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Hot and fast brisket yesterday at a friend's house - interesting technique.

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    Hot and fast brisket yesterday at a friend's house - interesting technique.

    So one of my coworkers has a gigantic offset smoker he "inherited" from his uncle. This thing is make of super heavy steel, at least 1/4". I need to get some measurements, but I am seriously impressed.

    Anyways, we have planned for a while to bring my Fireboard over so we can get accurate temp measurements on it. The only thermometer it has is mounted in the smoke stack, which is itself at least 6" in diameter? So I assumed the temps weren't going to be super accurate.

    So when I got there, he had had the brisket on for almost 5 hours already, I think. He was trying to keep the temp around the 250-275ºF mark on his smokestack. So when I stuck my probes in, I got some crazy high readings. For one, we noticed with this thing whenever you opened one of the two doors to the cooking chamber, the heat went up quickly when we closed them back down, I assume from increased airflow. I convinced him to turn things down, but he was running 340-380ºF at various places in the cooking chamber. Wow! The problem was, as big and heavy as this smoker is, it takes a LONG time for the temp to come down. To give you an idea, when it was showing 275ºF or so in the smoke stack, I used my infrared thermometer and got about 125ºF on the outside surface.

    So to the brisket...

    On advice of his friend who used to use this cooker, he rubbed it and wrapped it in muslin the night before. He trimmed it very little. Rub was salt, pepper, garlic powder and smoked paprika. While it was cooking, a couple of times he basted it in butter while still wrapped. The purpose of the muslin is so the butter will melt and still penetrate through the covering onto the meat. Interesting.

    So, since it was wrapped from the get go and in such high heat, it cooked quickly. This was a 16-lb brisket and when we probed it at 6½ hours, it was pretty well done. 202ºF at some places in the point. High 190s in the flat. So he went ahead and pulled it. Then his friend who has been doing this for 30+ years cut it - perpendicularly straight through the thickest point of the brisket. So, the orientation of the fibers was all wrong. I later started trimming some flat off at the "right" orientation and it was actually pretty darn good. It was a Prime brisket, so the flat was moist, but it wasn't dripping. Had a really thick fat cap, as he didn't really trim it. But the pull test passed with flying colors. No smoke ring, as it was wrapped from the beginning. And no bark at all, again due to the wrap and the butter through the muslin.

    Overall, though, the flavor was good. The cut sections left the point a little chewy, as they were longitudinal through the point. I was surprised, though. It was moist and juicy, very flavorful. I would change some things personally, yes, especially how they cut it, but that's ok, it's not how I would do it, but everyone does their own thing. I didn't know much about any of this stuff before I came here, and it was good to show me how much I have learned from everyone else's experiences.

    Makes me appreciate The Pit even more!

    I didn't get any pictures, sorry. I will get some pics of his smoker next time I am out there. It is an impressive beast, and I wish I had something like that to play around with - as good as his brisket was yesterday, it just makes me think how much better I could make mine!

    Here's a link to my Fireboard data, I don't know how to post just the single pic of the whole cook I seem to see on here?

    No meat probes on single brisket. Just mapping grate temps on a large offset stickburner smoker. Ambient outside temp of 62ºF with fairly constant 20mph winds, smoker partially blocked from wind by house.

    #2
    I'll also add, once we got the temp to start coming down and left the doors closed, the temps were really fairly even from left to right, except right at the firebox. And all that super thick metal really holds heat well. This thing is on its own trailer and I can borrow it any time I want to do a big cook... so I might just have to do that! Now he knows, though, not to trust the temp in the smokestack, it is about 70-80ºF lower than his grate temps. So that's super valuable information.

    We're going to do an 80-lb whole hog on it in 4 weeks for our company picnic, so that's going to be really interesting!

    Comment


      #3
      Please remember to take photos when cooking the hog! Sounds like a great smoker when used properly.

      Comment


        #4
        Absolutely, I will be doing that!

        Comment


          #5
          Ok, so I just made a screenshot of the Fireboard data. Not sure if there's a better way to do it.
          Attached Files

          Comment


            #6
            Very interesting. Lookin' forward to the whole hog cook.

            Comment

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