Weekend Brisket lets see them

[chopsknives]

Dang now I wish I woulda thrown the ribs on today instead of tomorrow, I’m hungry

Ha! Ha! I feel your pain!!!! I ran down and got me some country style ribs cause of this here thread!! Was gonna have SandBass and Shrimp but now I gotta have me some grillins!!! LOL!

[slomo]

Here is round one off the big smoker, I’m on my 4th brisket of the weekend now. This next one is finishing up on the uds. Pics to come


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[iamntxhunter]

I got mine rubbed this morning and it will go on the smoker early tomorrow morning.

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[justindfw]

So I have a question. I'm a brisket smoking newb. Is there a way to get a good bark even if you wrap your brisket to keep it juicy? Or do I just leave it unwrapped and smoke it?

[mikeyb_23]

Just finished eating a plate of mine. Put it in at 9am and ran it about 300 full 3:30. Pulled it at 198° and stuck it in the cooler for 2 hrs. Came out great.

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[meathunter]

No brisket this weekend. Today was sausage, chicken fajitas, pork ribs, boneless pork chops, Mac and cheese, stuffed jalepeno, homemade peach cobbler, and mixed squash. Not good with pictures of food at my house, when the food is done we attack.

[GA Bowhunter]

Thanks for the brisket tips fellas!

It sounds like I should smoke a pork butt with the brisket just in case the learning curve is long.

[SneakyPhil]

Seems to me a trimmed brisket with the majority of the fat removed would have a high potential of being dry. Am I wrong? The few times I've done brisket I trim it just a little. Basically try and get an even thickness where the fat is thickest. Less is more when trimming brisket for me.

[RobinHood]

Seems to me a trimmed brisket with the majority of the fat removed would have a high potential of being dry. Am I wrong? The few times I've done brisket I trim it just a little. Basically try and get an even thickness where the fat is thickest. Less is more when trimming brisket for me.

I don’t trim a whole lot either. I try to leave maybe 1/4” on the fat side.
But everybody has their different ways which works for them.

[hooligan]

Seems to me a trimmed brisket with the majority of the fat removed would have a high potential of being dry. Am I wrong? The few times I've done brisket I trim it just a little. Basically try and get an even thickness where the fat is thickest. Less is more when trimming brisket for me.

I’ve done it both ways and it’s turned out good both. After I read that the fat cap doesn’t actually render down through the meat I trim more. I go with Smarts suggestion of making sure it’s got good marbling, that fat and collagen breaks down for the moisture. But I haven’t cooked a fraction of the briskets of most on here so I’m still learning.

[Leon County Slayer]

X2. I've got a pit that could use some restoration

So they have to clean it out and lose flavoring? I know nothing about smoking!

[Lonestar_HOYT]

So I have a question. I'm a brisket smoking newb. Is there a way to get a good bark even if you wrap your brisket to keep it juicy? Or do I just leave it unwrapped and smoke it?

If you wrap, you wrap it after several hours of being in the smoke. You don’t have to wrap at all. Lots of folks use foil, it holds more heat and speeds up the cooking process. I use butcher paper if I wrap at all.

[RobinHood]

So they have to clean it out and lose flavoring? I know nothing about smoking!

No, if your pit is good and seasoned, do like I did and tell him don’t mess with the inside!!
Had a buddy take his in somewhere else and they painted the inside too [emoji21][emoji21]
It was a mess for his first few cookings. Even when he thought he had it burned out enough, it still wasn’t the same as it was.

[Smart]

Looking good gentlemen! Yall's pictures tell me I should have overruled the boss and done a brisket myself. A) I could have had brisket and B) I could have had room for one more in the freezer at this sale price..

So I have a question. I'm a brisket smoking newb. Is there a way to get a good bark even if you wrap your brisket to keep it juicy? Or do I just leave it unwrapped and smoke it?

Absolutely you can. Folks do it everyday whether they wrap in foil or butcher paper.....I wrap every time but late in the process so the bark is good and layered.

I don’t trim a whole lot either. I try to leave maybe 1/4” on the fat side.
But everybody has their different ways which works for them.

That's pretty trimmed up compared to many of the "rip, rub and rack" guys... I do a 1/4" as well and folks say I trim a lot.....I do also trim all the hard chunk fat from the sides and the area where the point meets the flat. Not sure if you do that Jason or not. Looking at your slices it looks like you do since the only fat on your brisket is on the bottom..

Seems to me a trimmed brisket with the majority of the fat removed would have a high potential of being dry. Am I wrong? The few times I've done brisket I trim it just a little. Basically try and get an even thickness where the fat is thickest. Less is more when trimming brisket for me.

Yes you are wrong to a point. I'm not saying you do it wrong because I tell everybody there are a hundred ways to do a brisket right.. I'm big on "you do you" and how you like it. I'm just saying "a trimmed brisket is a dry brisket" is not correct.



Gonna get a little longwinded redneck technical Smart here on the fat part....and "you" below is not aimed at SneakyPhil....it's just a pronoun.



Considering the fat does not "render down through the meat" like the myth will tell you, the fat cap is basically just an insulator from the fire. That fat renders some and rolls over and off if you have it up....It renders some and drops off if its fat cap down.. The moisture in a brisket is the break down of the collagen and connective tissues/internal marbling within the meat itself, late in the cooking process....not the fat on the outside rendering and mythically passing through the brisket. This late breakdown is why most briskets that are not fully done are tough and dry and folks think they have over cooked them when in fact they usually have not cooked them long enough. This heavy white chunk fat our briskets are loaded with, unfortunately, does not creature much internal moisture nor does it allow or create a good bark on the outside so it goes bye bye....Bark is where the flavor is so I do whatever I can to make it better and create more surface for it. You can throw rub on your heavy untrimmed fat cap and run smoke over it but it's not going to set up right or bind to the actual meat because it can't. It has a glob of fat between it and the meat. Hell I've seen folks rub an untrimmed brisket, smoke it fat side up and scrape the fat off the brisket before they slice and serve. In my mind, I'm like dude...you just scraped off any flavor you had and worked so hard to get....now you just have gray meat slices. But hey if that's what floats his boat and he is doing the cooking then knock yourself out. "You do you". I'm just saying folks put a lot of work into making a good bark and scraping it off because they didn't trim the fat before smoking. Seems like a waste of good flavor and effort to spend all that time to scrape it when they could have trimmed it before hand and just started slicing when done. IMO



Since bark is flavor, I like to have the brisket trimmed of any hard chunk fat except the 1/4"cap.....that hard stuff does not render all the way, doesn't hold rub and most folks find it uneatable anyway. I like fat cap down on my offset or vertical type smokers like the UDS...w/ point facing the fire box on the offset. Just my personal preference and folks can argue for days which is best and why. For me....in my little feeble mind, since bark is layered smoke, plus "meat liquid" (rendered light fat, juice, pellicle, Maillard or whatever the hell folks want to call it) and your rub, I want my flat of the brisket surface on top and I want it trimmed of fat so that I can try to obtain a perfect even covering of bark on the whole brisket top and side. If I have the fat cap up and it doesn't render all the way, you've lost a large portion of your bark and the flat is hacked up by the grate when you flip it over try to cut. Taking it to 200+ probing for doneness at the end lets the internal moisture break down and make for good result with a pretty slice. Again. Just my personal preference.

[Smart]

One more thing to support the trimmed brisket theory. Watch some of these competitions on TV and look at how much they trim their briskets. Even the folks that use none Waygu briskets. Those folks can't have a dry brisket if they want to win any money. They need a brisket heavy on bark for flavor, tenderness and to look good in a box.