The Purchase
Early in May I had a very serendipitous shopping experience. I was in a big box store. The last thing on my mind was that I was going to buy a full packer brisket there. I stopped and looked, staring in awe that they had that item for sale there. Well I went home without buying one because I had to go back to the AR website and reread which brisket grades were good buys so I did not make a very large mistake. Two days later, information is hand, I returned to the store and looked again. They were USDA choice. I grabbed a 12 pounder, the smallest one left, and the journey had begun.
The Prep
The prep began as soon as I got it home. It went right into the second fridge in the lower meat keeping drawer. I maintain that at around 35F. The wet aging in cry-o-vac process was happening. This gave me plenty of time to make all of my plans including a reverse time table. I started with when I wanted to eat the brisket and worked the time table backwards, arriving at a start time.
The afternoon before cooking/eating day I got the brisket out of the fridge, cut open the plastic wrap, and pulled out a 12.5 pound hunk of meat and fat, washed it clean and plopped it down on my cutting board, fat (point) side up. And it was lab time after my brisket anatomy lessons on line. I learned where the point was, the flat, the fat cap. What I had only read about had now started to make sense as I stared at it.
Next step was to trim the fat to 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick. Sorry no pictures this time, but I can tell you that the fat left in tact was from zero to 1/2 inch thick, but I can still keyboard with 10 fingers, so I consider that outcome to be a success. The plate collecting the trimmed fat was about 4 pounds heavier. Next step was to dry brine with kosher salt, place the brisket in a large roasting pan for easy handling, top with foil, and back into the fridge until early morning, Memorial Day.
Later on in the evening, I went out and prepped the Weber/Smokenator duo for the big day a coming. The thought had occurred to me that the more ready everything was before I went to bed, the less brutal setting the alarm clock would be. I had all ash cleaned out, the smokenator fully charged with KBB charcoal, water and drip pans in place, even the Weber chimney was in place, fully fueled, ready to light.
The Cooking Day Begins
My alarm clock went off at 2:51am as planned....one 9 minute snooze, and I was up (vertical, on my feet) at 3:00am. Having well thought this out, first thing was to go outdoors to the Weber grill and chimney and light the starter coals. Next I came and started the coffee brew cycle, which had also been prepped the night before. I then got out the brisket, the BBBRub, beef broth, and the all important flavor injector tool. I don't know exactly how much beef broth I ended up injecting, but I know I wasn't holding back at all.....the more broth I figured I got into the brisket, the better my chances were of ending up with a juicy finished product. So at this point dryness was the enemy and my weapon was beef broth injections. (jumping ahead just a little in the story.....I won! He,he,he,he.)
Now it was time to add the starter coals to the Smokenator. It's going on 4am now, but still relatively dark outside. This was one of the greatest moments to remember. I looked down inside the chimney at the glowing coals. Those of you who have cooked over charcoal at night can relate. The beauty of the glowing coals, blues, oranges, and red shining through the gray ash on the charcoals...Hey, I was working on my first cup of coffee and was stone cold sober! Some things are just that beautiful.
Smokenator started, and smoking wood ready, it was time to put the BBBRub on the brisket and move it on to the grill. I had read about and tried the Minion method of starting up smokers and was comfortable with doing so, knowing I would be monitoring both the grill grate temperature and also the brisket internal temp with the Maverick Ready Read. Looking at the time once the brisket was on the grill, water and drip pans were filled, smoking wood in place on the top of the Smokenator, meat probe well inside the point, in the thickest part of the brisket, and grill probe right along side of the brisket, top air vents set at one-half open, bottom vents set at one-third open, lid in place........4:04am.
The Rise, The Fall, The Leveling...and The Stall
There wasn't too much noteworthy to do with the brisket now for a while. I had some kitchen cleanup, etc. This part was mostly about watching the remote part of the Maverick. The grill grate temp climbed steadily right past 225F as I expected it would. I sat comfortably and watched the numbers. What I liked about the setup work I had done was that the temperature climb stopped at about 270F and stayed there for about an hour. Then it gradually started its slow decent. Slowly but steadily it came back down to around 240F. That was it. It had found its sweet spot. Without any intervention on my part, the grill temp stayed within a degree or two higher or lower for the duration of the cook, which was one to 1 1/2 hours into the stall.
The stall was very interesting for me. I had read a lot about the stall. I had experienced the stall on pork shoulders I have cooked. The typical stall comes somewhere between 150 and 165F. I noticed that I had steady climb on the meat probe readout up to 142F, taking four hours to get there. A half an hour after I first saw the 142F reading, a half a Bloody Mary, and half an Asleep At The Wheel cd later, it was still the same, 142F. Regardless of what the actual temp readout was.....I WAS IN THE STALL ZONE! Now, let's analyze just a little. The brisket's got this large flat the covers a good portion of the available grate in the 22.5" Weber Gold. It also has this mound on top, AKA the point. I've got my meat probe in the thickest part of the brisket. What's going on out there in "flatland" is not what is registering on my Maverick. When the light bulb went on in my brain, it was a real AH HA moment.
