Brisking up a brisket, you ask? Well, it is not fast at all, but the enjoyment of making a brisket in a Weber Kettle is so big that time just went by. Fast. Too fast, possibly, so I must do this again soon!
I will start this post with a few disclaimers. I am not from Texas, not even from the US. I have never had brisket before, so the only references I have are the raving reviews of Texan brisket I have read, and of course the pictures, recipes and descriptions found on this forum, making brisket sound like the ultimate BBQ. It seems like brisket was the natural "next level" low-and-slow for me, after successfully making pulled pork, short ribs and other niceties for quite some time. This post is a writeup of my route to brisket in the Weber Kettle!
I will separate this into parts: Research, Recipe, Roasting and Result. Instead of a summary with what to improve, most of the learning will be inline.
Research
I never did brisket before. Never had it, in fact. Good news: I will be pleasantly surprised by taste for sure. Bad news: I have no idea what it is supposed to taste like. Im the kinda chef-wannaby that don’t let details like these stop me from trying. Luckily for me, I have learned (slowly, according to some…) that research into a subject matter before jumping in, pays off. This is a summary of the research I did for brisking the brisket in the Weber Kettle.
- Read every word by Meathead. At least those covering beef. Those covering low-and-slow. Those covering brisket. While reading, be amused by the knowledge, and enjoy the opinionated writing. While at it, dig into the youtube videos too.
- Pay attention to details. Like temperatures. Grade of meat. How to clean the fat cap. Time it may take. How to tell when it’s done. This one I still have no clue about, I mean, I do know what it feels like with a knife through warm butter, but applying that to 8Kg of beef?
- Source a good thermometer. This is no joke. Should be bought when you buy your kettle, IMO. I use the iGrill, with one probe for the temp inside the kettle, and one in the meat (due to Wife’s cleaning efficiency - meaning stuffing my probes in the washing machine which effectively killed it, I only had one this time around). The probe I had was used for the cooking chamber, where I kept the temperature between 120C and 135C.
- Get GREAT meat (I trust Meathead on this). I had a big chunk of Black Angus something, imported from Oklahoma, by a Norwegian butcher who competes in the world-wide BBQ competitions (I think that means in Texas), where he made fourth place some time ago. I trust him to know his stuff. The meat - just lovely!
- Learn how to use your Kettle. I believe that my previous success with low-and-slow was an important contributor to my calmness when doing this chunk’o’meat.
- Learn how to set up your Kettle for low-and-slow. I hear the S’n’S addon is a must-have, and it is on my list. I often apply the fuse technique, but this time I was told by Henrik to set up a two-zone using bricks. Failing to find bricks, I used rocks instead, as you can see on the picture. I added aluminium foil to ensure propper airflow. This setup works charms!
- Make sure to have enough time. I were cooking for 30 people, who wanted to eat around 7PM. The place is in the middle of the city, with tall apartment buildings all around. There were no way I could smoke in the early AMs at this location, so I had to do it differently. See the backup plan.
- Have a backup plan. You do make backups, don’t you? Something will always happen, so have a good backup plan. I knew I ran a high-risk project, running low on time, and with absolutely no experience in making this kind of roast. My backup, which became my main plan, was to set up the Kettle to smoke the meat, hit the stall, wrap it in foil and then move it to an oven to finish it off. I had to do it this way due to me having to do the low-and-slow two days prior to the event, and then reheat it before serving. See the results below…
- Ask for help. No better place to do so, than in this forum! Great support and advice from around the world! Also have someone have your back, if nothing else, at least morally. Thanks ecowper for being my mental wingman!
Recipe
Recipe is very simple, at least for me this time. Salt and pepper seasoning, salt for curing. Yup, that’s it. This is not my recipe, of course, I got this from the forums and Meathead's recipes.
- I dry-cured the chunk for 18 hours or so. I also used black pepper while dry-cyring, hoping that the pepper-taste will marinate the meat a bit.
- More salt and pepper just before the meat is put on on the Kettle.
