-
Very interesting. So the pouring out juice video was indeed real. Looks delicious. -
OK grab your popcorn and beer, the day is finally here. As a quick recap, I wet aged a full packer brisket for 45 days and dry aged it in an Umai bag for another subsequent 45 days. Had no idea what to expect but based on some recent YouTube videos, it looked rather interesting.
So let's first talk about the brisket itself and what I expected. To be honest I scoffed at the videos that showed tons of juice running out of the dry aged briskets after they were cooked. Logically I thought that like dry aged rib-eyes I've done, the meat would loose moisture and thus the opposite would occur, the meat would be dense and somewhat dry. That couldn't have been further from the truth.
The brisket itself was a Costco Prime, weighing in at 16 lb 2 oz. As I usually do I cut off the thin flat and made pastrami with it. That knocked the overall weight down to right at 12 lbs. At that point the remainder, which had wet aged in the cryovac for 45 days, went into an Umai bag (see previous pix). So yesterday was the target 45th day of dry or a total of 90 days of wet/dry aging. Here is the result after months of being in my meat frig ....
As you can see, it lost over 26 ozs or about 14% of it's total weight in volume. That primary due to the Umai bag allowing moisture to escape while the enzymes naturally occurring in the meat begin to break down the connective tissue and collagen.
Unbagged it was like a giant piece of beef jerky, stiff as a board....
It almost appears to have a layer of plastic wrap glued on it. Well it had to come off so I carved away at the thing for a good 30 minutes. The resulting meat had a dark rosy color and the fat was remarkably like butter to the feel once it got a little warm. As you might also notice, this piece of brisket was full of fat, more so then I generally like. I just did a backyard trim instead of a full comp trim, so the deckle fat was left on....
So here's the bad news, by the time you get done trimming, you loose another 2.5 lbs of total volume. I ended up, bottom line, with about 7.5 lbs. of raw meat to cook. Given a whole bunch of fat will render and be cut away after the cook, I probably ended with a yield between 5-6 lbs. of meat. So, long wait and way less weight.
Regardless, I went ahead with the cook. This is where things got interesting. Decided not to do anything too out of the ordinary, so I went ahead and dry brined over night and seasoned with BBBR and extra pepper the next day. I also wanted to inject, fearing once again that the meat would come out dry. So I injected with one cup of Butcher's BBQ for Prime Brisket dissolved in some beef broth.
I used my pellet cooker set at 275* and put the brisket on at exactly 10 am ......
As usual I spritzed it every hour on the hour until it got up to about 160*. The whole time I'm waiting for a stall to occur but it never did. The thing just made a bee line to my target temp of 195*. it set off the alarm at almost exactly 7 hours into the cook. As I lifted the cooker lid the brisket began to wiggle like a piece of jello without even touching it. It probed like proverbial warm butter all over, so I pulled it, put it in a pan foiled up and into the oven to rest for about an hour and a half...
Well as you can immediately see the no-wrap bark turned out amazing. So I began to carve the flat thinking that would be the real acid test. Much to my amazement, it turned out soft, I mean almost pot roast soft. It was a bit over tenderized, the connective tissue and fat had completely dissolved and juice was running all over the cutting board....
Probably the most tender and juicy flat I've ever cooked. It had a nice mild taste as well, not like pot roast, but beefy. It literally melted in my mouth. The only assumption I can make is that I didn't need the injection and maybe, just maybe I could have pulled it at 190*.
As for the honey pot point end, well it was the same. Super juicy, extremely tender with rendered fat just gushing out....
All in all it couldn't have been a more perfect cook. The results; however, were not what I expected. I'm dying to do another one, this time adjusting the cook to try and achieve a firmer result. But I can tell you one thing, if you're a fan of aged steak, you're gonna love aged brisket, it's the bomb !!!
Did a little gai lan cooked in an oyster sauce, a few slices of brisket and a shrimp fried rice for dinner last night. Mighty tasty !!!
Henrik, you're up brother. Can't wait to see how his turns out !!!! Troutman is out !!!!
Leave a comment:
Welcome!
This is a membership forum. Guests can view 5 pages for free. To participate, please join.
[ Pitmaster Club Information | Join Now | Login | Contact Us ]
Only 4 free page views remaining.
Leave a comment: