brisket

[salmonclubber]

hello everyone today i am doing a brisket got up early around 5 am put the brisket in the smoker also have some brats in the cooler for later i might even throw on a couple of fattys you guys keep talking about hope you all have a good fourth of july

 

[wynn_richards]

I thought I smelled smothing really good!!! Have a great 4th!

Wynn

 

[senor harv]

Lets talk brisket. How about step by step by size . Everyone submit ur best and I will use the best one, Deal? I'll be waiting, thanks

 

[senor harv]

Brisket, hey I'm still waiting. I suppose everyone has gone back to work. As 4 me, I try not to do that anymore. Later

 

[shaneholz]

Senor,
I'm no master but I've done about 12 already this year and they are coming out perfect now everytime. I start out buying a full packer brisket. They usually come packed like bulk meat and in the 10-15 lb range. I try to find the one that bends the most when I hang on to one end. They usually are more tender. I don't trim any of the fat off mine until done. I do cut slits in the fat to help with the rub. I usually rub mine Thursday afternoon so I'm ready for either a Sat. morning or a Sun. morning date with the smoker. I place mine in tin foil pan for the whole time. (I know people are groaning right now.) I find that it is more tender when its cooking in its own juices the whole time. I do put about half a can of beer and a little bit of Apple Juice in the pan. I fire the cooker up at 225 and put in the meat. After about a hour I pull it out and flip it. I do this a couple times during the first four hours then I make sure I end up fat cap up. Then It is just a waiting game. I seldom mop after the first four hours until the meat gets to 180 then I mop every 30 min. I cook mine till the internal temp reaches 198 so that way I guarantee it's ready to be pulled into chunks and thrown in a roaster. If you want it slicable I'd pull it at about 185. I do normally wrap in foil and hold in cooler till ready to eat. About 2 hours. This will bring the juices back into the meat so you dont lose them when you cut into it. Well my hands are getting tired so I might have missed something. If anyone else has anything to add, Pipe up. Keep on smoking Harv

 

[senor harv]

Thank you very much, gonna try it Sr. Harv

 

[senor harv]

P/S how many good ole boys will this feed?

 

[shaneholz]

Well I personally am 6' 250 and alot of my friends are also. I enjoy haveing left overs but one ten pounder will feed at least 6-8 big eaters. I always throw on a couple Pork Butts when I'm doing a brisket. I love the way the pork comes out and all the stuff you can do with it. My smoker was loaded so much last weekend (yeah all weekend) That I don't think I could have fit a hot dog in it if I wanted to. But I've been having Brisket and Pork sandwhiches here at work all week so far. Everybody loves the first of the week here at work. Ha Ha

 

[gene reda]

Took the ride to Middletown NY to the Walmart SuperCenter there to pick up a 12 pound Packer Cut Brisket today. This is the first Brisket that I have tried since getting the GOSM Big Block, and I figured it would be a great chance to try out the Maverick Remote Thermometer on an extended cook. Estimating things at 1.5 hours per pound at 235*, it looks like I will have 18 hours of smoker time and then another three hours in the cooler to let it rest.

Figure I will start smoking about 8:00PM tomorrow (Saturday) night after letting it juice up good for 12 hours with a rubbing at 7:00 AM tomorrow. That should get me into eating time around 5:00 on Sunday! I figure on foiling it up with some apple juice once it hits about 155* to 160* or so and then letting it cook until it reaches 195* since I want to be able to slice it. Any suggestions or comments would be welcome since Brisket is a new adventure for me.

 

[gene reda]

The only problem with long smokes here in Northwestern NJ, believe it or not, are the bears. We live around a few thousand acres of watershed property that has the highest Bear Population per acre of probably anywhere since they have almost no where else to go in this state that isn't developed.

Consequently they are always around looking for handouts, garbage (or grills and smokers) to get into. I always make sure that I remove and clean the grates and the water tray after smoking, but on these long overnight smokes it can get a bit tense when the bears are around. There is a big (has to go at least 350#) or so male that when he stands on his hind legs is almost as tall as my shed that has scared the cr-p out of me more than once!

Ever since they stopped the bear hunts here, they have no fear of people and just stand there looking at you when you yell at them to try and scare them off. They have actually had three bears break into houses while people were home this year looking for food. I might just bring a side arm out with me when I go to check on things during the night, I'd love to have the chance to take care of him one of and try that smoked bear recipe!
. My biggest concern is that one of these days he will just swat at the smoker and knock it over and cause a fire, or worse, eat whatever I am smoking at the time.

 

[gene reda]

Hi All,

Anyone still up out there? There has to be someone else on a long smoke tonight.

Just about four hours into a 17 or 18 hour brisket smoke, and fortunately the bear hasn't shown up yet. I'd love to get some pictures of him to post tonight...standing next to the smoker perhaps, and hopefully not eating out of the smoker...LOL!

Got a couple fatties ready to go in early morning for breakfast. You guys have really made me look forward to breakfast tomorrow morning with some of the wonderful posts about smoking fatties. Well, temps all look good, firebox is refilled and the hi/lo alarms are set on the thermometer, so I think I will try to catch a few hours of sleep while I can.

