ISO BBQ / grill master advice - smoking 2x small briskets on a gas grill

Cafe Society
1

I’m gonna try doing this for the first time tomorrow. I’ve smoked stuff before (pork ribs) on my Weber gas grill using indirect heat and a wood chip box, but this would be my first time making beef brisket.

I want it to be finished in time to bring to a picnic at 2-3PM tomorrow. I’d like to take it off the grill at around 1-1:30PM, seal it in foil, and carry/drive it for another hour in an insulated bag, to carve at the picnic. (I also have buns, BBQ sauce, hot sauce, hot mustard, and pickle chips on the side.)

We can be a little late if this runs over, but what I don’t want is to have the meat done at like 11:30-12 noon and be cold when we get there.

Advice on how to time this, and at what temperature, would be appreciated!

Almost every recipe I could find specifies a crazy long time at 200-225F - like, 10-12 hours - but also assumes a full brisket, like a 12+ lbs. slab of meat.

But I’m planning this based on having been given two small briskets: one is 3.30 lbs. and the other is 2.42 lbs. The smaller one is thicker than the larger one (like, it’s half the length but makes up in thickness).

I found this recipe for a “mini brisket”, which is still 4-5 lbs. where even my larger one is only 3.3 lbs:

It says " you will want to smoke the cut for about 4 to 5 hours at 220 F to 240 F" and “to the point where the internal temp is 180F” in the meat.

It also says “if your cut is smaller, it will cook faster”. OK, well, how much faster?

And two separate slabs would cook faster than one large one, right? Like, the larger slab would finish last (or maybe the thicker one)?

I’m thinking: treat my 3.30 + 2.42 lbs. briskets as equivalent to a single 4 lb. one, expecting to smoke for 4-5 hours at 225F, removing them at 180F (I have multiple digital meat thermometers so could remove the smaller/thinner one if done faster).

That would mean firing up my grill to do this at 8:30AM or so (getting up before 7:30AM to remove the meat to come to room temp), with soaked wood chips and a smoker box and a pan of water under the meat to catch drippings and steam it up.

What do you guys think?

2

I suggest keeping the temperature lower for that small amount of meat. You can heat it up more when it’s done. I imagine there’s insufficient fat on those two tiny pieces of brisket. Never fear, bacon is your friend! Stack the two briskets with a layer of bacon between them and more on top.

3

I think that with beef brisket, it is going to take as long as it takes and I would give myself a lot more time than you have budgeted.

ETA: I agree you should probably lower the temp

I would probably start around 6am am with the idea that I will keep it warm once it is at temp in a makeshift cambro.

A Faux Cambro Can Save Your Butt, Turkey, And Save Face (amazingribs.com)

4

Yes, your briskets are small so it shouldn’t take much longer than this, but you should leave them in until you hit an internal meat temp of 200-205F. 180F is not enough— they need to get hot enough to break down the collagen, or else your briskets will be tough as shoe leather.

If it seems to be taking longer than you’d like after they’ve been smoking for awhile, you can wrap them in foil for the later part of the cook. But at the size you’re working with I don’t think you need to worry too much about ‘the stall’. As Tripolar and madmonk28 said, keep the heat low.

5

Thanks guys, I see that comment on the recipe as well at the bottom - that 180F is too low to pull it and to let it smoke until at least 195F. I’ll go for a nice, round 200F.

I figure the temperature will keep rising when removed and foiled up for transport.

6

Although you’re planning to foil the food for transport, it will also count as resting the meat, which is good.

When I pull and rest smoked meat, I use a technique called “hot boxing” to allow the meat to stay serving hot after even hours of resting.

It’s also called a “faux Cambro” after a brand of professional culinary insulated transport boxes.

General idea: prewarm the interior of a clean well insulated cooler with hot water (which you empty out). Take your well-foil-wrapped meat, insulated with layers of clean dry towels, and store it in the warmed cooler. Transport and rest.

I actually wrap the meat in two large towels; the article’s advice is to put the towels into the box.

7

Brisket is really much more flexible timing wise than most old school BBQ purists give it credit for.

There are 3 phases to a proper brisket cook and you can adjust them to work on your schedule:

  1. Smoking
  2. Wrapped Braising
  3. Resting

The smoking phase gets the smoke flavor onto the meat and should be done on your gas grill. BBQ masters will insist on all kinds of tests to determine when the smoking phase is done but this is incremental percentages of improvement, generally allocate 3 - 5 hours for the smoking phase at your convenience.

Once the brisket has been smoked enough, it gets wrapped and then cooked to tenderness. Commercial BBQ operations do this step in the smoker for pure logistics reasons but it’s utterly asinine to do that at home. It’s a waste of fuel and a pain in the ass, this step should be done in the oven, preferably with a probe thermometer.

Resting is the step 90% of home BBQ cooks ignore but it’s what gives you the most leeway and improves the quality to boot. Resting up to 24 hours continues improving brisket so you really don’t have to start at any particular time to serve it at a designated time.

If you want brisket for lunch, just start the brisket before mid-day the day before, smoke for some number of hours until you’re bored of it, wrap and cook until it hits 195 or so and then probe for tenderness every 30 minutes until it feels good, put it wrapped in towels in a cooler and then go to bed.