The Rest of the Cook and Some ZZZs
An hour after the stall began at 142F, the meat had crept up to 147F, five degrees. The time was about 9:30am. I decided it was time to commence the crutch. When I did my reverse time table, I had already decided that once I was into the stall, I was going to use the crutch, switch to the oven for low and slow 225F cooking, and catch some more sleep. I brought the brisket back into the kitchen, triple wrapped it in foil, adding 3/4 cup of beef broth before tightly compressing the foil. Remember I was still fighting the enemy....dryness. Once the brisket, tightly tucked in foil was in the 225F oven, I tucked myself back into bed, and proceeded to sleep like a baby for 3 hours or so.
When I got up and went downstairs, I could not believe how great the kitchen smelled. YaHoo! Yipee! I started taking readings with my Thermoworks instant read probe. When the temp reading was 200F, I pealed back all of the foil. I had read somewhere in my research that when using the crutch open up the foil for the last half hour or so to firm up the bark again. About 45 min. later the probe reading was 205F. Now it was time to close up all of that foil wrap, and turn the oven temp down to its lowest heat setting which is 170F. "The Rest" happened right in my oven, no faux cambro required.
The time was about 5:30pm by now. My Sweetheart and I then had plenty of time to imbibe Bloody Marys and beer chasers while talking and listening to Asleep At The Wheel cds.
Dinner was at 7pm, so 1 1/2 hours for the brisket to rest. I felt like I had done all that I needed to do for some very good results. Right before cutting into it, I gave the brisket a little nudge with a finger. Pick your favorite metaphor...."like buttah," or "it wiggled like Jello." They both applied. And I was a happy camper. That was the day I went to Texas, although I never left home.
Final Thoughts
I may be 1200 miles away from Austin and my brisket may have spent less than half of its cook time in the Weber/Smokenator, but it was still a great grilling experience with great end results....awesome brisket for the eating. I am willing to represent that! I won't win any sort of competition, but I still won over my Sweetheart with it.
Early in May I had a very serendipitous shopping experience. I was in a big box store. The last thing on my mind was that I was going to buy a full packer brisket there. I stopped and looked, staring in awe that they had that item for sale there. Well I went home without buying one because I had to go back to the AR website and reread which brisket grades were good buys so I did not make a very large mistake. Two days later, information is hand, I returned to the store and looked again. They were USDA choice. I grabbed a 12 pounder, the smallest one left, and the journey had begun.
The Prep
The prep began as soon as I got it home. It went right into the second fridge in the lower meat keeping drawer. I maintain that at around 35F. The wet aging in cry-o-vac process was happening. This gave me plenty of time to make all of my plans including a reverse time table. I started with when I wanted to eat the brisket and worked the time table backwards, arriving at a start time.
The afternoon before cooking/eating day I got the brisket out of the fridge, cut open the plastic wrap, and pulled out a 12.5 pound hunk of meat and fat, washed it clean and plopped it down on my cutting board, fat (point) side up. And it was lab time after my brisket anatomy lessons on line. I learned where the point was, the flat, the fat cap. What I had only read about had now started to make sense as I stared at it.
Next step was to trim the fat to 1/4 to 1/8 inch thick. Sorry no pictures this time, but I can tell you that the fat left in tact was from zero to 1/2 inch thick, but I can still keyboard with 10 fingers, so I consider that outcome to be a success. The plate collecting the trimmed fat was about 4 pounds heavier. Next step was to dry brine with kosher salt, place the brisket in a large roasting pan for easy handling, top with foil, and back into the fridge until early morning, Memorial Day.
Later on in the evening, I went out and prepped the Weber/Smokenator duo for the big day a coming. The thought had occurred to me that the more ready everything was before I went to bed, the less brutal setting the alarm clock would be. I had all ash cleaned out, the smokenator fully charged with KBB charcoal, water and drip pans in place, even the Weber chimney was in place, fully fueled, ready to light.
The Cooking Day Begins
My alarm clock went off at 2:51am as planned....one 9 minute snooze, and I was up (vertical, on my feet) at 3:00am. Having well thought this out, first thing was to go outdoors to the Weber grill and chimney and light the starter coals. Next I came and started the coffee brew cycle, which had also been prepped the night before. I then got out the brisket, the BBBRub, beef broth, and the all important flavor injector tool. I don't know exactly how much beef broth I ended up injecting, but I know I wasn't holding back at all.....the more broth I figured I got into the brisket, the better my chances were of ending up with a juicy finished product. So at this point dryness was the enemy and my weapon was beef broth injections. (jumping ahead just a little in the story.....I won! He,he,he,he.)
