Slow Cook on a Genesis Gold

Well, I've been lurking here for months now soaking up everyone's knowledge of and enthusiasm for barbecue. I live in Austin Texas so have ready access to excellent brisket in lots of places, but I want to make my own! I can cook a good brisket in the oven, but it isn't barbecue. Before doing any research into the right way to slow cook, I once charred a poor unwitting brisket into a blackened hunk just putting it on my previous grill and letting it cremate for way to many hours at way too high a temperature. I learned a lot from that experience.

I've had my Genesis Gold C (natural gas) for a little over a year and do a fine job of grilling with it several times a week. This community has caused me to add a WSM to my wish list for long slow cooks. I have no doubt, however, that I would quickly outstrip my family's capacity to consume smoked meat if I got a WSM. For the moment I'm hoping to satisfy my smoke jones with the gasser.

I've experimented with burner settings and find that my grill will hold at just under 250 with one burner on low when it is empty. On my most recent brisket attempt, the temp went way down when I loaded the meat on the grill and I got nervous, overcompensated and generally blew my cool. I wound up pulling the brisket off too soon and didn't hold if for any time. It came out pretty tough and not so tasty. This time I'm thinking I'll leave that single burner on low and just let it go. I really appreciate the record keeping concept promoted here, so plan to keep a record of times and temps during the cook to see how it goes.

I bought the Steam-N-Chips accessory when I got the grill and haven't been particularly pleased with it. Seems that I loose a lot of smoke out of the left end of the grill and never really get a good smoke flavor in my meat. I've never gotten anything close to a smoke ring. This time I'm taking the Steam-N-Chips unit out and going with soaked hickory chunks wrapped in a heavy-duty foil pouch running the width of the grill and sitting on top of the back edge of the back flavorizer bar.

I've trimmed my 13 pound brisket, rubbed it with mustard and my own rub mix. I usually use Worcestershire and rub, but hope to get some of the exalted bark by using good old yellow mustard this time.

I'm thinking I'll put it on tonight about 9:00 PM. At an hour and a half per pound, I should need to flip it for the first time at about 6:00 tomorrow morning. I'm thinking I'll load up another pouch of hickory chunks at that time and start misting with apple cider each time I flip it.

I was considering putting a few pieces of Kingsford in with my hickory chunks. Does that sound like a good idea or not? Anyone have suggestions to offer before I take the plunge this evening?

Alton Brown made a comment on his flower pot smoker show about issues with water vapor and gas grills that cause a reduction in smoke absorption, but he said that was an issue for another show. Anyone know what he means by that? Am I attempting an impossible task? I've seen LP-fired smoker units at Sam's Club and online. Do they work or does the burning gas and resultant water vapor reduce the smoke effect?

Thanks for all the assembled knowledge. I feel like I have a lot more to go on than I ever have before. I'll be back tomorrow night with a follow up.

Dan

Dan,

Your plan sounds OK, but I'm curious about one thing; what is the purpose of putting the Kingsford in with the smoking wood?

Poke some small holes in the foil pouch and put it on the burners directly at the opposite end of the grill where you tend to lose your smoke from, that way your smoke will travel over and under your meat on it's way out the grill.

Looking forward to hearing your results.

Good Luck and welcome to the TVWB, you know of course, that you WILL be getting a WSM before too long.

Dan - My bet is that you'll get a WSM before too long, but in the meantime, you can get decent results on the Weber Genesis Gold, but no where near the fine bbq you'll get from the WSM. I like the gasser for grilling fish, burgers, things that don't take long. I have a Weber Genesis Silver B & a WSM. Before I got the WSM, I cooked a couple of briskets on the gasser using low and slow.

I believe it took about 12 hours. I think these were just flats, not packers. I put the back burner on as low as it would go and kept the other two burners off. Meat went towards the front. Hickory chips in an aluminum foil pouch (poke holes in top) on top of the rear flavorizer bar. Basted every hour for last 5 hours.

Just took a packer brisket off the WSM this morning and man, is it tender! Foiled it, wrapped in a towel then put in a cooler for 4 hours. We'll take it to a party tonight. The raspberry chipotle bbq sauce (recipe at TVWBB somewhere) is quite tasty, too.

Good luck.

Richard
ps. I would not add Kingsford to the hickory chips pouch.

Howdy...

