Wish me luck!

[McGurk]

Smoking my first Brisket this weekend. Reading up on injections, rubs, temps, times, techniques, etc... About an 11 lb packer, probably inject/marinade Weds night , dry and rub on Thurs night, smoke all day on Friday, and a lunch meal on Sat. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[Jim Almquist]

Quote:

smoke all day on Friday

You may not have to smoke it all day but you will definitely want to slow cook it all day.

There will be some awesome bark when it comes time to do a little slicing

Sounds like a perfect day !

[heavyduty]

an address??And is it B.Y.O.B??

[McGurk]

Let me rephrase that: It will be an all day low and slow cook, with a significant portion devoted to smoking.

[Jim Almquist]

Let me rephrase that: It will be an all day low and slow cook, with a significant portion devoted to smoking.

It will turn out Great !

The very first time I tried brisket it was slow cooked in a oven and it turned out just OK but when I made my first, doing almost the same way you are doing, the flavor was so much better.

Dang 7:00 am and I want some brisket

[Ralph Wiggum]

What time should I come over? I'll bring the beer.

[reinhard1]

thats a good size brisket. sounds like you got it all down and ready to go. let us know how it turned out please. good luck.

[Harmonica Bear]

Sounds great and delicious! I'll bring the beer!

Not having done a brisket before, I am curious as to how long you plan to cook/smoke and at what temp or temps?

[McGurk]

From what I've been able to glean off of another forum that I've had great luck with, there are a couple of ways to go about it.

Slow and Low: Stay as close to 225 deg as possible, and it will typically take between 8 and 16 hours depending on the size of the brisket. You want to smoke it naked to get it to 160 deg internal, and then either wrap it in tin foil or put it in an alum. pan and cover tightly with tin foil to keep the escaping juices contained with the meat.

Keep cooking at that same temp until you get to roughly 185 deg int temp, and at that time a probe should go into any spot of the meat like going through warm butter. Then it's off to a pre-warmed cooler still in it's tin foil cocoon for another couple of hours, covered inside with old towels to take up space. Then separate it, remove and discard as much of the fat as you can, and slice it across the grain. The juice should be separated, pour off the fat, and served alongside or poured on top.

Hot and fast: Similar temp targets and technique, but run at around 280 deg, and don't remove until 200 deg int temp is reached. It can cut your cook in half, but you will lose some of the smokey flavor.

[McGurk]

Found a simple injection/ marinade, and it's sleeping in it tonight instead of over last night. I figured I'm in no rush to get it done tomorrow anyways, so I'd do a 15ish hour marinade, dry it off, apply a multi-step rub, and smoke away!

Injection/Marinade:

4 cups beef broth

1/2 cup worchestire (sp?) sauce

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp cayenne pepper

-mix, and use

Apply these in this order for a rub:

even covering of garlic pepper

even covering of montreal steak seasoning

healthy covering of a coarse ground pepper blend (includes some cayenne heat!)

I'm skipping any direct salt in this as the marinade's broth had salt in it, and both the garlic pepper and Montreal SS have salt in them.

[McGurk]

Here we go! Got her warmed and rubbed this morning, and she's now on the smoker as we speak.

^^^ Naked, and ready for rub. Wrapped the spices in saran wrap to keep them clean.

^^^ After all 3 coats, this is the "bottom" as the fat cap is down.

^^^ Fat cap up, with all of the seasoning I used.

^^^ The Smokestack, chugging away on a beautiful day.

[Harmonica Bear]

Looks great! Time for a cold one.

[reinhard1]

great job mcgurk. love that smoker. good luck.

[Jim Almquist]

Well...........

We need to know as well as a few pics of the finished product.

The before pics looked great.

[McGurk]

I know, I know... It was hectic around her for the party. I knew to expect a stall, but it was much longer than I thought! It only took about 5 hours to get to 150 deg int, and another 4 hours to get to 160! After that, it was sealed in an alum pan and tin foil to get to 195 int, which only took around 2 hours. Slicing at 2 in the morning is where I ended up. Here we go!

^^^ On the smoker, ready to be sealed up in a foil pan and tin foil to finish.

^^^ In the pan

^^^ Sliced after resting in a cooler for about 2 hours.

[Jim Almquist]

Dang!

Wipe the drool off my keyboard

That really looks GREAT !

[sweept]

Nice smoke ring and UDS

[birdswacker]

Why the saran wrap? Stupid question?

[McGurk]

Thanks, guys. I'm real glad it turned out. I think I'd add more salt to the rub sequence, and cut the Montreal SS out as none of that came through. Salt, Garlic, and pepper will be my go-tos on the next one.

Saran Wrap: It is used mainly to mimimize cross contamination, and keeping meat juices off things that you will store and use again. I'm a hands on guy when prepping meat so I'm handling spices with the same hands that are rubbing spice into the meat. After I'm done, I unwrap them, toss it, and then wash my hands. The other option is cleaning them off with soap and water.

[Jim Almquist]

Saran Wrap: It is used mainly to mimimize cross contamination, and keeping meat juices off things that you will store and use again. I'm a hands on guy when prepping meat so I'm handling spices with the same hands that are rubbing spice into the meat. After I'm done, I unwrap them, toss it, and then wash my hands. The other option is cleaning them off with soap and water.

I like those big rolls of wrap they have at Sam's. The stuff is great when you want to wrap up meat because it is so strong and it sticks to itself so much better. 1 roll will last darn near a life time

[Deitz Dittrich]

BRAVO~.. looks fantastic.....

[chaffmj]

Awesome job for your fisrt one. Looks great and you didn't need any luck.