Dave Lewis
TVWBB Super Fan
I cooked my first brisket today and it was good, but not great. My family prefers pork butt.
I bought a 7.5 lb untrimmed cryovaced brisket and trimmed a little less than a pound of fat of yesterday. My trimming wasn't pretty. Kind of lumpy. I used the Braggin Rights Brisket recipe from "Smoke and Spice." Put the rub on yesterday afternoon and let it sit in the fridge about 12 hours.
Because of its size, I didn't do an all night cook for fear it would be done early this morning. Much to my wife's incredulation, I got up at 4:20am and fired up the WSM using the Minion method. The meat went on at 5am along with 4 fist sized chunks of oak and 2 of hickory. By 5:30 the WSM was on temp. My target was 240-260 lid temp. It was solid at 255 +/- 5 degrees for the entire cook with very little vent adjustments. By far my best Minion method cook yet. It took 1.7 hours/lb to hit 185 in the flat. The point was on temp earlier.
I let it rest for an hour in the cooler and sliced the flat and chopped the point. 1/4" smoke ring. The flat was tender, but not falling apart tender. It was also not very moist. It wasn't dry, but just not as moist as I expected. Of course, I have never eaten brisket before and so I can only compare it to my pork butts which are very moist. The point was moist like my pork butts. Good flavor, but pork butt is better. I froze the chopped point for sandwiches, beans, ABTs etc.
I will definitely do it again. Fortunately, I'm taking the Paul Kirk class this next weekend, so hopefully I will learn and see what a proper brisket is like.
I bought a 7.5 lb untrimmed cryovaced brisket and trimmed a little less than a pound of fat of yesterday. My trimming wasn't pretty. Kind of lumpy. I used the Braggin Rights Brisket recipe from "Smoke and Spice." Put the rub on yesterday afternoon and let it sit in the fridge about 12 hours.
Because of its size, I didn't do an all night cook for fear it would be done early this morning. Much to my wife's incredulation, I got up at 4:20am and fired up the WSM using the Minion method. The meat went on at 5am along with 4 fist sized chunks of oak and 2 of hickory. By 5:30 the WSM was on temp. My target was 240-260 lid temp. It was solid at 255 +/- 5 degrees for the entire cook with very little vent adjustments. By far my best Minion method cook yet. It took 1.7 hours/lb to hit 185 in the flat. The point was on temp earlier.
I let it rest for an hour in the cooler and sliced the flat and chopped the point. 1/4" smoke ring. The flat was tender, but not falling apart tender. It was also not very moist. It wasn't dry, but just not as moist as I expected. Of course, I have never eaten brisket before and so I can only compare it to my pork butts which are very moist. The point was moist like my pork butts. Good flavor, but pork butt is better. I froze the chopped point for sandwiches, beans, ABTs etc.
I will definitely do it again. Fortunately, I'm taking the Paul Kirk class this next weekend, so hopefully I will learn and see what a proper brisket is like.