Now it was time to add the starter coals to the Smokenator. It's going on 4am now, but still relatively dark outside. This was one of the greatest moments to remember. I looked down inside the chimney at the glowing coals. Those of you who have cooked over charcoal at night can relate. The beauty of the glowing coals, blues, oranges, and red shining through the gray ash on the charcoals...Hey, I was working on my first cup of coffee and was stone cold sober! Some things are just that beautiful.
Smokenator started, and smoking wood ready, it was time to put the BBBRub on the brisket and move it on to the grill. I had read about and tried the Minion method of starting up smokers and was comfortable with doing so, knowing I would be monitoring both the grill grate temperature and also the brisket internal temp with the Maverick Ready Read. Looking at the time once the brisket was on the grill, water and drip pans were filled, smoking wood in place on the top of the Smokenator, meat probe well inside the point, in the thickest part of the brisket, and grill probe right along side of the brisket, top air vents set at one-half open, bottom vents set at one-third open, lid in place........4:04am.
The Rise, The Fall, The Leveling...and The Stall
There wasn't too much noteworthy to do with the brisket now for a while. I had some kitchen cleanup, etc. This part was mostly about watching the remote part of the Maverick. The grill grate temp climbed steadily right past 225F as I expected it would. I sat comfortably and watched the numbers. What I liked about the setup work I had done was that the temperature climb stopped at about 270F and stayed there for about an hour. Then it gradually started its slow decent. Slowly but steadily it came back down to around 240F. That was it. It had found its sweet spot. Without any intervention on my part, the grill temp stayed within a degree or two higher or lower for the duration of the cook, which was one to 1 1/2 hours into the stall.
The stall was very interesting for me. I had read a lot about the stall. I had experienced the stall on pork shoulders I have cooked. The typical stall comes somewhere between 150 and 165F. I noticed that I had steady climb on the meat probe readout up to 142F, taking four hours to get there. A half an hour after I first saw the 142F reading, a half a Bloody Mary, and half an Asleep At The Wheel cd later, it was still the same, 142F. Regardless of what the actual temp readout was.....I WAS IN THE STALL ZONE! Now, let's analyze just a little. The brisket's got this large flat the covers a good portion of the available grate in the 22.5" Weber Gold. It also has this mound on top, AKA the point. I've got my meat probe in the thickest part of the brisket. What's going on out there in "flatland" is not what is registering on my Maverick. When the light bulb went on in my brain, it was a real AH HA moment.
The Rest of the Cook and Some ZZZs
An hour after the stall began at 142F, the meat had crept up to 147F, five degrees. The time was about 9:30am. I decided it was time to commence the crutch. When I did my reverse time table, I had already decided that once I was into the stall, I was going to use the crutch, switch to the oven for low and slow 225F cooking, and catch some more sleep. I brought the brisket back into the kitchen, triple wrapped it in foil, adding 3/4 cup of beef broth before tightly compressing the foil. Remember I was still fighting the enemy....dryness. Once the brisket, tightly tucked in foil was in the 225F oven, I tucked myself back into bed, and proceeded to sleep like a baby for 3 hours or so.
When I got up and went downstairs, I could not believe how great the kitchen smelled. YaHoo! Yipee! I started taking readings with my Thermoworks instant read probe. When the temp reading was 200F, I pealed back all of the foil. I had read somewhere in my research that when using the crutch open up the foil for the last half hour or so to firm up the bark again. About 45 min. later the probe reading was 205F. Now it was time to close up all of that foil wrap, and turn the oven temp down to its lowest heat setting which is 170F. "The Rest" happened right in my oven, no faux cambro required.
The time was about 5:30pm by now. My Sweetheart and I then had plenty of time to imbibe Bloody Marys and beer chasers while talking and listening to Asleep At The Wheel cds.
Dinner was at 7pm, so 1 1/2 hours for the brisket to rest. I felt like I had done all that I needed to do for some very good results. Right before cutting into it, I gave the brisket a little nudge with a finger. Pick your favorite metaphor...."like buttah," or "it wiggled like Jello." They both applied. And I was a happy camper. That was the day I went to Texas, although I never left home.
Final Thoughts
I may be 1200 miles away from Austin and my brisket may have spent less than half of its cook time in the Weber/Smokenator, but it was still a great grilling experience with great end results....awesome brisket for the eating. I am willing to represent that! I won't win any sort of competition, but I still won over my Sweetheart with it.
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