I finally got done with this smoke session, The Pork Shoulder came out great the meat mass broke in half while taking it out of the foil and the bone just slid out. The pork was delicious and perfectly seasoned and had nice smoke penetration ring . I ended up pulling the pork at 197 and only let it rest for 1/2 hour wrapped in a towel in a cooler. ( I did not see a need for a longer rest time especially since I wanted to go to sleep sometime soon )
The sad part is the brisket while is was super tender ( probe tender ) and looked great it is just flat out too salty. The recipe my wife used called for the rub and injecting it with beef broth which left it too salty for our taste. while it is delicious neither of us will be able to handle that much salt flavor (and I salt everything). I am hoping BBQ sauce will tame down the salt flavor if not I may have to cut the bark off of it to make it something we can eat. We will be searching for a different recipe the next time we do a brisket. I will post pictures in the morning
Well it wasn't a smooth ride but you had some success and learned a lot!
Briskets and especially brisket flats can be over salted a lot more easily than people think.
You can simply do a Salt, Pepper, Garlic (granulated or powder), Onion (dehydrated, minced, granulated, or powder) for a great brisket rub. No need to inject. A lot of people just go plain Salt and Pepper for briskets but I like the onion and garlic flavor, it is out of this world!
Pork ribs are SUPER EASY to over salt as well so be sure to keep that in mind when seasoning them.
An easy way to avoid over salting a cut of meat is to:
1. Shake on each seasoning SEPARATELY so you can control the amount of salt
2. DO NOT use salt PLUS any seasonings, injections, or mixes that already have salt in them (garlic salt, onion salt, a rub mixture that has salt plus salt and other seasonings). A simple rule of thumb is that if a mix/rub already has salt then do NOT add anything else that has salt in it. Let the mix/rub act as your salt component.
I'm pretty sure you can save the brisket. You might have to carve off some of the bark that has the salt but an easy way to save brisket is to throw it into a crock pot with some BBQ sauce and if it is salty add a little water. This will give you shredded/chopped BBQ brisket (chopped bbq brisket with bbq sauce mixed in is actually my favorite way to eat it).
The nice thing about doing this is that you can use water to dilute the salt and as long as you don't turn the thing into a soup you will have anything from lightly sauced BBQ brisket to heavily sauced BBQ brisket that you can even out to make great sandwiches or put on a backed potato, or put in a tortilla with pico de gallo and squeezed lime wedge juice for brisket tacos! Lots of options with brisket :)
I hope this info helps :)