If you want brisket for dinner, you can start in the early morning or you can start 3 hours before you plan to go to bed and let it coast in the oven overnight.

You can get into all the intricacies of getting the right smoke, rub, wrapping technique etc and those are what differentiate an acceptable brisket from a phenomenal one but fundamentally, brisket is about using the right heat control to bring the meat to the right texture at the right time.

8

I plan to use the transport and waiting time to do the “resting” - probably 1-2 hours, in foil - but had not planned on a “wrapped braising” phase.

It’s already on the grill, steady at 225F with a probe set near to the meat; I put it on at 8AM, it’s now just past 9:30AM and the interior temp is up to 117F on the thicker brisket and 124F on the thinner one.

I have a pan of water set under the meat to keep them moist (hopefully?), and was hoping they’d reach 200F noon to 12:30pm, then I would remove them, wrap in foil, and set them in an insulated bag, expecting to carve them around 2:30pm at the picnic.

What step do I need to add for “braising”, in your estimation?

9

Wow, those are tiny, and I find smaller cuts of brisket more difficult to do. (So much so that I just go full packer cut every time.) I can’t imagine this taking much more than 5 hours at 225, but I would definitely wrap it in foil or butcher paper at two hours, hold it for about two wrapped, and then about another hour naked. And then hold in the cooler (mentioned above) with some towels indefinitely. (I like to do at least one hour, if not two.)

This is just a guess. With such a small piece, I would be monitoring it a bit more closely than I normally do and cooking at a lower heat than I normally do. When you go to wrap it, the brisket should be somewhere around 160F. If that’s closer to three hours rather than two, then wait the extra hour. I’m just guessing. I’d like to hold off on wrapping as long as possible to give the bark time to set. Two hours is going to be on the short end when it comes to the bark setting.

Good luck!

10

It’s 2.5 hours in now and both cuts are at 140F. Grill is steady at 225-235F.

what is this about “wrapping”? Is this to preserve moisture?

11

Ok, then you’re going at an acceptable pace. I thought/was afraid it was going to get up to temp a good bit quicker than that. Wrapping (also known as the “Texas crutch”) is to help speed up the collagen breakdown process. You essentially end up steaming the meat for a bit. It is not necessary, but it does help with maintaining consistent results with something like brisket, and it does help with keeping things moist. Some people go extra by slathering the meat in some tallow before wrapping, but I suppose you don’t have some tallow laying about.

With that info, I think this cook is going to go more like six plus hours rather than the five I had initially guessed. You always gotta let the meat guide you. :slight_smile: Barbecue can be a bit tricky to time.

12

Oh, by the way, do you know if you have the point or the flat? The brisket has two parts to it, one is a bit leaner and trickier to cook (the flat); the other is fatty and cooks up almost like a pork shoulder (the point.)

13

It is the point. The reason I have two small brisket points is that they come (a) pre-packaged (shrink-wrapped) and (b) are kosher/halal, which some of the BBQ attendees observe. (That is, they take care to eat halal meat, but accept kosher certification as equivalent/good enough).

Not to the degree that they require the grill be purified after having grilled non-kosher meat, fortunately, but they did ask for kosher hot dogs for example, and I saw this on Fresh Direct while making a grocery order, saw they were small (estimated at around 3-4 lbs. and one was actually smaller when it arrived), and figured why not.

I’m sure this kind of size/cut is meant for like a pot roast rather than a BBQ.

14

Oh, the point. Then you’ll be fine with this smoke. Much more forgiving than the flat!

15

This is a really excellent piece of advice. It gives you tons of flexibility in terms of when your brisket is done. If for some reason you get stuck in the stall stage for an extended period, you have tons of cushion for the several hours you keep in the faux cambro. Giving yourself just an hour and a half is painting yourself in a corner. And I’ve found that briskets really benefit from extended rests (3+ hours). No one really cares if your brisket isn’t piping hot when it’s served - that’s not the point of the…point.

16

Any old cooler will do the job. Mine doubles a sous video vessel. I have also used bricks heated up very hot, wrapped in foil and old towels to maintain temperature even longer. You can also allow it cool down and reheat it later. In that case I would keep it wrapped in foil after cooking so it doesn’t dry out.

17

I thought this video would be helpful.

18

If only I had thought of that in post 3

19

Wish I’d seen this yesterday

My efforts today took 6 hours and turned out tough and dry :frowning:

20

203-205 is better I think.

And there’s nothing magical about the 200-250 range as far as meat cooking is concerned. You can easily get just as tender of brisket at 300, as long as you cook it to an internal temp of 203-205. THAT is what counts, not the temp by which you get there.

The reasons for low & slow are more centered around wood/charcoal burning pits- if you run those at 300, you run the risk of not getting enough smoke on your meat, because you’re having to burn it hot and with a lot of oxygen, which doesn’t produce much smoke.

Aaron Franklin cooks at 285, IIRC, which is a lot hotter than many recommend (including him). But he knows his equipment well. He actually recommends 275 in his cookbooks.