Roasting
The roasting, which is not really a roasting, I guess, was quite straight forward. Quite possibly too straight forward, the time whisked by faster than I could say beer! This step is not complicated at all:
- set up the kettle for two-zone cooking. I used a couple of rocks to allow me to build a taller area for charcoal (bricket). Add a nice amount of unlit ones, then add a few lit ones (handful, 10-ish possibly, I am not that accurate).
- add a water pan. I use an old cast-iron pot that works great for most cooks, but for brisket it was too small and unable to catch all the fat drippings. And there were a lot of those! So next time, I will use an aluminium pan, possibly forming it to the shape of the kettle, and then add the cast iron pot inside that one for water.
- make sure you add your temperature probe. After this cook, I bought myself the iGrill probe for use in the cooking chamber (it comes with a clip that is supposed to make it easy to fix to the grill).
- Heat up the baby!
- Hit adjust to the right temp. I settled for 125C.
- Add meat.
- Add a handful or more of wood chips of choice (I used Mesquite for this one). Keep adding at intervals to keep the smoke going. (I like a strong smoke taste…)
- Pit lid back on.
- Have a beer. Or more.
- Take pictures. Post to forum.
- Monitor temperatur, adjust as necessary. If you need to add charcoal, light them up in your chimney before adding to the Kettle.
- Some hours into the cook, you may want to look at the meat temperature. And meat color. And the smell. Warning: Expect the pack of meat to have shrunk quite a bit. (I also had to turn it around, as I discovered that I had put it in with the fatty side down…Newbie mistake!)
- At some point, the temperatur had hit 88C, which is a bit shy of the 93C recommended. This is where I got nervous (and cold, it was quite cold sitting out that day), and uncertain if the cook was done or not. The temperature probe I used (a double-probe of some size) went into the meat like a knife in warm butter. Just "swoop" and in it went. After a short while, reading 88C, I pulled it out, and the two holes where like hot springs with melted beef fat popping and sizzling and trying to run away. Not really sure if this was what the descriptions means when saying "knife in warm butter", I tried two other places of the thickets parts, both with similar results. I decided this was perfect. Remember, with no previous experience, and basically no clue wether I was in the right or in the wrong.
- I took the now blackened meat out, wrapped it in layers of aluminium foil, and let it cool down before I moved it into the fridge for storing. The party was still a few days away.
- Backup plan of finishing the roast in the oven was decided "not needed", confident in the knife-in-butter test that I was.
- Two days later, the roast still wrapped in foil, it was time to reheat it. I set up the Kettle the same way as before, lit the coal, and set it up to burn around 100C to slowly reheat the brisket. This time, with the new iGrill temp probe fixed to the grill, and another one inside the chunkiest part of the meat.
Slowly reheating the brisket until ca 57C, all the time inside the wrap.
Result
Remember the disclaimer at the top? I never had brisket in my life, and I never knew how to make one. So while I marvel at the result, I may not have won a Texas BBQ competition, or even metered up to all of you great pit-masters.
Three hours slow reheat, brisket tightly wrapped in aluminium foil. The guests started arriving, the meat was almost at a perfect temperature. I served up some chicken, chorizo, lamb sausages and side dishes as an aperitif, and the guests settled in.
Drinks in glasses, happy chit-chatting all around the garden, I decided now was the perfect time to flash the brisket! Most guests in Norway are not accustomed to a large, blackened chunk’o’meat on a grill, and I suspect they expected the meat to be be almost frozen on the inside, as BBQ in Norway seems to be - black on the outside, still frozen on the inside, that is.
After the obligatory photo-session, I moved the brisket back on the grill, to show off a few flames and to firm up the crust. Two days wrapped and kept in a fridge had moistened the crust to almost-soggy.
