Slow-Smoked Mesquite Brisket (Friday, 10 June 2016)
This was my first brisket on my Weber Summit Charcoal Grill Center. It was a ten-pound packer (AFTER my favorite butcher trimmed it to order then priced it).
Basic recipe is from Weber’s "Smoke" (2013) pages 70-71. Cooking techniques are from Meathead’s "Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style" and other parts of amazingribs.com and "The Science of . . ." as indicated below.
About a third of the way through the cook during some downtime, I browsed AR and saw Jim Grillman’s story about his Memorial Day brisket experience. It put me in a good mood which encouraged me to post about my own progress on the WSCG. At the time, things were going so well I was tempted to skip the Texas Crutch, something I’d never done before when cooking brisket on my Weber 22.5†kettle+Smokenator. Special thanks to Huskee who saw my post and suggested I wrap instead of powering through the stall. Without the wrap, I am sure I’d have ended up missing mealtime by a couple of hours instead of hitting it on the nose; I also avoided ending up with a good point but dry flat and, instead, got a butter-soft, perfectly cooked, excellent tasting packer brisket.
Timeline: making and applying rub - 45 minutes; wrapped and refrigerated – 12 hours; sitting before hitting the grill – 1 hour; cook time – 10 hours; sitting before carving – 2 hours. I was shooting for 7:30pm. I carved at 7:15pm.
Three PM Thursday (the day before the cook): After trimming the fat side a little more and removing the remaining membrane from the other side and rinsing the brisket, I rubbed BOTH sides and the edges with about 1/3 cup of yellow mustard. ASIDE: as Meathead wrote someplace, don’t worry about using mustard even if you don’t like it (like my wife who is not fond of it). It imparts very little flavor, if any, during a long cook like this and is used primarily as a means to stick the dry rub to the brisket. ALSO, I injected beef broth every few inches in a grid pattern going with the grain. I need a better technique – broth squirted out of "holes" in the brisket I did not know were there and from holes I’d just made further down the brisket.
The rub consisted of 2 tablespoons of ancho chile powder, 1 TBS each of light brown sugar, kosher salt, onion powder, paprika, and ground cumin and 2 teaspoons each of ground black pepper and allspice. ASIDE: Like what happens with the mustard and based on my previous experience, I’m not sure this is any better than using kosher salt and ground black pepper ONLY. But, the first time through, we follow the recipe closely THEN start playing around on subsequent cooks. Gotta say, though, this one turned out so well that I may not want to stray too far. Just saying . . .
Put the rubbed brisket in a large turkey roasting bag (which takes up less fridge room than a huge aluminum lasagna pan) and put it in the fridge about 4PM Thursday.
Then, I set up the "next day’s" fire following Meathead’s "For long cooks" suggestion (see "Charcoal grill setup" under "Tips and Techniques") and used the charcoal arrangement Clint Cantwell (grilling.com) uses. I put three layers of 2 briquettes each in a horseshoe pattern about half-way around the lower (i.e., smoking) level of the Summit. ASIDE: next time, I’ll put them ¾ of the way around. I interspersed mesquite CHUNKS (not chips) and some Kingsford "Smokehouse Style Mesquite Briquets" my wife bought me on the first half of the charcoal (i.e., about ¼ of the kettle’s interior circumference at the cooking level ) figuring they’d be consumed during the first half of the cook. I wasn’t far off.
Friday 6AM – Lit about ten leftover coals from a previous cook in a chimney and took brisket out of the fridge. Stuck my ThermaQ meat probe in the point (being sure to miss the fat layer) and clipped the ThermaQ air probe to sit beside where the meat would sit. Put my old TW ChefAlarm behind where the meat would go in order to compare to the Dome thermos; on previous uses of the WSCG, the built-in dome thermos wasn’t too bad on bigger pieces of food so I’d thought a long test with a packer would be a good thing to try. I was right; the dome thermo is not too far off when doing roasts or, perhaps, whole chickens although I’ll still use my ThermaQ and ChefAlarm. In future brisket cooks, my ThermaQ will be used in the point and the flat, and the ChefAlarm will measure air temp at the cooking level.
6:20AM – dumped the lit coals on the "left" end of the horseshoe AND opened the top vent about a pencil width and the bottom vent to "smoke" Ambient temp was 68F with no wind.
6:50AM – meat on. Dome thermo temp 280, cook surface temp 240F, and point temp 46F.
7:15AM – Dome thermo 280F, cook surface 250F so closed bottom vent a little.
By 8:20AM, dome thermo temp 230F, cook surface 225, point internal temp 89F.
10AM – dome thermo temp 215, cook surface 224, point internal 140F.
11:30AM – dome thermo temp 210F, cook surface temp 214, point internal temp 148F. Swept ash and opened bottom vent a little.
12:15PM – dome 205, cook surface 210, point internal 149. Opened kettle, manually knocked off ash and swept, restacked existing coals and added 6 briqettes to the unlit end of the horseshoe.
12:30PM – dome 215, cook surface 225, point internal 149. THANK YOU, Huskee – I wrapped here.
1:15PM to 5:15PM, dome moved from 215-220 down to 210, cook surface moved from 235 down to 220, and point internal moved from 149 to 195. Flat hit 205 so I closed all vents and moved brisket to a faux cambro until 7:15PM when I sliced a butter-soft, fragrant but not too spicy, brisket.
That was Friday. Today is Sunday. We are having homemade brisket tamales. Tomorrow’s lunch will be brisket on homemade Kaiser rolls.
I already noted the couple of things I’d do differently next time (extending the horseshoe, thermo rearrangement, better injection technique). One more thing I’d do is remove the fat layer between the point and the flat.
In the pics, the veggies are from our garden. No pic of my schedule with pencil notes this time – it was too messy to read.
