Brisket and Ribs on WW Weekend


 
W

Wade Grace

New member
Hi everyone,
I'm doing my first brisket for dinner tomorrow night, but my daughter loves ribs- so I am going to throw on a few BB's to have as well.

My question is this- -what smoke wood would go best with the brisket? Traditionally, I've only done Hickory, but that's all been with pork.

Secondly, with my first Wicked Good Weekend Warrior cook last time (over Labor Day), I had read that I should decrease the smoke wood- -since it was all natural hardwood charcoal. I didn't get a ton of smoke flavor though- -so wondering with the brisket if I should still go with 5 fist sized pieces or back it down?

thanks for the help!
 
Wade I like mesquite with beef but a lot of people here don't, they find it has too strong a flavour. Hickory and oak are good choices also. I would stay away from any of the sweeter type of wood since I don't think sweet and beef go together well.

As far as the WW lump goes I really like it for grilling but for long cooks I use Royal Oak lump since it is 1/2 the price. There is definitely a difference between the two as far as smoke flavour but it is pretty subtle.

I usually use 1 hickory and 2 mesquite chunks.

What method are you using to cook it?
 
I like mesquite best for brisket or any beef, and I also use it with ribs and butts quite often. I like a good, strong smoke flavor on my meat. I've never used Wicked Good, so can't comment on that. I don't use fist size chunks, but smaller chunks. For brisket, the pieces I use would equal about 4 fist sized chunks.
 
Thanks for all the replies!

I use the minion method, as I am doing the Smoker/Oven finish recipe for the brisket, and plan on throwing the BBs on midway through the cook. So, in a sense, I need whatever smoke wood I chose to be compatible with both the brisket and ribs.

Maybe I start with hickory- -and then when the BBs go on, add a little more fresh pecan?
 
Oh- and I have a BBQ guru temp controller- which should allow me to do the BBs at 225 to start, and then ramp it up to 275 later.
 
With my palate, there is no smoke wood that wouldn't go well with both brisket and baby backs so I don't think you can go wrong using one for both. But I would reiterate that using one smoke wood at a time is great for a while so you can pick out the profile of each wood.

I hope it goes well for you!
 
i like mesquite with beef too but usually just burgers and steaks. for brisket i've really liked the results with straight oak. i have a store down the street from me that has oak chunks from old wine barrels. they're pretty great. Having said that though, when i do pork butt and brisket together i do straight pecan wood. it seems to work OK for both of them where as i just don't think oak is any good for pork.

the other problem that you might have though is that the amount of wood you use to get a good smoke flavor in your brisket is probably going to be way too much for ribs and vice versa. if i were doing this i'd put oak in with the brisket and then 10 hours later or whenever you want to put the ribs on i'd foil the brisket to keep the smoke out as well as speed cooking etc., and then i'd put the ribs on and throw in a sweeter wood for the pork (i like apple and hickory).

experimenting with different woods is one of my favorite parts of this process so let us know what you decide to do and how it turns out.
 
I use my normal amount of wood with Wicked Good - or any other lump. I don't find any all that flavorful.
 
Nicolas- Great idea! That's precisely what I was planning to do, except I'm planning on pulling the brisket to finish in the oven. I'm also going to separate the point and put it back on the smoker uncovered- -so it's going to get some of the rib smoke- but I'm ok with that.

I'll fish out any large pieces of oak and replace with pecan. Or if I can't find any oak tonight, I'll do hickory since it can go with the pecan anyway.

Starting to get hungry. . .
 
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