Problem Smoking A Corned Beef Flat Cut

[SkunkedAgain]

I'm interested in hearing a few opinions from all of the veteran smokers on this forum. On Sunday morning I pulled out an old flat cut of corned beef from the freezer. It was "mostly" thawed by Monday morning. My only plan was just to slow smoke this thing until an internal temp of 205. I had no specific goal such as making pastrami.

I rinsed off the meat, dried it, and put on a light dry rub. I put in my temp prob and noticed that the very center was still slightly frozen. The smoker started at 10:30am at 200 with good cherry smoke. Within 1/2 hour, the internal temp prob hit 32 degrees.

I smoked the meat most of the day at 200 degrees and then kicked it up to 225 in the late afternoon when the beef stalled at 147 degrees. It crept to an IT of 158 by 10pm. I put the temp alarm on and went to sleep and awoke this morning to a smoker still running at exactly 226 degrees and an internal temp of 171! So it smoked for 20 hours and never got much higher.

I pulled the beef out and the outside looked great. Not really knowing what to do next, I stuck it in the crock pot on low with the 1/4 cup of juice in the water pan along with maybe a 1/2 cup of orange juice.

Did I make the right move with the crock pot, and most importantly, why couldn't I get my corned beef up to an IT above 171 after 20 hours?

[McGurk]

From my limited knowledge of the "Stall", from room temp it isn't that tough to get the meat to an internal temp of around 155-165 deg, and it will sit there for a LONG time as the collagen (tough fat) turns chemically to gelatin (juicy goodness). All of the heat applied via the smoker gets taken in during that chemical reaction but the IT doesn't change, and a big hunk o' meat has a lot of collagen to change. When most of the collagen has been melted, the meat will start to take on heat again to get to the desired IT of 190-200 degrees.

In your scenario, I don't think 20 hours was that out of line being you started with a semi frozen cut of meat. What you witnessed (or didn't as you were sleeping) was an extended stall, and a few more hours may have got you where you wanted to be as I think you were just past it when you checked it today. You'll be fine with the crock pot, but the bark may not be as crusty good. One of the parts of the chemical reaction is splitting H2O into H and OH, and 225 isn't a lot of heat to work with. I try to get around 250 for my briskets, now.

I hope someone with more experience either corrects me or backs me up, as I have been wrong before.

[reinhard1]

i think you and Third Eye gave some good advice also in the thread further down the first page on this forum simply called "Brisket". you guy's are the ones to look too as far as briskets plus a couple of others. but that thread should help out also.

note to Skunked: you said corned beef brisket. is that what you have or is it a fresh beef brisket? just so we know what it is. good luck.

[LABS4ME]

I agree, it was stuck in the 'stall'. At 200 degrees (where it spent a lot of the day), it was going to take quite a while to get it up to temp and through the stall... 225 was helping but still not a lot of heat to get it over the hump. I agree, I start mine at 225 but raise it to 250 to get it throught the last few hours... Many of my briskets were 12-14 hours and they are smaller ones!

I think starting out with a frozen center also added hours to your smoke. You needed to basically finish thawing it before it even began the cooking process, all the while the outside is already cooking...

I'm sure the end result was tasty and if you really wanted it to be tender, the crock pot most likely got you there. I generally foil my brisquit for a few hours to help it through the stall... and finish it back without foil to get the outside firm up and the bark crispy again.

Good Luck!

Ken

[SkunkedAgain]

Thanks for the advice. It seems that I should have been running things a little hotter. I was just trying to go with the low and slow, but didn't realize how slow the slow would be!

Reinhard1 - this was just one of the Rainbow specials from not this St Patrick's Day but the previous one. I think that it was a Berkshire Farms or something like that, and it was 4.75lbs.

When my kid cried around 3/3:30am this morning I noticed that the IT was at 170, so when it had only risen another one degree by 6:30am I figured that it was somehow stuck in another stall. 20 hours just seemed like a long time no matter what. I'll have to check my smoking log but I think that it was up to 100 degrees by noon or 1pm, so it went up 70 degrees in 2-3 hours and took another 17-18 hours to go another 70 degrees. Oh well. I'm learning more!