Buy maybe just one more beer....

 

[TulsaJeff]

I am not smoking anything tonight.. I am a little envious of you... I had too many honey do stuff today to fire up the smoker.

I am not wishing for you to see that bear but if you do I sure would like to see a picture of it :shock:

Keep that hunting rifle close by.. and the camera

Have a good night and may your brisket be the best yet!!!

 

[gene reda]

Hi Jeff,

I am actually happy to say that the bear never showed up last night, although the dogs around the neighborhood began barking about 2 AM which is usually the first sign that they around!

I have a question about the brisket. I started with a 12# brisket which I expected to finish at 185* to 190* early this afternoon based upon the average of 1.5 hours per pound that I had heard. I put it in at 8PM last night at 235* and it hit 160* at 5:00 AM at which time I put it in a foil tray and poured in the apple juice and covered it with foil and returned it to the smoker. The smoker held pretty steady at between 128* and 139* all night with some tending, but the brisket hit 190* at 8AM which really surprised me. I took it out and took the foil off to double check the temps with my other instant read meat thermometer and it was dead on 190* everywhere I checked! I wrapped it up tightly again and put it into a cooler filled with damp towels and crumpled up newspaper and closed it up tightly. I was figuring on eating at 5PM based upon the time estimates I used...will this hold until then, or should I hold it until about 4:00 and then just stick the covered foil tray back in the smoker just to heat it up a bit again before eating? Not sure why this finished so quickly since the temps were right around 235* all night...It does look and smell great at this point, and I can't wait to try it later. I'll be taking the fatties out in a few minutes to get breakfast going for the wife and kids...wish you could join us.

I would appreciate your thoughts on the cooking time/temps (or anyone else's also).

 

[TulsaJeff]

All pieces of meat have a personality of their own and it all depends on the tenderness of the meat... how tightly the protein strands are wrapped, the age of the animal it came from, etc. and that is what makes smoking meat so special. It is not a cookie cutter situation.

I would put it in a large cooler (leave the thermometer attached so you can monitor the temp throughout the day) place a blanket on the bottom of the cooler, place the double wrapped brisket on top of the blanket then put pillows on top of the brisket to finish filling the cooler, then shut the lid and keep it shut.

It will hold for 5 or 6 hours that way most likely.. if the temp drops below 140 you must remove it and either place it in the fridge or put it in a heated environment to keep it above 140 degrees.. the safe zone.

It may hold until 5 if you can insulate it well enough but it is not likely.. I do not believe I have ever tried to hold one that long... give it a shot.

Keep us posted on how it does!

 

[gene reda]

Jeff,

You were on the money with your guess that it would not hold that long. When I saw the temps start to drop in the early afternoon, I took the brisket out of the cooler and split the point muscle from the flat and put both in the fridge to cool. I then put the flat back in the smoker at 4:00 in foil with the juice from cooking and some more apple juice and heated it up for eating at 5:00. It was perfect, moist and very tender...able to cut it with a fork. Thanks for the help!

Figured it was about time I tried to smoke a brisket!

 

[hoosiersmoker]

I guess this is sort of a cross post since it's about a brisket and a pork sholder (Our stores call them pinics?) on an off-set chrcoal smoker. My mother-in-law hurt herself this week and was unable to cook much, so I volunteered some pulled pork and brisket to get her by for a couple of days. I used a typical mop with lots of minced onion. I used hickory, oak, and charcoal. Started at about 10:00 am and put it in the fridge at mid-night. I've made some mod's to the bottom of my Smoke 'N Pit Pro and raised it up about 10" with some wheels and feet with a new expanded metal rack to keep wood and stuff on. I think grill manufacturers assume that everyone that grills is only 4 ft tall. Any way, I recommended that she not sauce the brisket until they try it. So far, I haven't had the chance to talk to her, so I'll lat you know how she liked it. I do see how one could find themselves needing a larger more self contained and adjustable smoker but I still love my Brinkman. I think you can actually taste the effort that goes into the smoke. I'm trying to figure out how to post some of the pics but the files are too big. I've set the image quality down on the camera but the images I already have are still too big. Is there any easy way to make the image files smaller?

 

[grunt]

hossiersmoker,
If you have some photo editing software it should be fairly simple. First crop the photo to get just what you want in the frame. Then there will be an action for resize. Resize the pic to about 400 pixels wide, that is a good size for forum software like this and the size of the file will be much much smaller.


Regards,

Nick

 

[nwsolarjohn]

Give this a try for working with dig photos.

The easiest photo editor I have is CompuPic the full version is $39.95. You can download the 30 day trail free at:

https://www.photodex.com/secure/order.cgi?oem=0100

John

 

[senor harv]

IrfanView,easiest way is to download this. Then you can resize anything or most anything. Note: Still take your pictures with the largest image( to get best quality) then down size it for your application. You can go smaller but sometimes you cannot go larger and keep quality, these are things I have learned anyway. Later Sr. Harv

 

[grunt]

here's one that is 400pixels x 284 pixels. Sorry I don't have any pictures of tasty animals fresh from the smoker yet :D The file size is 21675 bytes

Nick