The meat quickly caught on with guests, especially those who knew me from earlier sessions. Moving it from the grill to a cutting board, I suddenly had an audience of drooling and photo-shooting people ready to experience something extraordinary. And no, I did not call them in to watch, word spread amongst the gourmands present. I did not rest the meat, figuring that two days resting in the fridge would be enough, and that the slow reheating would have kept the meat moist. I sharpened my knife, and tried to remember the Meathead "How to chop up a brisket" video I had watched a number of times. As one of the comments on my research-post in this forum put it: "With 30 guests, you do not want to fail at brisket".
Starting in the flat end, cutting of the end (my fav piece), and continuing down the flat with 7-8mm slices, the knife met hardly any resistance, juices were flowing and the audience awing. Again, photo-shoot, and then people started digging in. Reaching the point where the point meets the flat, I turned the brisket 90 degrees, cut off the end, and started to serve the best pieces of meat on the brisket, according to the guests. The combination of the firm flat and the point with its melted, marbled fats was a treat out of this world. So said the guests, and as you see on the pictures, they aught to know!
Due to my completely missing the amount of fat drippings, I failed to catch the drippings while smoking the brisket. This is a mistake I will not repeat, instead I will ensure that in the future, I will catch as much of it as I can. The reason? It is amazing! I got perhaps 0.5Dl of juices from the wrapped meat, which I mixed with a Mexican salsa I had received as a gift from a Mexican chef, which took an already amazing salsa to new heights. Next time, I will make sure to use the drippings to prepare a salsa for the guests to enjoy, as this time the amount was only enough to provide the most gourmandise of the gourmands present a special taste.
It is always a great pleasure to cook for others. More so when you cook something that tastes this nice, and the guests know how to savour the experience, the taste and the occasion. As a result of this session, I was promptly invited to do more BBQs, which I take as a sign that I am not the only one happy with the outcome of the brisket in the Kettle! This fact, my friend, means that if you have put off using your Kettle to make brisket, get over it! Get that great cooking machine ready and make some food love! I know I will! (in fact, today my kettle is filled with short-ribs, Texas style!)
A picture of the setup for this day - the Kettle for the brisket, the middle one set up for Asado grilling of sausages and chicken, the one furthest away I set up and used to keep food ready before the guests arrived.
I will start this post with a few disclaimers. I am not from Texas, not even from the US. I have never had brisket before, so the only references I have are the raving reviews of Texan brisket I have read, and of course the pictures, recipes and descriptions found on this forum, making brisket sound like the ultimate BBQ. It seems like brisket was the natural "next level" low-and-slow for me, after successfully making pulled pork, short ribs and other niceties for quite some time. This post is a writeup of my route to brisket in the Weber Kettle!
I will separate this into parts: Research, Recipe, Roasting and Result. Instead of a summary with what to improve, most of the learning will be inline.
Research
I never did brisket before. Never had it, in fact. Good news: I will be pleasantly surprised by taste for sure. Bad news: I have no idea what it is supposed to taste like. Im the kinda chef-wannaby that don’t let details like these stop me from trying. Luckily for me, I have learned (slowly, according to some…) that research into a subject matter before jumping in, pays off. This is a summary of the research I did for brisking the brisket in the Weber Kettle.
- Read every word by Meathead. At least those covering beef. Those covering low-and-slow. Those covering brisket. While reading, be amused by the knowledge, and enjoy the opinionated writing. While at it, dig into the youtube videos too.
- Pay attention to details. Like temperatures. Grade of meat. How to clean the fat cap. Time it may take. How to tell when it’s done. This one I still have no clue about, I mean, I do know what it feels like with a knife through warm butter, but applying that to 8Kg of beef?
- Source a good thermometer. This is no joke. Should be bought when you buy your kettle, IMO. I use the iGrill, with one probe for the temp inside the kettle, and one in the meat (due to Wife’s cleaning efficiency - meaning stuffing my probes in the washing machine which effectively killed it, I only had one this time around). The probe I had was used for the cooking chamber, where I kept the temperature between 120C and 135C.