[McGurk]

This does seem off for a brisket less than 5 lbs... Now it does seem very odd. I have had a large (10+lbs) done in less than 15 hours at around 250 deg . Have you checked your thermo probe in boiling water for precision? I usually check mine a couple of times a year, in boiling water looking for 212 deg (and ice water for 32 deg if it reads that low). From the NakedWhiz Brisket page:

Quote:

Next, you need to be familiar with the temperature plateau that meats like brisket and butts hit while cooking. When you cook a brisket, at first the heat absorbed by the meat is going to be used to raise the temperature of the meat. So far, no brainer, right? Well, tough pieces of muscle like brisket contain a lot of connective tissue called collagen. At around 150 to 170 degrees internal temperature, the collagen in the meat is going to be slowly converted from collagen to gelatin. While this occurs, all the heat absorbed by the meat will be used to perform this melting of collagen. During this time frame, the internal temperature of the meat will stop rising and will stay steady for a very long time. In fact, it might even drop a few degrees. Once the conversion is complete, the heat absorbed by the meat will once again be used to raised the internal temperature of the meat. This conversion process is critical in converting a tough chewy dry piece of meat into a tender and moist piece of meat.

So, it will help you greatly if you have a remote thermometer like a Polder so you can watch the internal temperature of the meat. It is critical that you do not try to raise the temperature of the cooker in order to force the meat's temperature up. This plateau is normal and to be expected. In fact, you want the plateau to last as long as you can in order to ensure that the conversion from collagen to gelatin is complete. So, while you monitor your meat's temp, don't freak when you see it hit the plateau. Don't freak when you see it stay in the plateau for many hours. Don't freak if the internal temperature of the meat actually goes down a degree or two. As long as your fire is burning like you want it to, this is all normal, so just let nature take its course. And remember, if you do it right, your brisket is going to take a long time to cook, perhaps 2 or more hours per pound.

[SkunkedAgain]

This baby should be all gelatin by now!

Last night I woke up dreaming about the meat...funny, eh? One of the thoughts in my dream was to double-check the IT with my digital kitchen thermometer. It read the same thing....171 degrees on the head.

It just all seemed weird. The thawing rule of thumb is one day for every 4lbs, so I was just shy of that mark at 4.75lbs and a 24 hour thaw. There shouldn't have been too much ice to turn this into a 20+ hour smoke.

[thirdeye]

The first thing that comes to mind is.... have you ever compared your pit thermometer with the actual temp at the grate? Usually the two readings don't agree. My Eggs are about 25 to 30 colder at the grate than up in the dome where the factory thermometer is.

This brings me to my second observation, lets say your grate temp was really 200, and your target doneness was 205, the ratio between the two is essentially 1:1. When cooking at 200, it will take forever for something to get to 200, especially with that frozen center. If your grate temp was lower than 200, you can never get your meat to 200.

Next is the stall. We all know how the stall works with raw brisket, but corned beef has been changed via the curing process. It might not react the same as raw meat.... just like a ham will cook differently than a pork roast.

How was the tenderness? And the moistness factor?

[SkunkedAgain]

Well I got home yesterday and pulled the meat out of the crock pot. I probably should have added more juice as the bark was hard and crusty (burnt). Once I sawed through the bark, the center was as tender as a prime rib. I put it in the fridge for the night and had better luck slicing it this morning. It's good but I definitely learned a lot.

Thirdeye - good points. I use one of those cheapy Masterbuilt vertical propane smokers. I've got Maverick ET372 thermometer with the probe on the grate at the same height as the meat.

I think that the biggest thing was that I should have increased the temp to 250-275 after the first few hours of smoking. I've got a bunch of notes for the next time and will NOT let the corned beef win! They've got a bunch of leftover corned beef flats at my local Rainbow so now I'll grab a few and try this again.

[SkunkedAgain]

Good news. My wife went home for lunch and tried the thick slices of corned beef. She said it was the best corned beef that she's ever tasted. That comes from a former vegan. So I didn't screw up all that bad!

[reinhard1]

trial and error and you came out great in the proccess. great news!!!good luck.

[thirdeye]

Well I got home yesterday and pulled the meat out of the crock pot. I probably should have added more juice as the bark was hard and crusty (burnt). Once I sawed through the bark, the center was as tender as a prime rib. I put it in the fridge for the night and had better luck slicing it this morning. It's good but I definitely learned a lot.

Thirdeye - good points. I use one of those cheapy Masterbuilt vertical propane smokers. I've got Maverick ET372 thermometer with the probe on the grate at the same height as the meat.

I think that the biggest thing was that I should have increased the temp to 250-275 after the first few hours of smoking. I've got a bunch of notes for the next time and will NOT let the corned beef win! They've got a bunch of leftover corned beef flats at my local Rainbow so now I'll grab a few and try this again.

Good move with the Maverick, at least you know where you are at. Another finish method is using a pressure cooker. You add 2 or 3 cups of water depending on the pressure cooker size and cook for 20+ minutes. At my elevation (5400') I pressure cook for 27 minutes and my cooker is a 15# one. Your bark will soften, so you won't need the saw Heheheeee. And you will get some wonderful liquid to cook some cabbage in. Here is a pastrami I pressure finished to give you an idea of what to expect.