As this thread shows, ask five pitmasters a question, and you’ll get ten answers.
@Shalmanese basically said what I would have said, and even more. I would also add that collagen aids in the perception of juiciness, but I think that was implied by the paragraph detailing the collagen to gelatin conversion process.
Cooking to temp, indeed, is just one of a number of cues. I find my briskets usually finish at around 195-7, but I’ve had them finish around 203 or so. I don’t think I’ve had one need all the way to 205, but I’ve only done like a couple dozen briskets. (They’re a lot of meat!)
I have found that getting whole packer cuts (flat + point) cook up better than just a plain flat. I’ve had issues with getting the flat right when I do it alone that I don’t have when smoking the whole cut. Point alone is fine, though. I like to get the prime brisket packer cuts at Costco, which are usually cheaper per pound than their choice flats.
As for cooking temp, I do mine at 275-285, which is the temp range my Weber Smokey Mountain settles in. I like them at a slightly higher temp. I have never had any issue with getting them moist. There are people who do their briskets even higher, 325-375, with great results, but we’re straying away from barbecue there into grilling. You can make good brisket at 225 or 325.
Fat side up or down never made a difference to me that I could see. I like to do fat side up as it’s a little easier to get off the grates cleanly.
On the second clause: in this thread, with gracious participation by some of the greatest minds on the Internet (no snark), we’ve had votes that I’ve overcooked it and some that said I’ve undercooked it.
And for the first: this is the “cop out” I referenced in my OP: the brisket is from Restaurant Depot (it’s halal), and while I usually have good experiences with their poultry, their beef can be hit-or-miss. Whether, or how much, of the dryness was due to a poor cut of meat is unknown, but since at least one poster has mentioned it, I guess it’s a possibility. I will note that the fat cap had already been trimmed down to 1/4 inch or less; my plan was to leave about a half-inch, per Internet Wisdom.
I’ve had my Traeger smoker for about a year and a half (seems longer), and I’ve had thrilling results with everything: whole chickens; cut-up chickens; chicken wings; lamb roasts; beef roasts; turkeys. Everything’s been super-flavorful, naturally, and nothing (including the roasts) were dry.
This is probably my last attempt at a brisket - way too much work, money, and time for an unpredictable (for me) result. My hesitancy is made that much worse by the wide variety of often-conflicting guidance (not directed at SDMB), diminishing hopes that I will improve.
Quarter inch is fine. Brisket is tricky. I’ve followed the exact same cooking procedure and one time my brisket may be heavenly, and another time, just okay. The cut of meat does make a difference, in my experience. I’ve had the same with pork. Pork is much more foolproof, but even I’ve had a pulled pork every once in awhile that is not quite as moist as one I’ve previously made. Or – more commonly – where one part of the Boston butt is cooked beautifully and moist, and another part is a little drier. And you can see on the meat where the meat changes.
With brisket, I do actually find it helpful to foil (“Texas crutch”) for part of the cooking time. My best brisket was made without using the crutch, but I’ve had more consistent results by crutching it. I know I’ve heard that Franklin Barbecue coats its brisket with a bit of beef tallow before wrapping it in butcher paper at the end to rest. I’ve never tried that, but my brother has and said it produced extra succulent results – but the base meat has to be cooked properly to begin with it. If it’s dry, you’ll just have fatty dry brisket.
Undercooked brisket will be tough. It may technically be “dry” as well but a very different type of dry from overcooked brisket. In any case, it’s extremely obvious if a brisket is undercooked.
There’s two types of fat on a brisket: Intermuscular fat are the large fat layers and they become chunks of fat in the final brisket and don’t noticeably affect juiciness. Intramuscular fat, aka, marbling is what you need to look for in a good brisket.
I agree, brisket is severely overrated. Plate/dino/short ribs are basically everything you love in a brisket in a more convenient package, without most of the downsides. It’s easier to gauge marbling, can be easily scaled down to 1 - 2 servings, you get your choice of bark:meat ratio and I find it tastier. Depending on where you live, it might be a little bit pricier but if you’re committing 6 - 8 hours for a meal, spending a bit more for avoiding the risk of disappointment is worth it IMHO.
I smoke brisket about 20 times a year (sometimes up to 4 at a time) and honestly have never seen fat-side up or down make too much of a difference either way.
