Brisket in a rib rack?


 
C

ChadVKealey

TVWBB Pro
I'm picking up two small (10-12 pound) briskets this weekend in my 18.5" WSM and had a crazy idea. I've got this rib rack that I've sworn to never use for ribs (it's a PITA to clean) and I'd have no qualms about hacking it up, so I was thinking of cutting out two of the "uprights" to form two wide slots. I think you know where I'm going with this.

Basically, I'd be cooking two brisket on their sides next to each other. I can use some bamboo skewers to maintain some airflow space between them, and probably have to do it on the lower grate because I doubt the lid would fit with them on the top.

Has anyone every cooked a brisket "vertically" like this? It seems like it would work fine, but these being holiday meals (one for Easter, the other for pseudo-Passover), I want them to come out as perfectly as possible. I was planning to rotate them top-to-bottom about halfway through to compensate for the variance in temps between the grates, but doing them on the rib-made-brisket rack would avoid the need for rotation.
 
OK, here's the rack with one side modified for a test fit with the larger of the two briskets:


Seems like it might work, so I mod the other side and slide in the smaller brisket:


Hmmm...this might just be the ticket. But, to be sure, a test fit in the WSM:


I had to do a little squeezing to get the bigger one in...and it's touching the sides. So, I could just trim a bit off the bigger one and they'd fit no problem. Or, I could pin it with skewers or something...I'm sure once it shrinks a bit there'll be plenty of clearance. Or, I could just go the old fashioned route and do them flat on the grates. I'm torn. Suggestions?
 
I loaded these bad boys up last night. It's kind of hard to see in this pic, but both of them were making contact with the sides. I pinned them with bamboo skewers to try and minimize the contact.


Put them on at 10:00 PM with the WSM chugging along and my PartyQ set to 230. From 10-midnight, the temps fluctuated from a low of 214 to a high of 245. And yes, that seems like a LOT of smoke seeping out where it shouldn't be. Maybe this year I'll invest in a gasket kit since seasoning/gunking alone doesn't appear to have sealed it up.



At 8:00 AM, I checked in on them and found there's now plenty of breathing room, although it's hard to tell with all the smoke in the way. Should have taken the photo before adding a chimney's worth of unlit charcoal.
 
This thread is cool :cool: and I'm following it with interest. Did you leave the briskets or flip them end for end during the nite?
PS.. I got that same POS rack and looking for ways to use it (besides a paper-weight)
Tim
 
timothy said:
This thread is cool :cool: and I'm following it with interest. Did you leave the briskets or flip them end for end during the nite?
PS.. I got that same POS rack and looking for ways to use it (besides a paper-weight)
Tim
Click to expand...

Since they shrunk to the point that there's plenty of airflow around them, I'm leaving 'em as-is and letting it ride. I figure the smaller one is probably going to finish a bit earlier, so that's why I put the food probe in it. It's at 160 now, 11 hours in. I'm not a huge fan of foiling through the stall and stick with Alton Brown's "your patience will be rewarded" philosophy. That's the main reason I started them last night to eat tomorrow :cool:
 
OK, I pulled them off and discovered the problem with this approach. The smaller one (~10 lbs.) lifted out just fine. The larger one (~14 lbs.) seems to have spread a bit and I had to be very careful to get it out without tearing it apart. In hindsight, I think I should have separated the point & flat before cooking, in which case I probably could have used the rib rack unmodified with one chunk of meat (flat or point) in each "slot".
 
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