- Get GREAT meat (I trust Meathead on this). I had a big chunk of Black Angus something, imported from Oklahoma, by a Norwegian butcher who competes in the world-wide BBQ competitions (I think that means in Texas), where he made fourth place some time ago. I trust him to know his stuff. The meat - just lovely!
- Learn how to use your Kettle. I believe that my previous success with low-and-slow was an important contributor to my calmness when doing this chunk’o’meat.
- Learn how to set up your Kettle for low-and-slow. I hear the S’n’S addon is a must-have, and it is on my list. I often apply the fuse technique, but this time I was told by Henrik to set up a two-zone using bricks. Failing to find bricks, I used rocks instead, as you can see on the picture. I added aluminium foil to ensure propper airflow. This setup works charms!
- Make sure to have enough time. I were cooking for 30 people, who wanted to eat around 7PM. The place is in the middle of the city, with tall apartment buildings all around. There were no way I could smoke in the early AMs at this location, so I had to do it differently. See the backup plan.
- Have a backup plan. You do make backups, don’t you? Something will always happen, so have a good backup plan. I knew I ran a high-risk project, running low on time, and with absolutely no experience in making this kind of roast. My backup, which became my main plan, was to set up the Kettle to smoke the meat, hit the stall, wrap it in foil and then move it to an oven to finish it off. I had to do it this way due to me having to do the low-and-slow two days prior to the event, and then reheat it before serving. See the results below…
- Ask for help. No better place to do so, than in this forum! Great support and advice from around the world! Also have someone have your back, if nothing else, at least morally. Thanks ecowper for being my mental wingman!
Recipe
Recipe is very simple, at least for me this time. Salt and pepper seasoning, salt for curing. Yup, that’s it. This is not my recipe, of course, I got this from the forums and Meathead's recipes.
- I dry-cured the chunk for 18 hours or so. I also used black pepper while dry-cyring, hoping that the pepper-taste will marinate the meat a bit.
- More salt and pepper just before the meat is put on on the Kettle.
Roasting
The roasting, which is not really a roasting, I guess, was quite straight forward. Quite possibly too straight forward, the time whisked by faster than I could say beer! This step is not complicated at all:
- set up the kettle for two-zone cooking. I used a couple of rocks to allow me to build a taller area for charcoal (bricket). Add a nice amount of unlit ones, then add a few lit ones (handful, 10-ish possibly, I am not that accurate).
- add a water pan. I use an old cast-iron pot that works great for most cooks, but for brisket it was too small and unable to catch all the fat drippings. And there were a lot of those! So next time, I will use an aluminium pan, possibly forming it to the shape of the kettle, and then add the cast iron pot inside that one for water.
- make sure you add your temperature probe. After this cook, I bought myself the iGrill probe for use in the cooking chamber (it comes with a clip that is supposed to make it easy to fix to the grill).
- Heat up the baby!
- Hit adjust to the right temp. I settled for 125C.
- Add meat.
- Add a handful or more of wood chips of choice (I used Mesquite for this one). Keep adding at intervals to keep the smoke going. (I like a strong smoke taste…)
- Pit lid back on.
- Have a beer. Or more.
- Take pictures. Post to forum.
- Monitor temperatur, adjust as necessary. If you need to add charcoal, light them up in your chimney before adding to the Kettle.
- Some hours into the cook, you may want to look at the meat temperature. And meat color. And the smell. Warning: Expect the pack of meat to have shrunk quite a bit. (I also had to turn it around, as I discovered that I had put it in with the fatty side down…Newbie mistake!)
- At some point, the temperatur had hit 88C, which is a bit shy of the 93C recommended. This is where I got nervous (and cold, it was quite cold sitting out that day), and uncertain if the cook was done or not. The temperature probe I used (a double-probe of some size) went into the meat like a knife in warm butter. Just "swoop" and in it went. After a short while, reading 88C, I pulled it out, and the two holes where like hot springs with melted beef fat popping and sizzling and trying to run away. Not really sure if this was what the descriptions means when saying "knife in warm butter", I tried two other places of the thickets parts, both with similar results. I decided this was perfect. Remember, with no previous experience, and basically no clue wether I was in the right or in the wrong.
