Cooking Cheap

All the cool kids are talking about smoking brisket in 5 hours instead of the 10 to 12 hours. I’ll try one too. Here’s the plan and reality will just have to be discovered.

Night before, trim brisket a bit closer than normal, apply rub, cover and fridge overnight.

Light a full chimney (around 40+ briquettes)
Remove brisket from fridge

Fill ring with charcoal. add lit charcoal, (30 to 40 minutes from lighting charcoal
Assemble smoker – foiled but empty water pan.
Add brisket with temp probe
Add smoke wood.

Target cooker temp is 325 to 350 so all vents wide open. (can turn door upside down and prop it open a 1/4 to 1/2 inch if needed)

When briskets reads 165 to 170, wrap in foil with probe and return to smoker. Expect a 2 or 3 hours to get here from putting the meat on, longer depending on smoker temp.

When briskets gets to 190, start checking for tenderness – slight to no resistance to probe or fork. This phase may take a couple of hours.

Remove brisket from smoker. Remove probe.
Drain the liquid in the foil into large measure might be +3C in there.
Reserve the liquid.

630 PM. Separate point from flat (if you can, or care too and return the point to the smoker and cook another hour, unwrapped – i suppose, probably at a lower temp? )

Double wrap brisket in new foil and add enough reserved liquid (or add broth) to make 1 1/2 C. Wrap in towels and put in microwave or cooler for an hour or two. Unwrap 10-15 minutes before slicing.

Thats the plan. Here’s how it went.
1:30 PM Light a full chimney (around 40+ briquettes)
2:30 All lit, assembled the smoker as above. 3 good size chunks of Apple and a handful of loose little chips. Meat on

I’m a little surprised the smoker got that hot that quickly but you go with what you’ve got. It’s didn’t take that long (90 minutes) to get to 165 on the probe and it hit 190 a half hour after the foiling step. I was warned your have to pretty much ignore the probe at this point. It’s all touch now. It’s done when it’s tender. I decided to wait for another hour before testing for tender and eventually decided that it was “about” right, I guess.

Basically it’s braising in it’s own juice after it gets the smoke treatment, it’ll taste good.

I was a little worried about handling the hot foil package with all that juice (2 Cups for me) but it was no problem. I even managed to get the point off the flat with without too much error. The liquid left doesn’t have a lot of fat separating out yet. It seems a shame to toss it. – it’s got to be full of beef and rub flavors, although it might be too strong?

Here’s a picture of the brisket as I started to cut the point off before going into the cooler.

That camera batteries ran low when it came time to shoot the picture of the smoke ring in the slices and I was too hungry to refill. Not much of a smoke ring, 1/8 ” inch maybe a 1/4″. One wasn’t promised. Tender was promised and that promise was delivered too.

Perhaps as moist and tender a brisket as I’ve had. Plenty of beef flavor. So, the recipe performs as claimed. The downside is the bark and the rub just kind of vanishes in the braising liquid (and yes, the liquid is too strong).

I don’t know if I’ll do this again or not. If I do, I’ll try to keep the heat around 325F for a slightly longer cooking time and use a less complex rub. If I had that old Electric Brinkman this would the technique to use.