Brisket Technique, Fat Side Down and Up w/ QView

[tallbm]

This past week the grocery store has/had $2.97/lb Prime Brisket (whole packers limit 1).

I got one and smoked it up! I have been doing this new "technique" for a while now and love the results. I know there is a lot of discussion about fat side up or down and often the most sensible approach is to put it fat side towards the heat source to protect the meat. That works great but randomly I sometimes have an extra crispy bit of meat on the non-fat side of the brisket that would not like to be cut through.
I'm not talking a whole section but maybe a couple of 2 inch long by 1 inch wide spots anywhere along the flat or often around the edges of the flat.

So I played around and have consistently eliminated those spots on the flat. Now any dangling, hanging, or square edges can get extra crispy but that is fine, I just want to be able to easily slice my briskets and eliminate those spots throughout the main parts of a brisket. Also a major and fun bonus, is you end up with the most awesome beef cracklings from the beef fat rendering and drying up a good bit :D

For context, I smoke my briskets UNWRAPPED the entire time at 275F and I don't open the smoker until the thermometer tells me it's time to check for tenderness. Often with BBQ, and most things in life, simplicity is best :D
This prime brisket had a LOT of fat, as a prime brisket does.
So I was able to cover the ENTIRE meat side of the brisket with trimmed fat. Normally I get choice grade and I can all of the edges of the flat muscle and a good bit of the flat muscle but not the point muscle. This is basically a rare and extreme case of being able to cover the entire meat side with trimmed fat AND the reason I thought I would take pics and post about it.
JUST KNOW, as long as you get the edges of the flat covered and the end of the flat (last 1/4 to 1/3 of the whole brisket or so) then you will get the same kind of results. The point doesn't really ever need it but hey, if you have the fat, might as well use it :D

OK enough words, here are the pics :D

(I wasn't exaggerating when I said this guy had a ton of fat. Look how the whole meat side is entirely covered and I still had 2-3 good pieces of trimmed fat to spare!

(All of the light brown pieces are the pieces of fat turned into beef cracklins, look under in the pan I smoke it over and you see all that amazing smoked and rendered tallow if you like to use it for things. The bamboo skewer is simply my tenderness tester, I just left it in because that beef cracklin was stuck to it lol)

(Here all the beef cracklins are removed and you can see the meat underneath looks fantastic. No dry spots and notice that being covered in beef fat did NOT cause any weird things to happen to the meat. Again this is smoked unwrapped the entire time at 275F smoker temp)

(Sliced brisket AND you can see all the beef cracklings at the lower 1/3rd of the pic. Eat them, give them to dogs, cook beans or anything else with them, or toss them out if you don't want them lol)

(Finally, nice close up slice pics just for tasty views)

For a while I've mentioned how I've been doing this and now you see a post of like the most extreme covering and the results. Again, if you try this you don't need to cover more than the edges of the brisket flat and whatever you can get covered towards the brisket flat and then beyond, so don't think you MUST go this extreme. Also, you know see what I mean by beef "cracklings" and just wait until you bite into a few. I don't even season them, it's just all fat and smoke flavor and whatever little bit of seasoning they may pick up from sitting on the seasoned brisket and from my hands when I am handling them and placing them on the brisket.

So if you ever wonder "fat side up or fat side down" I say, why choose. Just go with fat side up and down :D
I hope you find this post interesting and helpful should you have run into the little issues that it resolved :D

 

[SmokinEdge]

Looks good. How much smoke flavor is sacrificed? The extra fat covering the meat side blocks smoke, so how was it really flavor wise?

 

[kelbro]

Looks pretty good to me.

I tried the 'foil boat' method and it took care of those hard dry spots around the edge and the bottom. Also kept the bottom of the smoker a little cleaner.

 

[gmc2003]

Perfection on that one TB.

Point for sure
Chris

 

[tallbm]

Looks good. How much smoke flavor is sacrificed? The extra fat covering the meat side blocks smoke, so how was it really flavor wise?

Thanks! Zero smoke flavor sacrificed. I only do unwrapped though for max flavor. If it was wrapped at some point then maybe some smoke flavor would be sacrificed but that's not an experiment I'm going to risk when it comes out amazing like this lol. This is also the only brisket I've done that had the entire meat side covered. I rarely have enough fat to do more than about 80% of the brisket and I focus on the flat and edges more than the point. So this brisket showed me I can go as little or as covered as possible and no issues to worry about... other than making sure to capture all that rendered fat instead of it filling up the bottom of the smoker hahaha.

I don't check it as it's going but my alarms went off about 4 hours early due to bad probe placement and the cracklins were already formed and shrunk a good bit exposing the meat. My guess is that the fat renders enough early on and shrinks up enough early on to allow smoke all in and under and such while keeping the top basted in tallow.

I do 100% Mesquite pellets in the AMNPS for 12 hours so I'm never lacking in amazing flavor and due to it being AMNPS there is never too much smoke on this big hunk of meat :D

This pic shows all the brown color cracklins and there is plenty of gap between and under them to the meat. I pulled the rack from the smoker exactly like this, so it's exactly as it was in the smoker when it was finished.

Looks pretty good to me.

I tried the 'foil boat' method and it took care of those hard dry spots around the edge and the bottom. Also kept the bottom of the smoker a little cleaner.

Thanks! Yeah that would solve the issue for sure. I'm in love with unwrapped 100% of the smoke so landed on this approach a while back. I just wish I could go with a bigger foil pan to catch the fat rendering but bigger than this size pan drastically messes with cooking times and air flow, etc. So I capture most of the render in that pan and then a foiled drip pan gets the rest without going over.

Perfection on that one TB.

Point for sure
Chris

Thanks!

I wished it was a little big bigger but it was the best one of the 6 or so they had and turned out great :D
I like my briskets large enough to where I trim the thin meat from the flat and repurpose it, and what's left of the entire brisket is basically a hair under the size of my rack, then it shrinks about 40% as you can see by the uncooked vs cooked pics above and how the meat shrinks on the rack.

I have 3 quart bags of meat and 1 bag of cracklins vac sealed and in the freezer. Me and the girlfriend will be eating on some good brisket later this week :D