Several weeks ago I ordered a brisket. I thought I was going to get a brisket like the ones you make corned beef from or use in a slow cooker. (I must learn to read more carefully. )What arrived was not a reasonable 5 to 6 pound piece of beef, but an entire brisket weighing close to 15 pounds. Honestly, to my untrained eye it looked like half of a cow. I found room for it in the freezer until I could figure out what to do with it. By this reaction you will know that I am not a Texan. A Texan would have known immediately what to do--BBQ it.
Eventually it dawned on my that the smoker in the backyard was big enough to cook this slab of meat.So I looked ahead to the weather forecast so I could be assured of no rain and on the designated day we set out to BBQ what I have come to call our "hunk o' burnin' love." I found a wonderful website amazingribs.com that told me everything I needed to know to tackle this project with confidence.
We started the night before by trimming the brisket and covering it with rub and leaving it in the fridge overnight. At 7 a.m. the next morning I began cooking and 12 hours later we had a fabulous piece of barbecued brisket. The next time I do this kind of thing, I will be confident enough to invite people over for a party. This time we had enough leftovers to feed a couple of families and ourselves for almost two weeks.
The recipe below is from amazingribs.com and is part of a much longer article containing a ton of very useful information for the would-be BBQ artiste. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Trimming the brisket
Putting the rub on the meat
Loading the Smoker
The Finished Product
Recipe for Texas-style whole packer brisket
In the recipe below I have chosen a path that yields excellent results for me and my readers. Some may dispute my choices, but if you start here, you can then riff on the controversies above. If your effort yields meat that is a bit dry or tough, try again. Sometimes it's the steer, not the recipe or the cook! Cattle are not widgets. But remember, garbage in, garbage out. Start with choice grade beef or better.
Makes. 12 servings if you are cooking a whole packer of about 12 pounds. Calculate about 1 pound of meat or more per person. There will be significant loss, up to 20% from fat trimming and up to 40% from shrinkage. You'll end up with about half a pound per person, more than enough and maybe you'll have some leftovers.
Preparation time. 5 minutes to apply the salt. If you can let the salt soak in for an hour or two, that would be nice. 24 hours is better.
Cooking time. About 10 to 12 hours for a flat at 225°F if you wrap it tightly in foil at about 150°F, depending on your cooker, humidity and other variables. If you do not foil the meat it can take up to 12 to 14 hours. For whole packers, which are thicker, allow up to 14 hours if wrapped, up to 18 hours if nekkid. On an electric it can move a bit faster because it is so humid in there. Remember it is not the weight of a piece of meat that determines cooking time, it is thickness. Read more about what determines cooking times. Start early. If it gets done early, you can hold it in a faux cambro or in an oven at 170 to 200°F (see rest time, below). But the rules of thumb can vary significantly by as much as 25% depending on how thick it is at the thickest point, and the orneriness of the particular steer whose flesh you are honoring. There are too many variables to be precise. Once you have done the same cut on the same cooker several times, you'll be able to better predict.
Holding. When the meat is cooked, wrap it in foil, then wrap it in a towel, and stick it in a faux cambro (a plastic cooler), for 1 to 4 hours. I discuss this above.
Toolkit. This is a long cook so make sure you have plenty of fuel and wood. You'll also need about 6' of heavy-duty aluminum foil and a plastic beer cooler bigger than the brisket (not styrofoam, which could melt) with a towel or blanket. Don't forget a comfy chair, a book, tunes, and plenty of beer.
Ingredients for the meat
1/2 cup Big Bad Beef Rub
4 tablespoons kosher salt
1 whole packer brisket about 12 pounds, untrimmed, USDA Choice grade or higher
1/8 cup of beef broth per pound of raw meat for injecting
1/2 cup of beef broth for use in the Texas Crutch
Sauce optional. 2 cups of Texas Barbecue Mop-Sauce (you can make this days in advance) for a packer, or 1 cup for a HOF.
Sides
Brisket is great with potatoes. For sandwiches, use thick slices of sturdy bread or kaiser rolls, and let the gravy soak in and get sloppy. Garnish with grilled ancho and red bell peppers or caramelized onions.
