The next brisket adventure… better, but…
So we’re now into May 2020. I was still going to the same butchers (Pre-Harrisons) and I asked for a bit of brisket that was good for smoking.
They gave me this:
Yeah I know – I could have taken it out the bag for that photo, but still…
I will say this to any ‘wannabe’ smokers out there that want to cook themselves a good bit of brisket. A BBQ like this makes life a lot harder than if you have something “proper”. I’m lucky enough to now own a Kamado Joe Classic III (something I’ll talk about later) and I had another Char Griller BBQ in between this one and that one, but… temperature control is a real important factor in smoking a good brisket.
Whilst I had this BBQ, I decided to cook it in the oven first for a while, then smoke it on the BBQ. So I’d start it cooking about 10pm, and I often had work to do so I just pulled an all-nighter so I could keep a close eye on it (and also, with a gas oven, I didn’t feel comfortable going to bed and leaving it going… I’m sure it’d be fine but…)
Anyway, it went into the oven looking like this:
I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I put on it. Almost certainly paprika, brown sugar, mixed herbs, salt… but yeah, I was probably experimenting a bit here and I took no notes.
It went onto the BBQ at about 10am, looking like this:
I remember at this point, it already had a ‘wobble’. The meat was so tender at this point, as I carried it, the meat wobbled. It was done, and I could have eaten it at this point – but I wanted that smokey flavour.
As you can see, I’ve got the water for the moisture, and a good chunk of wood chips (which if I were doing it now, would be chunks of wood not little chips). After about 7 hours of smoking (although there wouldn’t have been that much smoke, because I used chips!) it looked like this:
It had come off about 6pm I think, and I didn’t really let it rest (hunger!) but it would have really benefited from it. In addition, you can see there’s a lot of good meat there, but there was a lot of excess fat in many places, and I think if memory serves – I’d removed big chunks for the purpose of this photo.
I gave it a baste in BBQ sauce, and it was ready to eat….
That bun is a “keto” bun. It was made using ‘Fathead Dough’ – it was alright but in hindsight, if you’re gonna have a bun just have a proper bun. I think part of my obsession with doing those sort of buns (which you’ll see in upcoming photos) was… well, did I mention lockdown?
The dark bits in the blurred part of this photo are the edges of the brisket which the kids didn’t want. Then some butternut squash chips.
So what did I learn?
- Smoke. Not enough smoke.
- Temperature. I don’t think it got to the right temperature nor did it steam properly.
- But one of the bigger reasons I don’t think this worked exactly how I wanted is the cut of brisket wasn’t trimmed properly, and I should have smoked it before the long cook with proper, decent chunks of proper wood (I now have a massive reserve of Applewood that I use, but I also chuck in some thick chunks of whiskey barrel wood chips I got from – I think – Green Olive Wood… I’ll talk about them another time.
Overall though, this was a good brisket. It wasn’t dry, it had great flavour, and I cooked the leftovers into an almighty Chilli. I was happy with this, but… not completely happy… the Brisket saga continues…
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