It was pretty much a disaster. I was trying to follow Harry Soo's "Back to Fundamentals Hot & Fast Brisket" technique, but the result was certainly not Harry's fault.
I bought a prime brisket, slightly under 10 lbs, which seemed to be a good size since only my wife and I would be eating it. The night before, I trimmed it, maybe a little too much on the fat cap, I don't know, and injected it with beef broth, and put a Dalmatian rub on it and eased it into the refrigerator.
I was figuring on a 6 hour total cook and hold time. At 11:15am I fired up the RecTec and set it to 400 degrees per the instructions in Harry's video. I put the brisket in at noon, spritzed it with water and closed the cover. The meat temp was at 48 degrees. I spritzed it again after an hour. At 2 hours the meat temp was 150 degrees but the bark didn't feel set so I sat back to wait out the stall a little. Only there was no stall. By hour 3 the internal temp was 190 degrees and I had no idea what to do next except to pull the meat and wrap it in foil, reduce the temp to 205 degrees and hope for the best. After 2 hours of that, I took the brisket off, opened the foil and let it cool down a little before slicing it.
The flat was dry but had a nice smoke ring and came apart with a gentle pull. The point was more moist but the most moist meat was the layer of flat underneath the point. I don't understand that at all unless it just benefited a lot from the layer of separating fat.
In any case, neither the flat nor the point tasted all that good, moist or not.
I'd like to hear from folks on the forum, what I did wrong and what you think I could have done to fix things when they started to go sideways. I'm not discouraged because I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get it right the first time, but after seeing how much meat was left over from what is pretty much the smallest brisket available, I have to think it might be too wasteful to cook for just 2 people.
I bought a prime brisket, slightly under 10 lbs, which seemed to be a good size since only my wife and I would be eating it. The night before, I trimmed it, maybe a little too much on the fat cap, I don't know, and injected it with beef broth, and put a Dalmatian rub on it and eased it into the refrigerator.
I was figuring on a 6 hour total cook and hold time. At 11:15am I fired up the RecTec and set it to 400 degrees per the instructions in Harry's video. I put the brisket in at noon, spritzed it with water and closed the cover. The meat temp was at 48 degrees. I spritzed it again after an hour. At 2 hours the meat temp was 150 degrees but the bark didn't feel set so I sat back to wait out the stall a little. Only there was no stall. By hour 3 the internal temp was 190 degrees and I had no idea what to do next except to pull the meat and wrap it in foil, reduce the temp to 205 degrees and hope for the best. After 2 hours of that, I took the brisket off, opened the foil and let it cool down a little before slicing it.
The flat was dry but had a nice smoke ring and came apart with a gentle pull. The point was more moist but the most moist meat was the layer of flat underneath the point. I don't understand that at all unless it just benefited a lot from the layer of separating fat.
In any case, neither the flat nor the point tasted all that good, moist or not.
I'd like to hear from folks on the forum, what I did wrong and what you think I could have done to fix things when they started to go sideways. I'm not discouraged because I knew it wasn't going to be easy to get it right the first time, but after seeing how much meat was left over from what is pretty much the smallest brisket available, I have to think it might be too wasteful to cook for just 2 people.
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