I´ve done the "kingsford between the flavo bars" thingy before i got my smoke ´n chips accessoire (wich im very pleased with).

In my experience, putting a couple of brikquettes between the bars, lighting em by preheating the grill, and then putting DRY wood chunks on top gives real good smoke.
I wouldnt use wet chunks (chips would be fine) and i would not put the chunks in foil.

Don Marco

I told my brother he should do a pork butt on his Silver B since he doesn't have a WSM. He told me no way in HE*& was he going to do such a thing. He also added that its better when I make it(because he doesn't have to!! ).

I will be hugely interested in seeing how it turns out. May I suggest taking pictures as you go!??!!

Here's the follow up to my slow cook on a gasser questions. I've included pictures as requested. Not sure I did it the right way, but we'll see how they come out. I couldn't figure out how to set it up so you can click the little images to see larger versions, so you get the larger ones.

My plan got pushed back by a day, so the brisket stayed rubbed and wrapped for an extra 24 hours. I ended up putting hickory chunks on top of the back flavorizer bar. I didn't use any Kingsford as there seemed to be opinions both ways on that idea so I decided to go simpler for this project. Here's a picture of how the chunks looked with the grills removed.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-1-hickory.jpg

Once I had the wood in place and the grills installed, I fired up all three burners to preheat like you normally do for grilling. While the grill was pre-heating, I pulled the brisket from the refrigerator, unwrapped it and inserted my Maverick temp probes. I put one into the point and the other into the flat. I put the brisket on at 9:00 PM. Here's what it looked like.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-2-raw.jpg

I used the standard Weber thermometer in the hood to give me the pit temperature. Probe 1 tracked the point temperature and probe 2 showed the flat temperature. I was much more interested in flat since I typically find the meat in the point too fatty to be particularly appealing. (My opinion on this was soon to change.)

I checked temps several times until going to bed and got up once around 1:00 AM to check on things. The pit temperature stayed just under 250 all night. The meat temperatures went from 31 degrees just out of the refrigerator at 9:00 PM to 159 at 1:00 AM.

I got up at 5:30 AM and had to check things out. Pit temperature was 248, the point was at 192 and the flat at 177. I flipped it at this point and started misting with apple cider. It looked really pretty at this point, but it was clearly far from tender.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-3-midway.jpg

While flipping and misting, I added more hickory chunks on top of the flavorizer bars. This is where things got more confusing. My temperatures all started rising faster than expected. Here's what they did:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>Time -- Pit -- Point -- Flat
<LI>7:00 -- 265 --- 194 --- 185
<LI>8:00 -- 260 --- 204 --- 195
[/list]

With visions of charred shoe leather dancing in my head, I decided to crack the lid open to bring the temperature down. I used my grill brush to open the top about an inch.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-4-brush.jpg

This surely brought the pit temperature down a little, but it also caused the brisket temp to plummet.

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>Time -- Pit -- Point -- Flat
<LI>9:00 -- 265 --- 202 --- 188
<LI>10:00 -- 260 --- 193 --- 183
<LI>11:00 -- 260 --- 187 --- 178
[/list]

The flat was feeling fork tender at this point, so I decided to pull it. Here's what it looked like at the end of cooking.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-5-finished.jpg

Because of my aforementioned aversion to the fatty point, I decided to bisect the brisket when I took it off the grill. I cut the point off and returned it to the grill. Then I sprayed the flat one more time, wrapped it securely in heavy-duty foil; wrapped it in a big towel and put the whole assembly into an ice chest for 4 hours.

During those 4 hours of resting time, I sprayed the point every 45 minutes or so with cider and kept my hands off the flat. At the end of the rest period, this is what I had.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/lg-6-bisected.jpg

The point had great burnt ends all around and the meat was moist and succulent. The flat has a nice smokey flavor despite the total absence of a smoke ring. Having cut off the point made it very easy to determine the grain of the flat. I sliced and sliced and sliced on that flat. I've never gotten such a great yield out of a brisket before. The texture of the flat may not be ultimately moist, but it is tender and the slices hold together very nicely.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and suggestions. You can bet I'll be doing this again.

Dan

Dan, Take a bow. Job well done. Nice pics looks awsome. Bryan

Looks great. Makes me want to cook a brisket this weekend.

Hi Dan,

I changed your photos to links. One photo in a post is OK, multiple photos should be links. Helps improve page load time, especially for those still on dialup.