Method
1)Trim. Rinse the meat and dry it with paper towels. If you have a packer, trim off most of the fat cap but leave about 1/4". If you are trimming a packer, until you get the hang of it you might cut off some of the meat while trimming. No harm, no foul. I remove the point. Some cooks attempt to remove some of the fat layer between the flat and the point by slicing them apart from both sides, but not slicing all the way through so they remain attached. If you are competing, trim the flat to about 9" wide in order to fit the width of the standard 9" x 9" turn-in box after shrinkage. On the meaty side, slice off any silverskin, a tough thin membrane. If you have a HOF, you probably will not need to trim much at all. Just make sure there is no silverskin on the meaty side. I freeze the fat, save it, and grind it if I think my burgers need more fat. I render some of it over low heat in a pan and freeze that too. I use it to paint my steaks just before searing.
2) Pump. I always inject briskets with beef broth. This meat takes so long to cook the extra moisture is needed to keep it from dehydrating, and the salt helps the meat hold on to moisture and enhances flavor. Use broth only. No need to add spices juices or other flavorings. All we want here is moisture. We don't want the fluid to mask the flavor of the meat. If you have a hypodermic for injecting meat, now's the time to use it. Pump in about 1 ounce of beef broth per pound of raw meat by inserting the needle parallel to the grain in several locations about 1" apart and back it out as you press the plunger. Do it in the sink and be careful so you don't get squirted in the eye.
3) Rub. Anywhere from 12 to 1 hour before cooking, if you can, salt the meat so it can work its way in. Then, just before cooking, notice the direction of the grain of the flat and remember this so you can carve it perpendicular to the grain. Coat the meat lightly with oil and sprinkle the Big Bad Beef Rub liberally on all exposed meat and rub it in. I coat the meat with oil. Some folks use a slather of mustard. It makes little or no diff. I strongly recommend you use a digital remote thermometer such as the Maverick, and insert the probe with the tip centered in the thickest part of the meat.
4) Preheat. OK, before we begin, it is important to note that brisket is an inexact science, and the timing can vary significantly depending on the size of your brisket, it's moisture and fat content, and the nature of your cooker, not to mention the accuracy of your thermometer. But the method I describe has a long period of resting in an insulated beer cooler, and that time is flexible so you can use that buffer time to keep dinner on schedule. Keep the meat chilled. Chilled meat attracts more smoke (read about this in my article on smoke). If you are using a grill, set it up for indirect cooking. Click here to see how to set up a gas grill. Here's how to set up a charcoal grill, and here's how to set up a bullet smoker like the Weber Smokey Mountain. Get the temp stabilized at about 235°F. We want to cook at about 225°F, but the temp will drop a bit once you load in the cold meat.
5) Cook. Put the meat on the cooker. On a smoker with a water pan, put the meat right above the water. Place the oven temp probe on the grate next to the meat. Add about 4 ounces of wood right after the meat goes on. When the smoke stops, add 4 ounces more for the first 2 hours, usually about every 30 minutes. Keep an eye on the water in the pan. Don't let it dry out. After 3 hours, turn the meat over if the color is different from top to bottom. Otherwise leave it alone. No need to mop, baste, or spritz. It just lowers the temp of the meat. The meat temp will move steadily upward to the stall, somewhere around 150°F. Once in the stall zone, it will seem to take forever to rise. The stall can last 5 hours and the temp may not rise more than 5°F!
6) Texas Crutch. After about 2 to 4 hours, by which time the meat will have hit about 150°F, take it off and wrap it tightly in a double layer of heavy-duty foil. We have learned that the more airspace around the meat the more juice leaks out. Pour 1/2 cup of beef broth around the sides of the meat being careful not to wash off the rub before you seal the foil. Then crimp it tight and put the wrapped meat back on the smoker or move it to an indoor oven at 225°F. This step, called the Texas Crutch, slightly braises the meat, but most importantly, it prevents surface evaporation which cools the meat and causes the stall. If you wrap the meat at 150°F it will power right through the stall and cut your cooking time significantly.
