Over night cook, high temps, but ok...(?'s)

[Scott T (Odirom)]

So I had a real conundrum this weekend.

I put a brisket on. 6.8 lbs. Cryovac flat from Costco. It was smaller in that it fit on my top grill with no real problem. It was almost uniform thickness (about 2 inches) throughout. Good stuff.

So I took it home, rinsed, toweled it dry, went berserk on it with my 48 blade meat tenderizer, put it fat side down on the grate, slathered the top with mustard and then added my rub (2TBL of Pensy’s BBQ 3000, 1 TBL Ancho chili powder, 2 tsp annepo chili powder) And ‘patted’ it in. Threw back in the fridge to chill.

Started with a full ring of lump, a full chimney of lump. Chimney was about 2/3 lit when I dumped it. Gave it plenty of airtime before I buttoned up and put everything together.

Temp skyrocketed to 300 right off the bat. (Lump is a different bird than K. Learning all the time.) Put the Guru on, squeezed my top vent almost closed and went in the house to clean up; pit temp coming down as I was gathering things on the porch.

Threw the brisket onto the WSM at 9 pm. Pit temp, 250, empty pan. Top grate, no other meat on. BBQ Guru in place to maintain pit temp. Pit temp drops to 167. (meat and grate were cold from the fridge)

9:30 I add my smoke packets (apple and cherry, 50/50). Pit back up to 250.

10:30 everything looks good, all well, clean kitchen, pit temp 250. I cover the Guru with a stainless steel bowl (in case it rains) I go to bed.

7:00 AM. I wake up with the kids, get them up to the table and breakfasted, and I go out and open the lid. Brisket has VISIBLY shrunk. Looks like a briquette of K. I poke it with a finger (working as a culinary arts major in College gives you hands of asbestos) The meat seems REALLY firm. I uncover the BBQ Guru and the pit temp is sitting at 284. (OH NO.)

I grab the probe thermometer and learned what everyone means when they say “It feels like you are pushing the probe into room temp butter. It has to be a mistake. I try the other end. Same thing. I try the side. Wow. Tender. I get some foil, grab the thing with my tongs and pick it up, it splits and almost falls apart there on the grate.

I foil and cooler for a 3 hour rest.

After 3 hours there is NO juice in the foil. The meat is VERY dry. Hard to slice but it pulls apart perfectly. It was the tenderest brisket I have ever cooked. I first thought “Chooped.” So I added some No. 5 sauce, to a pan, chopped some of it, and warmed it all on the stove slightly. DELICIOUS!!! It really tasted great and the tenderness was to die for.

Juice levels are my only concern. Now, I know the temp was high, and I know that my temp problem was that I did not restrict the air flow enough to let the temp really come down and force the Guru to earn it’s keep. (I left my blower hole at about 75% when I should have choked it down to 25% or less.)

So, how can meat be incredibly tender with no juiciness? I didn’t think that was possible!

Any tips for the juiciness? (*other than don’t cook it for hours on end 20 degrees higher than expected?) Add anything to the foiling at the end (Dr., Pepper, rum, beer?) Foil in the middle if possible?

I really would rather do the brisket without foil. But if I could have just corrected the juiciness I would have had the best brisket ever cooked. It was THAT good.

And I know now that I was not patient enough with the high heat brisket. I need to do that again and just let the heat do its thing.

So that was my weekend cook. Thank you for the space. Any thoughts?

 

[K Kruger]

Several issues here:


First, ramp up to your target temps. One of the main things about having a Guru in the first place is that this is so easy to do. Load the coal, add a little lit, load the meat, assemble, turn on Guru and set the temp. No fuss no muss.

A Jaccard is entirely unnecessary for something like brisket. Not only will the rendering connective tissue and internal fat soften and the meat become tender without the intervention of a Jaccard, but using one on brisket utterly destroys the integrity of the muscle fibers. Want to lose juice quickest? Jaccard.

