Brisket -- Back to Basic Questions


 
S

Stone

TVWBB Super Fan
I haven't had much opportunity to smoke in the past year or so. But my two recent briskets were not up to my standards. They were both somewhat dry, even though the meat wasnt' fully cooked - -i..e, not fork tender.

I admit that I've gotten to a somewhat automated approach to smoking. Using my 18.5", I do the minion method and the temp at the top is usually a very steady 250 for about 8-10 hours. Once I woke up at times throughout the night to check temps, turn the meat, spray with cider -- but I stopped this years ago. Maybe I need to go back to being more anal?

But I guess my question is -- is there an obvious fix if the brisket is dry while not yet fork tender?
 
When I started out doing briskets, I trimmed them to a 1/4 inch of fat and smoked them until probe tender at the flat at 225F as measured at the grate. I did not wrap or spray and the briskets were tender but dry in the flat. I would suggest that you smoke briskets at 250F as measured at the grate, spray with liquid (water, 50/50 water worcestershire, apple juice, broth, ...) and wrap at the stall (160-170F internal temperature), remove when probe tender at the flat, let sit out on a counter loosely wrapped for an hour or until the internal temperature is around 170F, and then re-wrap, wrap in towels, and place in a cooler rinsed with boiling water until ready to be served. For wraping I use 40# pink butcher paper, others use heavy duty foil.

Your briskets are probably not cooking properly because the thermometer on the WSM is not at grate level and is notoriously inaccurate. If they are not fork tender, they probably are underdone. With briskets you do not cook to temperature but to probe tender. If its not probe tender, its not done. I would wrap the brisket and place it in an oven at 300F until probe tender. Once its dry there is not much you can do to fix it.

-- Mache
 
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I'm still learning what fork tender really feels like so am no brisket guru, but I'm on a mission to get better at brisket, and from what I've read:

dry & tough = under-cooked
dry & crumbling = over-cooked

I agree with Mache, that it sounds like your brisket was probably under-cooked. Brisket isn't a very forgiving piece of meat, and I'm still learning how to hit the sweet spot too.
 
I gave up on low n slow brisket for that very reason: you spend hours cooking to end up with a dry brisket. So I go high heat to cook in half the time resulting in a probe tender moist brisket.
 
What Mark and Dwaine said. Undercooked brisket is always gonna be dry. Don't use water and cook it faster, 275-350 at whatever temp is easy for your smoker. There's less time for it to dry out. I highly suggest wrapping. I use butcher paper, but you can also use foil. It's just easier to overcook in foil. Rest properly as Mâché suggested.
 
Hi Stone. You can check my thread over in the Photo Gallery of a brisket I recently did. I used water in the pan, but I never opened my wsm once I put it on until 5 hours passed. Then I put my probe in multiple places. The difference between temperature in the point and the flat was 10 degrees more in the flat, but both were higher than 150 or 160 people say one should wrap at. I mostly used my nose. I took notes of my cook and at one hour I notated that the meat smelled good, which was a good sign. Experiment, but don't over think it and you'll do well.
 
So, for a high-heat brisket -- say 300* at the top -- would I be looking at about 5 hours for a whole-packer?
I guess I need to dig out my thermometers.

Thanks for the advice.
 
More like 10! 300 isn't high heat. You might plan on .75hr per lb and add an hr or two for holding. The most common mistake in cooking brisket is not allowing enough time to cook and rest it.
 
How to not mess up a brisket:

Prerequisites:
- Pick a temp and stick with it. Doesn't matter what it is, just try to keep it consistent. If you want to cook at 225F for 20 hours, more power to you. If you want to cook at 325F for 6-8 hours, more power to you. Just don't go from 225F to 325F to 275F to 190F. Measure temps at the grate, not at the dome. The dome thermometer lies, sometimes by a lot.

- Use a Maverick or some other temperature probe. The probe goes into the thickest part of the flat, with the tip right in the center of the meat. Make sure it's not in the fat between the flat and the point.

Cooking:

1. Smoke your brisket unwrapped until your temperature probe reads 160F

2. Tightly wrap your brisket in foil fat-side down and continue to smoke until your temperature probe reads 185F.

3. Start poking your brisket every 20-30 minutes with a quick-read temperature probe or a toothpick. Poke it through the foil, no need to unwrap. When your poker goes in like you're poking warm butter wrapped in foil (basically no resistance except what it takes to poke a hole in the foil) you're done. Don't re-use holes you made.

4. Remove brisket from the smoker and unwrap. Save the juices if you do stuff with juices. If you want to serve quickly, let it sit out unwrapped until internal temp drops to 165. If you need to hold it a while, wrap it in new clean foil fat side down and chuck it in a cooler with towels. It will keep for hours this way. If you want to firm the bark back up, you can put it back on the smoker for 15-20 minutes to dry out the exterior.

That's it. There are tons of other fancy things you can do with basting and injections and rubs and whatnot, but a plain old USDA Select brisket with salt and pepper on it will come out perfectly edible if you do the steps above.

The key is patience. Once that probe reads 185F, ignore your internal temperature. It might go up, it might go down, your brisket might be done at 186, it might be done at 210. It might take 30 minutes, it might take 3 more hours. Doesn't matter. Keep poking that sucker every 20 minutes or so until the probe goes in like butter, then it's done. Properly cooking brisket is a test of faith--believe in yourself and trust that as long as you're poking every 20 minutes, you didn't miss the doneness window.
 
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This is very good advice. The problem, for me, is that I almost always smoke my brisket over night. (how else does it get down in time for the party.) I'm not one to wake up at intervals throughout the night to check temps. Perhaps that will be my downfall.
 
Stone said:
This is very good advice. The problem, for me, is that I almost always smoke my brisket over night. (how else does it get down in time for the party.) I'm not one to wake up at intervals throughout the night to check temps. Perhaps that will be my downfall.
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Yep, it will be. If you don't check the brisket until morning and it's at say 197F internal temp, how do you know if you missed the tenderness window or not?

What has worked for me is to switch to hot & fast cooks. Empty water bowl, target 300F-325F. A brisket put on at 8am will be done mid-afternoon and ready for dinner. Much easier than overnight cooks where you might mess it up. I haven't found a good timing for overnight cooks with a foiling technique that let you sleep through the night. If you start the brisket at dinner time so you can foil before bed, you have to start poking in the very early morning. If you start it before bed, you have to foil in the very early morning. If you start in the morning, it's not done until after dinner. That's all at 250F...maybe if you cooked at 225F you could start a dinner, foil before bed, and still get a full night's sleep before it's time to start poking.
 
I just did a L&S brisket for a dinner party and started a little before 1:00 AM today. Since I use a HeaterMeter ATC, I use its available Android app (PitDroid, there is an iPhone app as well) to set alarms on pit temperature and internal temperature. If something goes out of whack while I am sleeping, the phone will wake me up. Nothing did on this cook and I wrapped at around 7:00 AM this morning. The HeaterMeter is discussed on another Virtual Weber Bullet forum and can be built for a little less than $200 USD.

-- Mache
 
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