My son graduated high school last week, and several families threw a joint party/picnic. I offered to smoke brisket and chicken for the event. I picked up 3 15 lb. packers (flat and point together) for the event. I use a SFB smoker with an upright bolted to the end. I could not fit all three packers on the side barrel, so I had to separate the flat and point of one an smoke it in the upright portion of my frankensmoker (we call her "Grillestate").
The recipe was about as simple as it gets: trim excess fat, then apply salt, pepper and smoke. No injections, rubs, sauces, or spritzes with juice. Of course, I had a water pan in the smoker to keep things moist. Below is one half of one of the packers I smoked right before foiling....
This was the first time I smoked an entire packer brisket, and I have a couple of interesting notes about my experience:
The recipe was about as simple as it gets: trim excess fat, then apply salt, pepper and smoke. No injections, rubs, sauces, or spritzes with juice. Of course, I had a water pan in the smoker to keep things moist. Below is one half of one of the packers I smoked right before foiling....
This was the first time I smoked an entire packer brisket, and I have a couple of interesting notes about my experience:
- The job was a piece of cake. No problems, no complications, really tasty outcome! One of my best friends is Jewish, and he invited me to make the brisket for his Passover celebration next year (tough to get a higher compliment, I thought)!
- They cooked way faster than many of our members' threads said they would. I maintained a really steady 225* (corroberated by 3 different thermometers), and they finished in just over 11 hours total. In fact, they hit 210* rather than the 195* I was shooting for. (BTW, they fell apart and we ate them pulled style rather than sliced.) I was expecting a 12-16 hour smoke/cook, so I was totally caught off guard.
- The plan was to place them wrapped in my cooler to rest for several hours between finishing and the party. Because they were done so quickly, I had 4 more hours in the cooler than planned, so in the cooler they sat. Man, did they stay hot! One brisket wasn't unwrapped until 14 hours after cooking, and it was still really warm, juicy, and tasty!