- Jun 28, 2015
- 483
- 296
I have had this 15.84 pound Costco Prime Brisket in the freezer since the beginning of July, waiting for me to get enough time in with the new All-Star.
Today was the day. Last night I preloaded the All-Star, and the chimney with Royal Oak Briquettes and some chunks of Pecan, Apple and Cherry scatter through out the maze.
4AM this AM, I got up, lit the chimney and once going good dumped it into the fire box, and let the smoker start preheating, while I set to trimming.
I did a pretty aggressive trim. taking nearly all the hard fat between the point and the flat, shaving off one end of the flat that was a little to thin, and part of the point that I felt would burn. When I got done I had 6.5 pounds of trimmings!, of that probably 1 pound was salvageable trimming, that I decided to pile up on a Qmatz over the top of the brisket.
Seasoned with SLPOG and let it hang out for a few minutes while I got the All-Star dialed in. For the first halve of the smoke it really liked running at 237.
6AM the brisket when in, it took a bit to recover from that massive hunk of cold thermal mass, but once it did the All-Star hummed along in the 235-243 sweet spot.
I am still having some issues with both sides of the maze getting lit, even though I covered the second side with foil, look like it actually lit from underneath, I am wondering if my grate doesn't have a dip that is letting the heat get to the second side. Nice thing is even with both sides of the maze involved I am still have to maintain a nice temp and clean smoke, for about 5 hours.
At 11AM brisket hit 160, and was looking pretty, so I wrapped in peach paper, charcoal was getting low at this point, so I closed the damper between firebox and smoker (one of the things I love about the All-Star) so I could rake up what remained of the coals into one end of the maze, without getting ash all over the smoke box. Then I reloaded the maze to send her back around the other way.
I didn't do a good job with the maze reload and had the whole fire box involved in short order, but again because of the full width firebox and damper between it and the smoke box, I am still able to maintain a low smoker box temp, so I let it right between 245-255, the whole time it was wrapped.
The thing shot up like a rocket once wrapped, and to my surprise hit 198 at 1:30. I checked it and it was wiggly but not jello, and had a bit of tug to the probe still. My plan was to let it ride another 30-45 minutes. but when I checked the fire box, there were only 5 or 6 little half nuggets. It must have hit 198 at right about the time the smoker temp was about to start dropping.
At this point I panicked a bit, blame it on lack of sleep, shock at being at this point in the smoke, way ahead of schedule, or just the fact that I am a bone head. I would have had to build a "new" fire, and by the time I got everything recovered I figured brisket would have lost momentum anyway, so I went ahead and pulled it.
Somewhat of a mistake #2. The paper was soaked and had quite a bit of liquid in it, and after fiddling with it probing etc. it and my prep table were a mess and I didn't want to make a mess in my cooler, so I tossed the paper and foiled it to rest. I really lost a lot of heat in that whole process, especially seeing as how it need to cook just a touch more, I think I should have left it in the paper, wrapped the paper with foil, to hold more heat and keep down the mess, and stuck it in the cooler.
I let it rest for 2 hours in the cooler, then popped it (still in foil) in 350 over for 1 hour. I have never "finished" one in the oven before so I was a bit clueless at this point.
After an hour in the over I pulled it, this shot is on fresh paper which is why there dry paper in the shot.
When I wrapped the brisket, I also pulled the Qmatz that had the bit of decent trimming on them. Of course they were tough but I could tell flavor wise this was going to be a GOOD ONE. I cubed the trimming up into 1/4 - 1/2 cubes (let's call it mini burnt ends), and ended up with maybe to big hand fulls of meat, I wrapped that in foil to hold for later.
About 1 hour into the rest, I put the mini burnt ends in a pan on the stove with some Sweet Baby Rays to let them cook down, after a couple of hours, I dumped a can of Bush's original in and let it continue to simmer. That's it, no other seasoning, nothing, figurged the bark from the brisket pieces was all the seasoning I needed.
Sliced up the brisket. Unbelievable juicy, I tried to get a video showing the juice dripping out of the slices, but the light in my MIL's kitchen sucks! It was very tender, but didn't quite pass the tug test, you have to give it a touch more of a tug for it to break apart than you should.
I did fat cap up, I had original planned on doing down, because the configuration of the All-Star is kind of like a vertical offset, so the hit comes from underneath. But for some reason when I didn't stick to the plan this AM. It wasn't bad by any means, but there was just enough crispy that some of the slices didn't slice clean because that bottom 1/8 inch wan't to pull instead of slice.
And the money shots, some slices from the flat, and a meal fit for a king served on fine china. You might notice the king got a point slice on his plate :-) And those beans, wow, can't believe how good they were for what little effort I put into them!
So definitely my best brisket to date, tender, juicy, and smacks you in the face with beef flavor, credit the Prime brisket, the All-Star, and just a touch of me, but still room for improvement.
Bonus Question if you are still with me: Those of you that wrap in paper, and cook to probe tender. What is your process? Do you probe through the paper? It felt almost like thick plastic and would seem to interfere with probing for tenderness. Or do you open the paper to probe? And if it needs more do you just close it back up, run it naked from there (I suspect it cools off to much if you do) or ? Guess my question is how do you wrap and probe for tender, and not make a mess, spend to much time with smoker open, lose momentum, etc.
