First brisket BBQ... ** UPDATE **

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DieUCLA98

500+ Posts
Last weekend, I had my first smoking adventure... Cooked some baby backs using Hornians recipe (more or less) and they turned out fantastic.

Confidence boosted, I'm going for a brisket this Saturday. I've already bought a 5.5 lb brisket (only cooking for two). Heres the gameplan:

Friday night: Marinade brisket with Fiesta Brisket Rub or Salt/Pepper if I'm too lazy to make a trip to HEB.

Saturday:
9:30am - Fire up the smoker, soak some oak logs, level the heat off around 225. Let brisket rest outside refrigerator. Throw on the logs.
10:00am - Throw on the meat.
10am - 4pm - Cut down a few trees, watch copious amounts of football, drink a few beers.
4pm - Wrap brisket in foil, pop it in the oven for the last 2 hours.
6pm - Remove from oven, unwrap, let it rest for 30 min.
6:30pm - Cut against the grain.

Anything I'm missing?
 
Sounds like you're set for an excellent Saturday!

My only additional advice is to remember that a full packer brisket has two muscles whose grains run in different directions. If you separate those two muscles at the beginning by slicing through the vein of fat in between them, then it's easy to see the grain of each one and slice accordingly.

Good luck!
 
UTEE nailed it. Cutting the top "plate" off a full cut lets you see the grain on both sections.

One extra idea, if you have an small old Igloo cooler that you don't mind getting greasy, you can throw the wrapped brisket in there for an hour or two as opposed to the oven. I ramp up my heat to 275-300 on the pit for 30-45 minutes before pulling the foil-wrapped brisket off, and throwing it into a cooler. The brisket will almost cook itself, and you don't have to worry about leakage in the oven. For some reason, I think the flavor and tenderness are better this way. Not to mention, in an hour it's still pretty darn hot. This works really well, especially when an oven isn't handy.
 
It will take longer than 30 minutes from the time you light the fire until it is ready to put the meat on. Allow at least 1 hour.
 
I use a big green egg. It gets going pretty dang quick. I got it settled in at 250 for my ribs in less than 40 min, give or take.
 
Ya, I have the meat thermometer handy. Would you suggest transferring to the oven in foil for a couple hours when I've hit 180 degrees over smoke?

Edit: Da fux happened to your post 12thstudstan? It was there when I posted this reply... Now I just look dumb.
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Sorry - I doubled posted then the same idiot deleted both posts. I wrap mine closer to 170-175 degrees but that's just another personal preference issue.

5.5 lb brisket? The smallest packers I have seen are a little over 7lbs, so it sounds like a trimmed flat, which would mean there would be no point to separate it from . It would also cook differently than an untrimmed packer. That is why I don't recommend timed cooks to anyone. Briskets can vary greatly and the fat content and thickness of the muscle will influence how fast it cooks.

I would invest $5 in a meat thermometer and target anywhere from 190-200 degrees (depending upon your personal preferences) peak at rest before cool down. An easy way to avoid cutting with the grain is to simply and gently bend the meat until the grain is exposed. Once you have a few briskets notched on your pit, you will know how the grain runs just by looking at the shape of it.

I would skip soaking the wood and just focus on soaking the pit boss, but that's just me.

Have a good cook.
 
Yeah, 5.5 lbs does sound awfully small for a packer trim. Are you sure it's a full packer? Or is it just a flat?

It'll definitely affect the way you cook it.
 
what the heck do you guys bbq for? to take pictures?
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I don't know about y'all but for me the most important thing of all about BBQin is

















THE EATIN!!!!!!!!




yippee.gif
 
It will definitely affect the cooking time downward. Your other problem with just cooking a trimmed flat is that you have maybe 20% of the fat that you normally would. You REALLY run a risk of it turning out dry.

Back in my early days of messing around with it, I tried smoking trimmed briskets, flats, etc. I learned. Go with a whole packer trimmed brisket if at ALL possible. Seriously. You can sometimes find a small one, like 8-9 lbs, if you don't want a lot of grub (my favorites are in the 12 lb class, which still isn't too much meat).

I honestly don't have any advice about smoking just a flat -- other than be careful as hell that you don't dry it out.
 
Ugh... Now I'm nervous...

If I wrap it in foil after, say, 5 hours of smoke and pop it in the oven, will that help preserve some juice? Five hours of smoke should give it a healthy pink smoke ring and some good flavor, no?
 
Trimmed flats are not as forgiving as packers, but if a flat is done right it is a beautiful thing that possesses a true smoke ring (not a semi-circle) and tasty rub encrusted bark all around. That's a big if though.

The abundant fat on packers are like flavorful self-basting training wheels that help keep you from crashing & burning your brisket. Flats are a bit trickier. Mopping, spraying or a bacon drape can also help prevent a flat from drying out, but I would not apply any of those methods during the first half of your cook because they can wash off your rub and screw up your bark development. When I smoke a flat or other leaner meats I generally choose to use a sprayer containing a mixture of Shiner Bock, oil, vinegar and some rub that I apply later in the cook before wrapping. I consider foil wrapping to be a personal preference thing with a packer but not so with a flat. I would also keep your temps more in the 180-200 range with a flat. I would also recommend applying a light coat of oil to the meat before applying your dry rub. The oil will help keep the flat from drying out and will help the dry rub stick to it.

Let us know how it turns out. He is some brisket porn.

brisketslices2.jpg
 
Yup, I echo what BT and 12thStud said (naturally).

Flats CAN be smoked, and as 12thStud's pictures prove, you get a smoke ring all the way around which is great. But they're tricky, which is why BT says he doesn't even bother with them (and neither do I).

While a full packer brisket is fatty, I'd consider a flat a "lean meat" and cook it accordingly. Still, lean meats can be smoked beautifully. I do pork tenderloins all the time and they turn out fabulously. For packer-trim briskets I'm not a "wrap-in-foil" guy but I agree that for just the flat, you're going to want to do that. So I'd follow 12th's recommendations on the cooking.
 
Also, in the future, I'd recommend going ahead and getting a full packer-trim brisket of around 10 lbs. After cooking and trimming the fat, that'll yield around 5 or 6 lbs of cooked meat. It should be pretty easy to find some folks to hand out the extras to, and if your friends don't like extra free BBQ, well, I'd start wondering if those are really the types of friends you want to have...
 
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