See Adding photos to posts for more info.

Regards,
Chris

Thanks Chris. I figured there was a better way of handling those pictures.

Dan

Dan, I don't understand how your pit temp got so wacky! It's a grill right? Shouldn't it stay a consistent temp?

Glad your results were to your liking. Now I have an alternate route for pork of beef if the WSM isn't around!!

All I can figure is that my addition of new smoke wood might have increased the temperature. It stayed very stable all night long until I started messing with it in the morning.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dan Hampton:
...until I started messing with it in the morning... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Dan, same thing happens with the WSM. Now it seems it's the same with both gassers and smokers!!

I like it when great pictures posted three and a half years ago are still viewable. Congrats!

Andrew -
I've continued to evolve my methods for smoking on the Weber Genesis. Now I put the smoke wood in a heavy pan over the left-side igniter tube.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/turkey_wood.jpg

Here you can see the heavy pan below the grate. I also put some foil over the smoke wood so it wouldn't flame.

I typically remove one or both of the top grates and either put my meat on a single top grate or on a rack in my roasting pan. This time I used an aluminum roasting pan on a single top grate.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/turkey_pan.jpg

The biggest improvement I've made is the addition of a big tent made of heavy-duty foil. I crimp it to the smoke wood pan on the left and then drape it over the shoulder or turkey or brisket so the smoke is forced across the meat before it escapes out the right side.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/turkey_tent.jpg

I found that the Genesis is so porous that most of my smoke was escaping without bathing the meat. Here's the final product. This turkey tasted as good as it looks.

http://punchlist.com/smoke/turkey_done.jpg

I actually used this picture as my desktop image for a few weeks after Thanksgiving. Sad, huh?

Dan, people have used gas grills as smokers before. I don't know if it works as WELL as a true smoker, but it does work. The trick is to maintain the temp between 200-250º. You will probably want to use the rear burner alone and adjust it to the right temperature. Using two burners will probably run too hot.

I add a chunk of wood right on the flavorizer bar above the rear burner. For something like a brisket, you will want to use several chunks. I would probably use one at a time, and add a new one when the old one burns out. Probably three chunks wiull be enough, give or take. You'll need to experiment a bit.

I saw that Alotn Brown show, and personally I think Alton was full of 'it' when he made that comment about the water vapor. Considering how many smokers come with water pans and how many offset smokers people put pots of water in, does it really make sense that water vapor will actually hurt the barbeque?

That Steam and Chips box is a waste. Don't bother with it.

That smoked turkey looks great!

I smoked a pork shoulder on my gas grill (weber spirit 500) yesterday. I pruned a bunch of dead twigs off of our apricot tree, soaked them in warm water for a while, and wrapped them with aluminum foil in two bundles.

Since the vent for the box is in the back, i used the front burner only, and put one twig bundle between the flavorizer bars next to the front burner. This way, the smoke starts in the front and moves through the middle and back before leaving out of the back vent. I started the burner on high to get the smoke started, put the meat on the middle/back, then turned the burner down to slightly-below-medium (at low, I didn't think there was sufficient smoke), which gave about 280F on the lid thermometer...i figured this was ok, since the back would be somewhat cooler than that.

After a couple hours I added the second twig bundle and pushed the first one around a bit to get the remaining bits to smolder.

After four hours (it was a tiny pork shoulder, just cooking for two), I turned off the heat.

Half an hour later, I cut a slice off. Delicious, halfway between a pork chop and a quality ham. There was a nice thick smoke ring as well.

Well done Dan. seems like you have it all under control. I have a couple of suggestions to fine tune. I noted that you only left the meat to come to room temp for about 10 minutes. when you throw cold meat on initially your lid temp will plummet until the cold meat comes up to temp. Not really a problem. When I slow cook on my Genesis I always put a drip tray of water under the meat, it does help to stabilize the temps and adds a little moisture to the air which does retard the bark from drying out too much.
The hood on the Genesis can be moved from side to side. I always try to position it so that the LH side of the hood is as close to the burner box as possible. Dont try and seal it completely. Turn the LH side of the BBQ into the wind so that there is a slight draft pushing the smoke over the food. As an alternative method to yours, you can get a successful smoke by placing a couple of
WET wood chunks over the interconnect tube between the flavourizer bars. Make sure that you place one close to the rear burner.

Regards