Hi guys,
I decided for my first smoke, I'd try my hand at a brisket. Equipment is a Masterbuilt Pro Dual Fuel, propane smoker from Home Depot. I used propane and wood chunks instead of charcoal/wood chunks.
Full packer brisket from meat shop, a little over 16lbs. I would have preferred smaller, but alas, this is the smallest they had. Not much selection here in rural NE Ohio, I was happy to find a full packer at all. Fat Cap up:
Here is the other side. Great marbling throughout:
Full packer, trimmed. My wife helped, we both had little idea what we were doing. We left a quarter-inch of fat cap on:
This monster was too big to fit into smoker so we cut the brisket in half. We decided to smoke the flat first and freeze the other half. Here it is, rubbed down and ready for refrigeration:
The next day, racked on the smoker, ready to begin:
I opened the smoker a quarter of the way through the smoke (or so I thought, took an extra 3 hours more than anticipated) to baste with the drippings in the drip/water pan:
After 9 1/2 hours in the smoker and and hour rest in the cooler, I greedily pulled away the foil and was presented with a nicely barked brisket, oozing with smokey aroma:
It carved up very easily and I was pleased to see a smoke ring:
Close up w/ phone flash:
All in all we were quite pleased with the result. It was a bit dry but not overly so. You can probably tell the dryness from the close up above. Thanks all to all of the great tips I gleaned from these very forums. The smoker I was pleased with as well. I had zero problems keeping the smoke at about 225-250F throughout the entire session. I did have some problems keeping the smoke rolling out of the vents but I am confident I can solve that for the other half of this packer. I will abandon the cast iron skillet at the bottom and instead wrap the chunks in foil w/ holes and set that on the pan that came with the smoker.
Smoke On
I decided for my first smoke, I'd try my hand at a brisket. Equipment is a Masterbuilt Pro Dual Fuel, propane smoker from Home Depot. I used propane and wood chunks instead of charcoal/wood chunks.
Full packer brisket from meat shop, a little over 16lbs. I would have preferred smaller, but alas, this is the smallest they had. Not much selection here in rural NE Ohio, I was happy to find a full packer at all. Fat Cap up:
Here is the other side. Great marbling throughout:
Full packer, trimmed. My wife helped, we both had little idea what we were doing. We left a quarter-inch of fat cap on:
This monster was too big to fit into smoker so we cut the brisket in half. We decided to smoke the flat first and freeze the other half. Here it is, rubbed down and ready for refrigeration:
The next day, racked on the smoker, ready to begin:
I opened the smoker a quarter of the way through the smoke (or so I thought, took an extra 3 hours more than anticipated) to baste with the drippings in the drip/water pan:
After 9 1/2 hours in the smoker and and hour rest in the cooler, I greedily pulled away the foil and was presented with a nicely barked brisket, oozing with smokey aroma:
It carved up very easily and I was pleased to see a smoke ring:
Close up w/ phone flash:
All in all we were quite pleased with the result. It was a bit dry but not overly so. You can probably tell the dryness from the close up above. Thanks all to all of the great tips I gleaned from these very forums. The smoker I was pleased with as well. I had zero problems keeping the smoke at about 225-250F throughout the entire session. I did have some problems keeping the smoke rolling out of the vents but I am confident I can solve that for the other half of this packer. I will abandon the cast iron skillet at the bottom and instead wrap the chunks in foil w/ holes and set that on the pan that came with the smoker.
Smoke On