This was my first brisket on my Weber Summit Charcoal Grill Center. It was a ten-pound packer (AFTER my favorite butcher trimmed it to order then priced it).
Basic recipe is from Weber’s "Smoke" (2013) pages 70-71. Cooking techniques are from Meathead’s "Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style" and other parts of amazingribs.com and "The Science of . . ." as indicated below.
About a third of the way through the cook during some downtime, I browsed AR and saw Jim Grillman’s story about his Memorial Day brisket experience. It put me in a good mood which encouraged me to post about my own progress on the WSCG. At the time, things were going so well I was tempted to skip the Texas Crutch, something I’d never done before when cooking brisket on my Weber 22.5†kettle+Smokenator. Special thanks to Huskee who saw my post and suggested I wrap instead of powering through the stall. Without the wrap, I am sure I’d have ended up missing mealtime by a couple of hours instead of hitting it on the nose; I also avoided ending up with a good point but dry flat and, instead, got a butter-soft, perfectly cooked, excellent tasting packer brisket.
Timeline: making and applying rub - 45 minutes; wrapped and refrigerated – 12 hours; sitting before hitting the grill – 1 hour; cook time – 10 hours; sitting before carving – 2 hours. I was shooting for 7:30pm. I carved at 7:15pm.
Three PM Thursday (the day before the cook): After trimming the fat side a little more and removing the remaining membrane from the other side and rinsing the brisket, I rubbed BOTH sides and the edges with about 1/3 cup of yellow mustard. ASIDE: as Meathead wrote someplace, don’t worry about using mustard even if you don’t like it (like my wife who is not fond of it). It imparts very little flavor, if any, during a long cook like this and is used primarily as a means to stick the dry rub to the brisket. ALSO, I injected beef broth every few inches in a grid pattern going with the grain. I need a better technique – broth squirted out of "holes" in the brisket I did not know were there and from holes I’d just made further down the brisket.
The rub consisted of 2 tablespoons of ancho chile powder, 1 TBS each of light brown sugar, kosher salt, onion powder, paprika, and ground cumin and 2 teaspoons each of ground black pepper and allspice. ASIDE: Like what happens with the mustard and based on my previous experience, I’m not sure this is any better than using kosher salt and ground black pepper ONLY. But, the first time through, we follow the recipe closely THEN start playing around on subsequent cooks. Gotta say, though, this one turned out so well that I may not want to stray too far. Just saying . . .
Put the rubbed brisket in a large turkey roasting bag (which takes up less fridge room than a huge aluminum lasagna pan) and put it in the fridge about 4PM Thursday.
Then, I set up the "next day’s" fire following Meathead’s "For long cooks" suggestion (see "Charcoal grill setup" under "Tips and Techniques") and used the charcoal arrangement Clint Cantwell (grilling.com) uses. I put three layers of 2 briquettes each in a horseshoe pattern about half-way around the lower (i.e., smoking) level of the Summit. ASIDE: next time, I’ll put them ¾ of the way around. I interspersed mesquite CHUNKS (not chips) and some Kingsford "Smokehouse Style Mesquite Briquets" my wife bought me on the first half of the charcoal (i.e., about ¼ of the kettle’s interior circumference at the cooking level ) figuring they’d be consumed during the first half of the cook. I wasn’t far off.
Friday 6AM – Lit about ten leftover coals from a previous cook in a chimney and took brisket out of the fridge. Stuck my ThermaQ meat probe in the point (being sure to miss the fat layer) and clipped the ThermaQ air probe to sit beside where the meat would sit. Put my old TW ChefAlarm behind where the meat would go in order to compare to the Dome thermos; on previous uses of the WSCG, the built-in dome thermos wasn’t too bad on bigger pieces of food so I’d thought a long test with a packer would be a good thing to try. I was right; the dome thermo is not too far off when doing roasts or, perhaps, whole chickens although I’ll still use my ThermaQ and ChefAlarm. In future brisket cooks, my ThermaQ will be used in the point and the flat, and the ChefAlarm will measure air temp at the cooking level.
6:20AM – dumped the lit coals on the "left" end of the horseshoe AND opened the top vent about a pencil width and the bottom vent to "smoke" Ambient temp was 68F with no wind.
6:50AM – meat on. Dome thermo temp 280, cook surface temp 240F, and point temp 46F.
7:15AM – Dome thermo 280F, cook surface 250F so closed bottom vent a little.
By 8:20AM, dome thermo temp 230F, cook surface 225, point internal temp 89F.
10AM – dome thermo temp 215, cook surface 224, point internal 140F.
11:30AM – dome thermo temp 210F, cook surface temp 214, point internal temp 148F. Swept ash and opened bottom vent a little.
12:15PM – dome 205, cook surface 210, point internal 149. Opened kettle, manually knocked off ash and swept, restacked existing coals and added 6 briqettes to the unlit end of the horseshoe.
12:30PM – dome 215, cook surface 225, point internal 149. THANK YOU, Huskee – I wrapped here.
1:15PM to 5:15PM, dome moved from 215-220 down to 210, cook surface moved from 235 down to 220, and point internal moved from 149 to 195. Flat hit 205 so I closed all vents and moved brisket to a faux cambro until 7:15PM when I sliced a butter-soft, fragrant but not too spicy, brisket.
That was Friday. Today is Sunday. We are having homemade brisket tamales. Tomorrow’s lunch will be brisket on homemade Kaiser rolls.
I already noted the couple of things I’d do differently next time (extending the horseshoe, thermo rearrangement, better injection technique). One more thing I’d do is remove the fat layer between the point and the flat.
In the pics, the veggies are from our garden. No pic of my schedule with pencil notes this time – it was too messy to read.
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