- I took the now blackened meat out, wrapped it in layers of aluminium foil, and let it cool down before I moved it into the fridge for storing. The party was still a few days away.
- Backup plan of finishing the roast in the oven was decided "not needed", confident in the knife-in-butter test that I was.
- Two days later, the roast still wrapped in foil, it was time to reheat it. I set up the Kettle the same way as before, lit the coal, and set it up to burn around 100C to slowly reheat the brisket. This time, with the new iGrill temp probe fixed to the grill, and another one inside the chunkiest part of the meat.
Slowly reheating the brisket until ca 57C, all the time inside the wrap.
Result
Remember the disclaimer at the top? I never had brisket in my life, and I never knew how to make one. So while I marvel at the result, I may not have won a Texas BBQ competition, or even metered up to all of you great pit-masters.
Three hours slow reheat, brisket tightly wrapped in aluminium foil. The guests started arriving, the meat was almost at a perfect temperature. I served up some chicken, chorizo, lamb sausages and side dishes as an aperitif, and the guests settled in.
Drinks in glasses, happy chit-chatting all around the garden, I decided now was the perfect time to flash the brisket! Most guests in Norway are not accustomed to a large, blackened chunk’o’meat on a grill, and I suspect they expected the meat to be be almost frozen on the inside, as BBQ in Norway seems to be - black on the outside, still frozen on the inside, that is.
After the obligatory photo-session, I moved the brisket back on the grill, to show off a few flames and to firm up the crust. Two days wrapped and kept in a fridge had moistened the crust to almost-soggy.
The meat quickly caught on with guests, especially those who knew me from earlier sessions. Moving it from the grill to a cutting board, I suddenly had an audience of drooling and photo-shooting people ready to experience something extraordinary. And no, I did not call them in to watch, word spread amongst the gourmands present. I did not rest the meat, figuring that two days resting in the fridge would be enough, and that the slow reheating would have kept the meat moist. I sharpened my knife, and tried to remember the Meathead "How to chop up a brisket" video I had watched a number of times. As one of the comments on my research-post in this forum put it: "With 30 guests, you do not want to fail at brisket".
Starting in the flat end, cutting of the end (my fav piece), and continuing down the flat with 7-8mm slices, the knife met hardly any resistance, juices were flowing and the audience awing. Again, photo-shoot, and then people started digging in. Reaching the point where the point meets the flat, I turned the brisket 90 degrees, cut off the end, and started to serve the best pieces of meat on the brisket, according to the guests. The combination of the firm flat and the point with its melted, marbled fats was a treat out of this world. So said the guests, and as you see on the pictures, they aught to know!
Due to my completely missing the amount of fat drippings, I failed to catch the drippings while smoking the brisket. This is a mistake I will not repeat, instead I will ensure that in the future, I will catch as much of it as I can. The reason? It is amazing! I got perhaps 0.5Dl of juices from the wrapped meat, which I mixed with a Mexican salsa I had received as a gift from a Mexican chef, which took an already amazing salsa to new heights. Next time, I will make sure to use the drippings to prepare a salsa for the guests to enjoy, as this time the amount was only enough to provide the most gourmandise of the gourmands present a special taste.
It is always a great pleasure to cook for others. More so when you cook something that tastes this nice, and the guests know how to savour the experience, the taste and the occasion. As a result of this session, I was promptly invited to do more BBQs, which I take as a sign that I am not the only one happy with the outcome of the brisket in the Kettle! This fact, my friend, means that if you have put off using your Kettle to make brisket, get over it! Get that great cooking machine ready and make some food love! I know I will! (in fact, today my kettle is filled with short-ribs, Texas style!)
A picture of the setup for this day - the Kettle for the brisket, the middle one set up for Asado grilling of sausages and chicken, the one furthest away I set up and used to keep food ready before the guests arrived.
Comment