rfjoinery
Newbie
Did my first brisket today and would appreciate feedback. (It's in towels now so the most important feedback, the taste, will have to wait.) Using all the advice I can glean from this great forum, and the butcher/smoker guy too.
Did an 8 lb flat, expensive meat from a good butcher. Dry rub, overnite in fridge. MES40 Gen1, AMNPS, maintained 220 to 230 smoker temp thruout. Measuring IT with Maverick, Thermapen, and the meat probe in the MES, and they all agree within a couple degrees.
Want slicing brisket for pretty sandwiches. So I'm shooting for about 195, and tender to the probe all the way in. Temp readings were consistently hotter in the thicker/fat portion of the meat, 5-8 deg lower in the lean thin portion. I'd expected the thicker part to cook more slowly and be cooler. Foiled it in the 160's because it seemed like it was taking forever, and sure enough it went up faster in the foil. When we got in the 180's. I got nervous about which reading to trust. By 190 in the fat end, it was very tender to a probe but the lean end wasn't fully tender at 184. I finally bailed out at 196 fat end 189 thin end, tho the center of the thin end didn't feel real tender yet. This is at a little over 18 hours.
So it's too late to fix this one if I've made a bad call, but do you regularly see the fat end running warmer than the thin end? Is this because it's fattier in the thick end? So which area do you use for temp and tenderness readings?
Thanks a bunch,
RF
Did an 8 lb flat, expensive meat from a good butcher. Dry rub, overnite in fridge. MES40 Gen1, AMNPS, maintained 220 to 230 smoker temp thruout. Measuring IT with Maverick, Thermapen, and the meat probe in the MES, and they all agree within a couple degrees.
Want slicing brisket for pretty sandwiches. So I'm shooting for about 195, and tender to the probe all the way in. Temp readings were consistently hotter in the thicker/fat portion of the meat, 5-8 deg lower in the lean thin portion. I'd expected the thicker part to cook more slowly and be cooler. Foiled it in the 160's because it seemed like it was taking forever, and sure enough it went up faster in the foil. When we got in the 180's. I got nervous about which reading to trust. By 190 in the fat end, it was very tender to a probe but the lean end wasn't fully tender at 184. I finally bailed out at 196 fat end 189 thin end, tho the center of the thin end didn't feel real tender yet. This is at a little over 18 hours.
So it's too late to fix this one if I've made a bad call, but do you regularly see the fat end running warmer than the thin end? Is this because it's fattier in the thick end? So which area do you use for temp and tenderness readings?
Thanks a bunch,
RF