Usually the reason I’ve found for a dry brisket is not smoking long enough. I always shoot for an internal temperature of 200-205F, which for larger cuts could take somewhere around 18-20 hours. I also make sure to let the meat rest in a cooler for a couple of hours and lower down to 160F before serving.
I don’t do brisket that often, maybe once a year, but when I do, I use the method described here:
with good results. (I don’t use their rub, though.)
Primary differences from your technique are wrapping in foil with a 1/2 cup of liquid (Texas crutch), and no pit temperature rise at the end. This one is fat side down, for the record.
I suspect, like many have said, that the temp rise at the end was your problem. I’ve done the same thing to a pork butt. I once had a stubborn butt that was stalled at the 160ish point longer than normal, with company on the way over. I raised the pit temperature hoping to cook it more quickly, and did get it to 200ish in time to serve. However, the texture was more like dry pork roast than the pulled pork I wanted. Yeah, the increased pit temperature forced the meat to the target temperature, but it didn’t allow the fat and collagen time to render completely.
I made a pork butt in the oven today (didn’t have time to get the wood out, start a fire, and all that --dry rub, roasted uncovered on a rack over a pan of water to catch the rendering fat), and I did about 5 hours at 250 and 3 hours to finish at 300 (in order to get the temp up in time for serving. This was like a half butt, around 4 pounds.) The butt was nice and slumpy and looking exactly like it should when the temp read about 196 inside. Foiled for an hour and served. Perfect! I’ve never had an issue cooking at temperatures up to 300 (never really tried to go beyond that.) In fact, I’d say the pork comes out moister when I do it on my Weber Smokey mountain at 275-285 as opposed to trying to keep it at 225 to 250. An 8-pound but will finish in about 6, maybe 7 hours, so perhaps it runs a tad bit hotter even. I only once used a grate thermometer years ago, which is where I get my estimate from. My brisket – a full packer cut, finishes in 8-10 hours. (When I got married [morning ceremony, lunch reception], I threw a brisket on the smoker early in the morning, filled the charcoal ring as high as I could, and let it smoke untended at whatever temp it felt like. We must have been gone about 10 hours. There was an after party at my house, the fire was pretty much dead, but the brisket was cooked, and fantastic.)
Ditto the fat-side up. Also you didn’t say if you trimmed any fat. If you did, you may have trimmed too much off. I know a lot of people spray their brisket with apple juice to keep it moist and a couple of youtubers I see are putting beef tallow in the foil/paper to keep it moist.
My friend’s brother used to be married to a Korean woman, and she made some fantastic Kalbi. I tried to make them once using her recipe, but I couldn’t find Korean-style cuts of short rib (American-style is much thicker. For the Korean style cut you have to go to an Asian market or special-order from a butcher) and it just wasn’t the same. The thin Korean-style cut allows more marinade flavor per surface area, and they’re really grilled rather than barbequed.
But I wonder, if I was to use American-style beef ribs, lengthen the marinade time (maybe over several days, like sauerbraten) and slow-smoke the ribs, maybe it would result in some Korean-American style fusion magic…(?)
If I may expand the thread a bit - has anyone tried sous vide brisket, followed by smoking? I’ve done it 3 times, using the Serious eats recipe and the Ballistic Barbecue recipe - both essentially the same, clean up, season, sous vide at 155 for 24 hours, then 3 hour smoke. I’ve done it 3 times, and every time the brisket comes out dry. I’ve determined it’s not the smoking step - for the last 2, I cut into the brisket before smoking and there’s very little moisture in the meat. There’s also a lot of liquid in the bag after sous vide. Anyone else have this issue?
I have not, but I have to say, I admire your stubbornness-- you use a cooking process that takes more than twice as long as smoking alone, get inferior results twice in a row, and say dammit, I’m gonna try this one…more…time!
lifehacker used to have an ongoing article series called “Will it sous vide?”. There’s an article on sous vide-ing a brisket with reportedly great results that you may find interesting, though no second smoking step, and mustard and liquids were added:
All I have to smoke with is a Weber kettle grill. I had made pulled pork from a Boston butt on it a few times in the past, and got pretty good results, but you really have to babysit a kettle to keep the temperature constant - 3 hours for ribs is OK, 12+ hours for a whole butt, not so much.
When I got a sous vide wand, I tried making pulled pork with that. I found I got better results with a lot less effort. Sure, it takes longer, but I much prefer 24 hours of unattended cooking than 12 hours of having to check every 30 minutes or so.
