New Year’s Brisket

[ecowper]

Cooking brisket for New Year’s .... I only have 8 people, or so, at the house. Picked up a 12.5 lb prime packer at Costco before Christmas, has been in the cryovac for a couple weeks.



After trimming, I had taken off 4.5 lbs of fat .... I get pretty aggressive on my trim, though. I find if I leave much fat at all, people just trim it off. Which means the whole bark on that side is gone.



And here it is on my brand new Nordic Ware big sheet pan .... thanks fracmeister .... this thing is awesome. I did 1/2 tsp of Morton’s per pound and will let it dry brine until tomorrow morning. I’m figuring a 10-11 hour cook for this 8 lb brisket. Will start my fire around 6 AM, get the brisket on at 7 AM, pull it around 5 PM and rest in the oven until dinner .... probably eat about 7:00 PM

I’ll post more as we go :-)

[HawkerXP]

Looks good! What you cooking it on?

[ecowper]

HawkerXP I’m gonna cook it on the WSM 22 ..... Cowboy hardwood briquettes and red oak for the fire. Figure just use a Dalmatian rub.

[Troutman]

Good choice, did one over Chrismas on a WSM, love the control they afford.

[ecowper]

Troutman I can run my WSM at 240 for 12-14 hours on a single load of briquettes, depending on wind and such ..... I love it for brisket and pork butt because of that.

[RonB]

Lookin' forward to more pics.

[ecowper]

Damn, I haven’t cooked on the WSM since before Thanksgiving ..... first time I’ve ever had mold growth inside it. That was a bunch of work to get cleaned up. All good now, though. Good thing I checked everything out this afternoon. I would have been really mad at 6 AM

Glad I decided to go out at halftime.

[fracmeister]

Yep, I use my big Nordic ware for everything. And seeing you are from "up North" I will give you one more idea for it.

Texas Sheet cake. Need to check you recipe dimensions because many have been scaled down to the Half sheet sizes.

[ecowper]

Heh, you do know Seattle was settled by Nordic peeps .... lots of Swedes and Norwegians here .... my wife, for example.

[ecowper]

Got the WSM fired up this morning .... It was a cold morning .... 30 degrees F ... and clear skies, not much humidity. I have a full ring of charcoal in the WSM 22, with 25 briquettes pulled out to start the fire. I’m using 4 chunks of ash wood that I got from Huskee. Fired off the chimney about 5:30, was ready to go at 5:50 (yay BBQ Dragon).

You can tell it’s cold, it took the WSM a solid 25 minutes to get up to 225F. I ran it up to 260 and then shut vents down to where it will hold between 240-250 for the cook. Smoke was rolling nice, thin and blue, so I got the brisket on just a couple minutes ago.

Seasoning on the brisket

Dry brined with 1/2 tsp Morton’s per pound, as per normal

3 tbsp coarse black pepper
3 tbsp granulated garlic
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp Hungarian paprika
1 tsp ground ginger

This is a new beef rub I’m playing with, so will be adjusting based on today’s outcome. This brisket is kinda on the small side and only needed about 2/3 of that rub.

[FishTalesNC]

I wish I had your trimming skills ecowper. I’ve done 2 and both looked like I ripped them from the jaws of a great white, and it takes me an hour and a half to screw it up that bad. Yours look gorgeous!

[ecowper]

The stall is soooooo deep that this brisket temp has dropped a full degree!

[jgreen]

Going to be great. Brisket is delicious. Looking forward you your comments on that rub mixture.

[EdF]

Likewise!

[ecowper]

This brisket is stalled so hard that the temp line for the meat is basically a flat line. At 8:00 AM it was 148F ... at 11:00 AM it is now 151F. Between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM it actually went down 1.5 degrees!

[ecowper]

Here’s the Fireboard graph for anyone that’s interested in what a brisket cook looks like as it goes from start to stall.

[ecowper]

Oh damn, look at that brisket! Starting to be really close to done, too ..... point is probing nice, flat almost there. If the flat doesn’t move along nicely, I may separate them.

[ecowper]

Chickens came visiting to see what I’m cooking



But they already had scrambled eggs this morning!

[Troutman]

That’s the literal definition of yard birds !!!!

[ecowper]

Well, damn ... New Year’s brisket might be a new tradition .... pulled the brisket about 4:00 PM and stuck it in a faux cambro. Made salad, French fries, finished up the Texas beans .....

I like the new rub. Gonna work on it, still needs something, but it had a mix of spice and heat going on, while aligning well with the beefy goodness of brisket. Helped with good bark too.

[Troutman]

Nice bark, nice ring, looks tender, WINNER !!