My wife made some delicious sweet and spicy pickles this week. Nothing goes better with them than a Texas style brisket.
I called around to the markets where I can usually get either a choice brisket or an Angus brisket. Only flats were available and I really like the fatty point. That meant getting a select brisket from Walmart. They only had one and I couldn’t see a single stripe of fat in it. Not a good sign.
Almost walked away, and should have. I got it home and trimmed it up. What it lacked in “good” fat in the meat it made up with that rock hard type of fat that never renders. Plus, whoever did the trim did such a bad job I had to cut away probably 3 pounds of brisket to get a decent shape.
“O’k, I can fix this.” I thought to myself. I mixed up a batch of Butchers Prime Brisket injection. It is filled with phosphates to tenderize meat. Went to inject and the needle bent trying to penetrate the brisket at the point! Changed needles and injected with the grain instead of across the grain. Plumped it up with a full 2 cups of liquid. “That’ll fix it.”, Says I.
Seasoned it and threw it into my Stump’s set to 190° at 10:00 pm. Got up at 4:00 am to replenish the charcoal and went back to bed. I have cooked briskets using this method many times. It has never failed and always insures that it will be done by dinnertime. Side note for those of you that are about to comment on cooking a brisket at such a low temperature. When I obtained my first stick burner in Texas, John Willingham was the king of BBQ, the Myron Mixon of that time. He advocated smoking almost everything at 185° for long, long times.
At 8:00 am, 10 hours into the cook, I wrapped it in pink butcher paper. Stuck a temp. probe in the flat and one in the point. The point was still as hard as clay. Left the pit temp. at 190°. Figured that around 12:00 pm I would bump up the temp of the pit to 250°, and expected another 3-4 hours of cook time before resting.
At 2:30 (16 ½ hours of cooking) the meat was at 200°, time to take a look and give it a probe. At this point the butcher paper should be soaked in juice and melted fat. Nope, only a little bit on the bottom half. At 2:50 hit 203°, felt like I was sticking the probe into clay. Figured it wasn’t going to get any better so, pulled it and wrapped it in tin foil to let it rest a couple of hours.
Unwrapped it at 5:00. Not even a hint of jiggle. Cutting into it, even the point was a dried out piece of jerky. Good flavor though, as long as you soaked it in bbq sauce and pretended it was a whole brisket of burnt ends.
So, the point is, some briskets just can’t be tamed. I doubt that even Aaron Franklin would have had any luck with this one
.
Waiting for brisket to cook is not like waiting for paint to dry. Briskets take longer.
Four months from order to delivery because of Covid.
I called around to the markets where I can usually get either a choice brisket or an Angus brisket. Only flats were available and I really like the fatty point. That meant getting a select brisket from Walmart. They only had one and I couldn’t see a single stripe of fat in it. Not a good sign.
Almost walked away, and should have. I got it home and trimmed it up. What it lacked in “good” fat in the meat it made up with that rock hard type of fat that never renders. Plus, whoever did the trim did such a bad job I had to cut away probably 3 pounds of brisket to get a decent shape.
“O’k, I can fix this.” I thought to myself. I mixed up a batch of Butchers Prime Brisket injection. It is filled with phosphates to tenderize meat. Went to inject and the needle bent trying to penetrate the brisket at the point! Changed needles and injected with the grain instead of across the grain. Plumped it up with a full 2 cups of liquid. “That’ll fix it.”, Says I.
Seasoned it and threw it into my Stump’s set to 190° at 10:00 pm. Got up at 4:00 am to replenish the charcoal and went back to bed. I have cooked briskets using this method many times. It has never failed and always insures that it will be done by dinnertime. Side note for those of you that are about to comment on cooking a brisket at such a low temperature. When I obtained my first stick burner in Texas, John Willingham was the king of BBQ, the Myron Mixon of that time. He advocated smoking almost everything at 185° for long, long times.
At 8:00 am, 10 hours into the cook, I wrapped it in pink butcher paper. Stuck a temp. probe in the flat and one in the point. The point was still as hard as clay. Left the pit temp. at 190°. Figured that around 12:00 pm I would bump up the temp of the pit to 250°, and expected another 3-4 hours of cook time before resting.
At 2:30 (16 ½ hours of cooking) the meat was at 200°, time to take a look and give it a probe. At this point the butcher paper should be soaked in juice and melted fat. Nope, only a little bit on the bottom half. At 2:50 hit 203°, felt like I was sticking the probe into clay. Figured it wasn’t going to get any better so, pulled it and wrapped it in tin foil to let it rest a couple of hours.
Unwrapped it at 5:00. Not even a hint of jiggle. Cutting into it, even the point was a dried out piece of jerky. Good flavor though, as long as you soaked it in bbq sauce and pretended it was a whole brisket of burnt ends.
So, the point is, some briskets just can’t be tamed. I doubt that even Aaron Franklin would have had any luck with this one
.
Waiting for brisket to cook is not like waiting for paint to dry. Briskets take longer.
Four months from order to delivery because of Covid.