Hello all! I'm fairly new to smoking. I've done chicken, salmon and pork butt. Last weekend I ventured into my favorite, brisket. I bought a small, 4 lb brisket at Sam's on Friday. I rubbed it down with rub that I bought from my favorite local bbq joint and wrapped it tight with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for the night.
I'm smoking with a ECB right now that we got for free. The price was right, so I figured I would put it to use. I have made a few modifications to it, the most important one being the purchase of the Maverick ET-732 thermometer. The photo below shows my setup.
I fired the smoker up at 8 am. I haven't been able to get the clip thing that came with the thermometer to hold well on the grill grates, so I use a potato to hold the temperature probe for the grill. Once the grill temp came down to 250 I put the brisket on (the photo below), which was about 8:30.
I let the brisket cook for 3.5 hours before I removed the lid and inserted the probe for the meat. I inserted the probe in the thickest side, right in the middle of the brisket. In the photo, that is on the right side. The meat probe read 154 degrees, which was right where I wanted it to be. I planned to let it get to 160 and wrap it in foil with a little apple juice until it got to 185 - 190, which I've read on here is a good temp for slicing brisket. I forgot to buy apple juice, so I used an ounce or two of Mountain Dew. Never heard of anyone using that before, but I figure what the heck.
I have read that you should plan for 1.5 hours per pound, so this 4 lb brisket should be about 6 hours. After inserting the meat probe and getting a reading of 154, it took another hour for it to get to 160. I had a good idea at this point it wasn't going to be done in 6 hours. It ended up taking 9 hours to reach 190 degrees. I only removed the lid twice, once to insert the meat and once to foil it. I suppose if I wanted to mop I could have done it at those two times, but I wanted to try it without mopping the first time. Once the internal temp hit 190, I removed it from the smoker still in the foil and let it sit for 30 minutes. The photo below is how it looked once we took it out of the foil.
The brisket sliced like butter! It was so moist and tasty. My wife said it was better than the local bbq joint's and I could tell by the way she said it she believed it and wasn't just stroking my ego. I don't know that I would say it was better than theirs, but I would say it was just as good. The one thing I will do next time is remove a little bit of the fat before I smoke it. I've read trimming it down to 1/4" is about right. This one probably didn't have much more than that on it, but it still had enough on it after it was cooked that my wife had to trim it away. You can see the little bit of fat along the top edge of the slices in the photo below. The fat doesn't bother me and just added more flavor, but I probably will trim it down next time.
Thanks to this forum, it was a success! I'm ready to try some ribs now!
I'm smoking with a ECB right now that we got for free. The price was right, so I figured I would put it to use. I have made a few modifications to it, the most important one being the purchase of the Maverick ET-732 thermometer. The photo below shows my setup.
I fired the smoker up at 8 am. I haven't been able to get the clip thing that came with the thermometer to hold well on the grill grates, so I use a potato to hold the temperature probe for the grill. Once the grill temp came down to 250 I put the brisket on (the photo below), which was about 8:30.
I let the brisket cook for 3.5 hours before I removed the lid and inserted the probe for the meat. I inserted the probe in the thickest side, right in the middle of the brisket. In the photo, that is on the right side. The meat probe read 154 degrees, which was right where I wanted it to be. I planned to let it get to 160 and wrap it in foil with a little apple juice until it got to 185 - 190, which I've read on here is a good temp for slicing brisket. I forgot to buy apple juice, so I used an ounce or two of Mountain Dew. Never heard of anyone using that before, but I figure what the heck.
I have read that you should plan for 1.5 hours per pound, so this 4 lb brisket should be about 6 hours. After inserting the meat probe and getting a reading of 154, it took another hour for it to get to 160. I had a good idea at this point it wasn't going to be done in 6 hours. It ended up taking 9 hours to reach 190 degrees. I only removed the lid twice, once to insert the meat and once to foil it. I suppose if I wanted to mop I could have done it at those two times, but I wanted to try it without mopping the first time. Once the internal temp hit 190, I removed it from the smoker still in the foil and let it sit for 30 minutes. The photo below is how it looked once we took it out of the foil.
The brisket sliced like butter! It was so moist and tasty. My wife said it was better than the local bbq joint's and I could tell by the way she said it she believed it and wasn't just stroking my ego. I don't know that I would say it was better than theirs, but I would say it was just as good. The one thing I will do next time is remove a little bit of the fat before I smoke it. I've read trimming it down to 1/4" is about right. This one probably didn't have much more than that on it, but it still had enough on it after it was cooked that my wife had to trim it away. You can see the little bit of fat along the top edge of the slices in the photo below. The fat doesn't bother me and just added more flavor, but I probably will trim it down next time.
Thanks to this forum, it was a success! I'm ready to try some ribs now!
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