So I thought I’d try brisket with the same method. If I can’t get it to work, I’ll give up on brisket, since I’m not going back to standing over a Weber for 14 hours again. And FWIW, the flavor is perfectly fine, and for the past 2 I’ve gone to saving the liquid from the sous vide bag and basting the sliced brisket, so it’s adequately moist. I was just hoping I could get to the point I see in youtube videos where it’s full of juices when you slice it.
You can get good BBQ / smoking results with a Weber kettle if you’re careful and creative. I saw an interesting episode of America’s Test Kitchen where, true to their exacting style, the person who came up with it must have OCD. He said to take exactly 58 charcoal briquettes (I may have the number wrong from memory, but it was something exact like that), lay the briquettes overlapping in a circle along the outside of the kettle grill in two rows, so it almost, but not quite, forms a complete circle. Get just a few charcoals lit, and put them at one end of the semicircle. They’ll catch on the other coals gradually around the circle, minion method style. Put a foil pan in the center with brisket on the top grill over it.
Never tried it myself, because I have a Weber Smoky Mountain bullet-style smoker, so no need to. But it was a very intriguing idea. It didn’t account for wood for smoking, but you could probably put pieces of smoking wood along the coal circle at strategic points. Also, I don’t remember if they used a whole brisket or just a flat, but I’m thinking a whole brisket wouldn’t fit and would take too long.
Going a bit beyond the OP and delving into BBQ theory:
If you understand the theory, then you can smoke in some rather improvised ways. I can’t find a picture of the thing, but we went RV camping with some friends back in '07 and all we had was one of those cheap little camping grills. I could just fit a four or five pound pork butt in it (not a full butt.) I built a small fire off to one side, put a water pan under the pork on the other side, and built a little bit of a foil barrier between the two halves of the grill to buffer the heat a bit. I also propped up the side where the pork was a tiny bit for airflow across the meat, rather than up and out. It took a lot of babysitting. Constant re-stocking of the coals every half hour to hour (with a little bit of wood for the first four hours or so – not too much – you don’t want to choke the thing and have it oversmoked and creosote-y), rotating the meat to make sure it cooks evenly. By about 10-12 hours later, we had deliciously smoked pulled pork. It was a royal pain-in-the-ass in the attention required, but it worked surprisingly well. I’d rank it a top-tier pulled pork, but part of it might be the fight involved in making it. My friends still bring it up.
I have no idea what temperatures I had in there – must have been on the lower side given the long smoke time (though I was opening it a lot to ensure even cooking, so lost a few hours there), but anywhere from 200-300 works fine. The exact temperature is not as important as people make it out to be. I could have foiled it and probably saved some time, or I probably could have just cooked it directly over very low coals after a couple hours (maybe with a couple layers of foil on the grill), but I wanted to cook indirect, for whatever reason. Probably I just felt the grill was too close to the coals (direct barbecue is fantastic but you need a foot to two of distance, in my experience.) There’s ways my method could have been tweaked or done differently, but it worked.
Great story. I used to do a lot of camping in Northern Michigan, and I enjoyed improvising complicated or elaborate meals using what I brought with me, as well as found wood and other stuff. My wife says part of the reason she decided I was ‘the one’ when we were dating is when I took her camping and cooked her gourmet meals over the fire. I imagine in addition to your BBQ skills and the work you put in, something about eating in the Great Outdoors makes everything taste better!
Sorry if I’m hijacking, but I imagine by now the OP has, if anything, too much information on what may have gone wrong with their brisket…
Yep, I’ve tried snake and minion methods, and IME they both work, but they both require frequent observation and fiddling to keep the temperature in the desired range. Which is OK for a 3-4 hour baby back rib smoke, but not something I’m interested in for a 12-14 hour brisket or Boston butt smoke.
Smoking is just cooking in a bad oven that happens to be filled with smoke. For people struggling with smoking, I advise them to nail cooking the same cut in an oven first and getting the texture/tenderness/juiciness right and then figure out how to add the right degree of smoke flavor. Repeatedly failing on a smoker because you can’t dial in the consistency right isn’t super conducive to learning.
Yeah, low and slow is finicky on a kettle grill. My Weber kettle is hard to get and keep below 350 without inadvertently choking off the coals completely. My Weber Smoky Mountain bullet smoker on the other hand, after the first hour or so of initial adjustment, will stay at 250-275 for hours and hours like an oven.