The higher heat was fairly immaterial except that your brisket cooked more quickly and was done sooner. Brisket goes from tough to tough/juicy to tender/juicy to tender/dry to too-dry-to-eat as its stages. You were tender/dry (overcooked) it seems. Resting more than 20 min was not necessary though it is hard to say whether the brisket would have been better had you not gone so long with the rest. My feeling is that it would have been tender/dry but perhaps a bit less so.

You can't 'correct' juiciness. You can not overcook.

 

[K Kruger]

P.S. I don't really get the foil aversion. If the effort is to turn out great brisket and do so without thinking much about it (using a Guru, cooking a fairly small piece of meat overnight) then foil is your friend. If you don't want to use foil for whatever reason, then you need to consider the cooking process more carefully. A flat isn't the best choice for not foiling. It can be done--but then attention to the cook and the meat must be more carefully paid. You need to at least know what the cooktemps are doing (if not adjust for them in real time) so that you can gauge the likely time where 'done' will be reached. And then you need to test for done, pulling the meat early so that residual cooking will take it to tender during its rest, or pulling the meat when it is tender and resting for a shorter time.

Though I'd advocate that approach regardless of what you are cooking, it is more essential if cooking a flat, especially without foil. Packers lend themselves better to overnight, unfoiled, unattended cooking if going the low/slow route. You can certainly do flats this way, but then start much later, skip the Jaccard, ramp the temps up so that the coals have restricted air and light slowly, as needed and determined by the Guru, and check the meat when you get up to see what's what.

 

[Scott T (Odirom)]

Thank you for the feedback, sir.

I haven't been able to get the level of tender in a brisket that I have cooked without the Jaccard. I will have to wait for it and be patient, I guess.

Foil aversion? I consider it a PITA, but it might not be so much of one if the results are that far superior. My big thing is that with the Guru I can keep a solid pit temp, so I can do overnight cooks. I don't want to have to get up and foil at 3 in the morning. (what I would consider a serious PITA). Next brisket gets the foil treatment.

The temp issue in the begining was because I got (under) burned when I tried using lump for a high heat an I only started with a minimal amount of lump for my minion start. I got it backward. Started with too little on that one, started with too much on this one.

I am on a quest for the perfect brisket. I brisket is my favorite BBQ and I WILL master it.

Thank you for your time and understanding and your sage words of wisdom. I will try again this weekend.

 

[K Kruger]

Whether or not you foil is up to you of course. (I mentioned 'aversion' because there are many that maintain the illusion that foil is 'bad', 'wrong', or somehow less than barbecue-pristine.) It's a tool that can be used or not. I use it for high heat cooks; when I used to low/slow briskets I occasionally used it, mostly not. But I cook packers.

For low/slow cooks foil can be helpful if doing flats or packers but especially flats. At low temps, depending on the quality of the flat, the meat can lose too much moisture (water, drippings) on its way to tender first because the cooktemps are low, second because of the lack of the point. Foil arrests excess evaporation and drippings, allowing the meat to retain more. Again, it isn't essential, but without it you have to be on top of the cook, cook at least a bit higher, imo, so that cooktime isn't overly extended, and check the meat's doneness level as it nears its finish. If you are going to do flats with foil then I would suggest cooking during the day so that you can foil at the appropriate point. If you are going to go without foil, then an overnight is fine but start much later, ramp up, and check early so that you are on top of the meat's condition. It's not that foiling will make the results far superior--although that certainly happens depending on what you are comaparing to--it is that is can be effectively used as part of the process, helping to even out cooking, retain moisture, and offer some assurance of a potentially better finish. One can still overcook in foil.

Work on your brisket without the use of a Jaccard if brisket is your favorite. Virtually no one uses one on brisket because it ruins the texture, a key variable in good brisket, imo. (A Jaccard is useful for tougher meats that you want to cook more briefly.) Brisket can get--does get--tender, moist and juicy all on its own.