accumulates in the foil boat to a LOT of liquid, then trying to push temps up to finish the cook, it really boils in there and my flat has come out a bit overdone, 'pot roast' like and crumbly. So this time I decided to push completely through the stall to sweat out all unnecessary moisture AND to not push the final stage of the cook in an attempt to finish quicker. I had plenty of time, even though I didn't start until 10AM or so. I ended up at 195 in the flat before pulling - I had planned on 190-192, but the point was lagging behind (even before my foil cap, which ONLY covered the protruding mohawk portion), so I really took it slower at the end, shooting for 250-275 (I often push to 300 once foil boated, something I am thinking to avoid in future cooks), hoping to allow the point to catch up a little bit. It did, slightly, being around 187 when I pulled, loosely wrapped trying to preserve the bark as much as possible, and placed in my Camp Chef Smoker Vault 24 with the burner on the lowest possible setting and played with cracking the door tiny bits at a time to get to the 150ish hold zone.

Woke up this morning at 630 to a temp in the Camp Chef in the 90s and the brisket cooling just below 140. DAMN! Went out and realized the wind had apparently blown the door open about an hour before - my fault for not being more attentive and blocking the door when I figured out the proper amount of gap that was needed. Corrected this and temp quickly climbed back above 140 - I ran it 180-190 for a half hour or so - and is now back into the high 140s internal. I didn't want to keep the temp at 190 long enough to bring the center up to 150+, because I was worried I'd overcook the outside, so I got it back into the safer zone quickly, then cracked the door again back open and am letting it SLOWLY climb up to bring internal up to 150ish without overcooking the outer later. I'll hold here until midafternoon when The Wife should be home from her weekend trip to Dallas and we can all enjoy brisket for dinner.

Also have a spatchcocked chikkin dusted well with Meat Church Holy Voodoo that's been drying in the fridge for about 40 hours now. I'll throw that on a couple hours before mealtime.

I'm excited to try this one out and see how it turned out, that super floppy state prior to aging and before the cook have me keenly interested in the results.

Didn't take any pics of it in full-on meteorite mode, sorry, but I'll try to get some when I unwrap it. It looked great, with a nice crispy bark, but not hard and dried out. Wish I could maintain that bark indefinitely without drying things out, but I don't want to keep it in the warmer uncovered overnight. It's a tradeoff - tenderness and juiciness, but at the risk of softening the bark. But if it's set really well before wrapping, I've found while it does soften, it doesn't become mushy and just wipe off when slicing. This time I tried to sort of 'tent' it a bit over the foil boat to see if this helps the bark - though I'm not overly optimistic it will be a dramatic improvement.

So there's my novella on yesterday's briskie cook. Hopefully this evening I'll find out it came out fantabulous! lol

[realdocBBQ]

Well, this turned out like shit. My whole process needs rethinking. The dog likes it, I cubed it up and froze it to mix in with the GSD's dry dog food. <sigh>

Back to the drawing board...

[Jerod Broussard]

I have found that more tender briskets just get done early. As in 195 probe tender in the flat instead of 203. In fact, taking it to 203 just makes it a horrible experience to consume. Imagine the driest flat in the world.

I think fat is only about 3% water so it doesn't have near the evaporative cooling properties of lean muscle.