You’re right, I didn’t make it all that clear. I do definitely want a hot smoker for long cooked (10 hours+) brisket. I’m not talking about grilling and I’m not talking about grill roasting at relatively high heat. I’ve already got two large Weber kettle grills to handle that. As I said in a separate post, I usually show up at my tailgating site the night before and set up so getting a smoker set up and running on site is no issue. The WSM seems like a good addition to my tailgating rig in that it should be able to handle the brisket with reasonable cost and portability.
I’ve got no real interest in doing large numbers of ribs or pork shoulder. I’ll probably do them often enough to try to maintain a basic level of competence but probably not much more than that.
This may sound odd but one thing I’ve been wanting to try to prepare was my own pastrami. Believe it or not, good pastrami is hard to find in rural Nebraska. I’ve got a few recipes to try and I look forward to the experimentation.
The bacon was an idle thought and quite possibly not reasonably possible with the WSM. Fair enough. I’ve done a few slabs of bacon before with a set-up not all that different than what Alton Brown used on Good Eats and I would like to get into other smoked and cured meats at some point. If the WSM can get me there, great. If not, I’ll try something else when I’m ready to go down that road.
You’re the fucking man! Breasola is awesome! How do you serve yours once its finished drying?
At a restaurant I used to work at, we made our own and would hang it with butcher string from the ceiling rafters in the basement for up to a month.
We generally served it thinly sliced and layered over arugula leaves with poached pear slices, ground black pepper and shaved curls of parmagiano reggiano cheese. Its heavenly.
I haven’t decided yet. This is my first go at bresaola. It cured for two weeks in the fridge and has been hanging for a couple of days now. It looks and smells lovely so far. I have a commercial Globe meat slicer, so slicing it thinly is not going to post any issue. I was figuring on something simple like bresaola, shaved parmesan, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil, with a good toasted bread on the side.
ETA: I also have a cured pork loin in the fridge that’ll be ready to hang in a few days (basically, a Spanish lomo embuchado.) I’m excited to see how that turns out.
I hope the OP won’t consider this too much of a hijack:
pulykamell - I’ve been wanting to get into the curing “biz”, but my wife is worried about making the whole house smell like a deli. Why? I don’t know. It’s one of my favorite smells!
Since you’re using yours as such, can you speak to whether or not her concern is valid?
When the meat’s hanging in the basement, sure there’s a bit of a cured meat smell. It doesn’t waft into the rest of the house though.
That said, the more exacting and dedicated way to cure would be to getting yourself a good wine fridge and just using that for curing. That way, you can control your temps precisely and you don’t have to stink up the basement. Or you can get yourself a regular fridge and hook it up with one of those beer fridge thermometers to keep the temps at 50-60. Ideally, you’d want to find a way to control the humidity, too–and there are solutions on the web if you want to look for them. Some people just use a water pan or wet rag or something, but you can be more precise than that.
Me? For the moment, I just hang 'em in the basement in the fall when the weather goes cool.
The stuff we used to make was marinated in herbs, spices and wine (and we are talking the eye of the round, right?) and stayed marinating for a month, then we’d air dry/cure for a month. It was incredible.
Thanks for your reply and the link, though I’d already found that INCREDIBLY cool link.
My impression from reading around was that that kind of setup is used for the curing process (which represents a couple of weeks) but not the drying process. Oddly enough I got that notion from the same site as your link: http://mattikaarts.com/blog/charcuterie/home-made-dry-cured-salami/
But I guess that’s not the case?
I also found this link with a setup like the mattikaarts curing booth.
The SDMB is so bad for my wallet - I also ordered a WSM and got the book from the library. Hopefully it will come tomorrow and we will have Lesson 1 for dinner!
Not to my knowledge. The set-up is an initial cure (for something like a bresaola or lomo, that would be about 2 weeks in a plastic bag or bucket in a regular fridge) and then complete the drying in 50-65F under controlled humidity (you don’t want to dry too fast, or the outside will dry and the inside will rot.) That’s the point of this fridge set-up.
For something like salami, you would incubate your ground meat with starter cultures , stuff the sausage, and hang it for one to two days at 75-85F to incubate your bacteria. Then, you would bring it down to 50-65F under 70-80% humidity to dry from one to three months.
One note: Lessons 1 & 2 are both chicken. The chicken from these lessons will result in a delicious chicken, but the skin may be a bit chewier than you’re used to, because of the low, slow cooking process. Do not be alarmed by that. There are ways of dealing with that, but do follow lessons one through five in order and exactly as written, and then you can go off-script once you’ve got the basics down. It really starts getting fun at lesson #3 (baby back ribs.)
Ribs are gross. I read through the book - this will require several dinner parties, I think. “Hi! You probably don’t remember me from high school, but I have three racks of ribs I need somebody to eat Saturday. Shall I put you down with a guest?”
B’wuh? I would have normally said you must have never had good barbecued ribs (I didn’t like ribs until I discovered they all weren’t gelatinous fall-off-the-bone swimming-in-sauce creations), but, seeing that you’re in South Carolina, I imagine you’ve had yourself a proper rack or two.
At least tell me you like pulled/chopped pork. Please? Chicken ain’t barbecue.
I wouldn’t call it barbecue if it wasn’t pulled pork! (Being in South Carolina, you do get three choices of sauce, though.) I just don’t like mostly bones with my meat like that. I don’t like to fight. Also don’t eat chicken wings.
What I want to smoke is brisket and pork shoulder and maybe Thanksgiving turkey, although my mom told me at dinner that that “isn’t Thanksgiving turkey” - but then, I cook the whole meal, so she really has no say.
Hard to give an exact number–every cut of meat seems to be a little different. Brisket is a little trickier than pork shoulder, for whatever reason. My advice is to get a full packer cut (with the point/deckle and the flat–it’s about 12-16 pounds). The bigger cuts seems to cook more evenly. That said, the point cooks a little more like pork shoulder and is forgiving, but the flat tends to be a bit finicky.
Anyhow, on to your question. I generally find the brisket is finished in the 190-195 range. The meat has a bit of a wobble to it and a fork inserted into the flat offers virtually no resistance. I just googled Wiviott (the author of the book mentioned upthread), brisket and he seems to agree (although he doesn’t give a target temp).
I cook brisket in a similar style. Sometimes–and this is the only time I do this–I will foil the brisket for two hours at around 170 or so, then finish unfoiled. Also, I find that letting it rest, foiled, in a cooler after it’s done for 45 minutes or so does wonders in redistributing the juices.
So, basically, it’s done when it’s done. The fork test and the wobble tell you when it’s done, but that usually occurs in the 190-195, sometimes even 200, range.
Thanks - that gives me the target - I’ve had one brisket come out ‘good’ (oddly enough, the first one) , and 2 more that came out bad - probably from me getting impatient.
I have Wiviott’s book, its helped a great deal, but there’s still a curve to it.
I read through the book - this will require several dinner parties, I think. “Hi! You probably don’t remember me from high school, but I have three racks of ribs I need somebody to eat Saturday. Shall I put you down with a guest?”