7) Hold. When the temp hits 200 to 205°F, get your plastic beer cooler, line it with a towel, blanket, or crumpled newspaper and put the meat, still in foil, into the cooler on top of the lining. Leave the thermometer probe in. If the foil is leaking fluids, put the meat in a large pan first. The lining is important to prevent the plastic from warping or cracking. Close the lid and let the hot meat sit in the cooler for at least 2 to 3 hours until you are ready to eat. If you have a tight cooler it should hold the meat well above 160°F for hours.
8) Optional: Burnt ends. Burnt ends (right) are amazingly flavorful bite-size crispy cubes. Originally they were simply edges and ends that were overcooked and trimmed off and munched by the kitchen staff. If there were any leftover, they were given away for free. Then, in 1970, in his marvelous book American Fried, Calvin Trillin wrote the following about Arthur Bryant's restaurant in Kansas City "The main course at Bryant's, as far as I'm concerned, is something that is given away for free -- the burned edges of the brisket. The counterman just pushes them over to the side as he slices the beef, and anyone who wants them helps himself. I dream of those burned edges. Sometimes, when I'm in some awful overpriced restaurant in some strange town -- all of my restaurant-finding techniques having failed, so that I'm left to choke down something that costs seven dollars and tastes like a medium-rare sponge -- a blank look comes over my face: I have just realized that at that very moment someone in Kansas City is being given those burned edges free."
In a frying pan, render about 1/2 pound of the beef fat that you trimmed from the brisket. Or cheat and use bacon fat or duck fat. You can do this over hot coals. Cut the point into 1/2" to 3/4" cubes. Discard any pieces that are too fatty. Put the cubes in the pan and gently fry the cubes until they are crunchy on the outside. Add about 1/4 cup of your sauce and 1/4 cup of the drippings from the foil used for the Texas Crutch. Put the pan back on the cooker in a hot spot and close the lid. Stir them every 5 minutes or so. Let the cubes absorb most of the liquid and start to fry in the fat again, but don't let them burn. When they're done, keep them warm in the faux cambro with the flat.
9) Slice. Don't slice until the last possible minute. Brisket dries out quickly once it is cut. If you wish, you can firm up the crust a bit by unwrapping the meat and putting it over a hot grill or under a broiler for a few minutes on each side. Watch it closely so it doesn't burn. When your guests are ready, heat up your Texas Barbecue Mop-Sauce and bring it to the table. Turn the meat fat side up so the juices will run onto the meat as you slice.
Slicing is a bit of a challenge because there are two muscles and the grain flows in different directions. There are two good ways to slice:
(a) This is my favorite method, shown in the pictures at right. Start slicing the flat, cutting across the grain so the meat will fall apart in your mouth about 1/4" thick, about the thickness of a pencil. As you approach the area where the point muscle lies on top of the flat, stop and cut the remaining hunk in half. Slice the center section crosswise, in the opposite direction that you sliced the flat. Then slice the remaining butt section in the same direction you sliced the flat.
(b) Some competitors prefer this method of slicing. Run a knife between the flat and the point and separate the two muscles. Trim off excess fat. Slice them separately across the grain about 1/4" thick. The meat should hold together, not fall apart or crumble. It should pull apart with a gentle tug. If the first slice falls apart, cut thicker slices. Here is a picture of the brisket entry by KCBS President Candy Weaver. Nice even slices of flat with the smoke ring on top surrounded by chunks of burnt ends.
10) Serving. If the meat is perfectly cooked it should be moist and juicy. You can serve it simply sliced on a plate or as a sandwich made with Texas Toast. If you wish, drizzle some Texas Barbecue Mop-Sauce mixed with some of the drippings from the crutch on top of the meat (taste this carefully because the drippings can be very salty from the rub). Serve everyone a little of both muscles. In the picture above we see a typical turn-in box by a competition team. Identical slices of flat fanned out like a deck of cards surrounded by chunks of burnt ends from the point.
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