Quote:
Originally Posted by cdcox
I cooked the first 3 hours directly on the grate without basting. At the end of 3 hours, I would estimate that no more than 2 T of liquid was sitting in the bottom of the smoker. None had dripped out the grease trap at all. So a foil pan would not have done anything except block smoke. Internal temp of the meat was 150F.
I then wrapped it in two layers of HD aluminum foil. It came up to 195 very quickly, about 45 minutes. I didn't look at the smoker temp very much during this time, but I would guess it averaged around 250.
Once it reached 195, I wrapped it in a towel and put it in my playmate cooler. I left the thermometer in so I could monitor the temp. After about 40 minutes it had dropped to 175 or so. I boiled some water and put the pot on top of the brisket and closed the cooler. It was in the cooler for about 3 hours and didn't ended at 165.
When I pulled it out of the cooler to slice, I drained about 2 cups of liquid from the foiled brisket. This all came from the meat since I didn't add a drop of liquid. I'm going to save this smoky, spicy wonderfulness for some kind of soup or chili.
All of the meat had excellent smoky flavor. The smoke ring penetrates a full 1/4 inch into the meat. The point (what little there was) was cooked to perfection (tender, juicy, smoky). I've only cut up part of the flat. It has great flavor, adequate moisture (not juicy, not dry), and is fairly tender. In the past, I've cooked a brisket for 18 hours and the flat was just about falling apart. The brisket I cooked today still has most of it's connective tissue. I'd say the connective tissue in the flat is the biggest difference between this brisket and the 18-hour brisket. Considering I'm done eating and the 18-hr version would still have 9 hours or so to go, this was a pretty fair trade off.
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Great info, cd. An excellent report, as I knew it would be.
Definitely save that juice. Another use could be BBQ sauce. I loves me some brisket drippings in my sauce.
I was planning on smoking ribs tomorrow but this thread got me thinking brisket.....so I'll do both, right?
No point in firing up a smoker if you're not going to use up all the smoke.
Might as well put some beans on there too.