Today was the day. Last night I preloaded the All-Star, and the chimney with Royal Oak Briquettes and some chunks of Pecan, Apple and Cherry scatter through out the maze.
4AM this AM, I got up, lit the chimney and once going good dumped it into the fire box, and let the smoker start preheating, while I set to trimming.
I did a pretty aggressive trim. taking nearly all the hard fat between the point and the flat, shaving off one end of the flat that was a little to thin, and part of the point that I felt would burn. When I got done I had 6.5 pounds of trimmings!, of that probably 1 pound was salvageable trimming, that I decided to pile up on a Qmatz over the top of the brisket.
Seasoned with SLPOG and let it hang out for a few minutes while I got the All-Star dialed in. For the first halve of the smoke it really liked running at 237.
6AM the brisket when in, it took a bit to recover from that massive hunk of cold thermal mass, but once it did the All-Star hummed along in the 235-243 sweet spot.
I am still having some issues with both sides of the maze getting lit, even though I covered the second side with foil, look like it actually lit from underneath, I am wondering if my grate doesn't have a dip that is letting the heat get to the second side. Nice thing is even with both sides of the maze involved I am still have to maintain a nice temp and clean smoke, for about 5 hours.
At 11AM brisket hit 160, and was looking pretty, so I wrapped in peach paper, charcoal was getting low at this point, so I closed the damper between firebox and smoker (one of the things I love about the All-Star) so I could rake up what remained of the coals into one end of the maze, without getting ash all over the smoke box. Then I reloaded the maze to send her back around the other way.
I didn't do a good job with the maze reload and had the whole fire box involved in short order, but again because of the full width firebox and damper between it and the smoke box, I am still able to maintain a low smoker box temp, so I let it right between 245-255, the whole time it was wrapped.
The thing shot up like a rocket once wrapped, and to my surprise hit 198 at 1:30. I checked it and it was wiggly but not jello, and had a bit of tug to the probe still. My plan was to let it ride another 30-45 minutes. but when I checked the fire box, there were only 5 or 6 little half nuggets. It must have hit 198 at right about the time the smoker temp was about to start dropping.
At this point I panicked a bit, blame it on lack of sleep, shock at being at this point in the smoke, way ahead of schedule, or just the fact that I am a bone head. I would have had to build a "new" fire, and by the time I got everything recovered I figured brisket would have lost momentum anyway, so I went ahead and pulled it.
Somewhat of a mistake #2. The paper was soaked and had quite a bit of liquid in it, and after fiddling with it probing etc. it and my prep table were a mess and I didn't want to make a mess in my cooler, so I tossed the paper and foiled it to rest. I really lost a lot of heat in that whole process, especially seeing as how it need to cook just a touch more, I think I should have left it in the paper, wrapped the paper with foil, to hold more heat and keep down the mess, and stuck it in the cooler.
I let it rest for 2 hours in the cooler, then popped it (still in foil) in 350 over for 1 hour. I have never "finished" one in the oven before so I was a bit clueless at this point.
After an hour in the over I pulled it, this shot is on fresh paper which is why there dry paper in the shot.
When I wrapped the brisket, I also pulled the Qmatz that had the bit of decent trimming on them. Of course they were tough but I could tell flavor wise this was going to be a GOOD ONE. I cubed the trimming up into 1/4 - 1/2 cubes (let's call it mini burnt ends), and ended up with maybe to big hand fulls of meat, I wrapped that in foil to hold for later.
About 1 hour into the rest, I put the mini burnt ends in a pan on the stove with some Sweet Baby Rays to let them cook down, after a couple of hours, I dumped a can of Bush's original in and let it continue to simmer. That's it, no other seasoning, nothing, figurged the bark from the brisket pieces was all the seasoning I needed.
Sliced up the brisket. Unbelievable juicy, I tried to get a video showing the juice dripping out of the slices, but the light in my MIL's kitchen sucks! It was very tender, but didn't quite pass the tug test, you have to give it a touch more of a tug for it to break apart than you should.
I did fat cap up, I had original planned on doing down, because the configuration of the All-Star is kind of like a vertical offset, so the hit comes from underneath. But for some reason when I didn't stick to the plan this AM. It wasn't bad by any means, but there was just enough crispy that some of the slices didn't slice clean because that bottom 1/8 inch wan't to pull instead of slice.
And the money shots, some slices from the flat, and a meal fit for a king served on fine china. You might notice the king got a point slice on his plate :-) And those beans, wow, can't believe how good they were for what little effort I put into them!
So definitely my best brisket to date, tender, juicy, and smacks you in the face with beef flavor, credit the Prime brisket, the All-Star, and just a touch of me, but still room for improvement.
Bonus Question if you are still with me: Those of you that wrap in paper, and cook to probe tender. What is your process? Do you probe through the paper? It felt almost like thick plastic and would seem to interfere with probing for tenderness. Or do you open the paper to probe? And if it needs more do you just close it back up, run it naked from there (I suspect it cools off to much if you do) or ? Guess my question is how do you wrap and probe for tender, and not make a mess, spend to much time with smoker open, lose momentum, etc.
