First brisket, comin up!

[Meatsweat Mike]

Doing my first brisket cook overnight into tomorrow. The initial plan was to have friends over Sunday for the wife’s bday butttt then she came down with COVID. I’m hiding from her in our guest bedroom without any symptoms (knock on wood) and she still wants some brisket so it’ll be an 11 pounder for two! Figured I’d start a thread since it’s been a little while since I posted. I’ll start to post pics as I go

So far I’ve trimmed and started to dry brine the brisket just after 12pm today. Was going to try to get it on the smoker around 8-9pm. Following meathead’s brisket recipe for the most part and was leaning towards injecting with some beef broth but a little concerned that’ll be too salty, any thoughts on that? Maybe I can find low sodium broth just for the moisture.

Other big question is water pan or not. I’m cooking on a Weber summit Kamado, and generally don’t use one. I know it can help add moisture in the cooker but I’m a little concerned that over night the water will all evaporate and the temps will skyrocket and I’ll have to deal with that. I’m otherwise confident I can hold it around 225 without needing to watch it too closely without the water pan since that’s what I usually do. I’ll have a temp probe with an alarm just in case. I also figured that with the injected broth, and since I’m wrapping it through the stall, it’ll have less of a chance of drying out. Any thoughts/suggestions here?

Thanks for looking and joining along for the ride!

 

[Stingerhook]

I call shotgun for this ride Mike. The only thing I do with brisket nowadays is grind it and use for other things.

 

[Learning to BBQ]

First of all, I'm no brisket expert, but have cooked a few good ones. Stick with what you know. Ditch the water pan if you've never used it. Brisket has a lot of collagen in it, it won't dry out cooked correctly. Wrap or no wrap, inject or no inject. The main thing is figuring out what probe tender is in the flat. Once you have that, take it off, let it vent for a bit (if you are cooking at 225, I'd do maybe 15mins), wrap it up, throw it in a cooler with some towels for a few hours (or 6). Don't over think it like always used to do, and still sometimes do. The rest is a big part.

That's my 5 cents (inflation you know), from a non brisket expert.

I hope you nail it and the Missus has the best birthday brisket ever! And hope you both stay well.

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Good call on doing what you know best, it’s easy to overthink these things! No water pan and going to let her run along at 225 through the night. Brisket on right at 9:20pm

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Update!
This pic was from 4:30am when the brisket point was at 185degrees. I still wasn’t pleased with the bark so I set my thermometer to 195 next. At 195 the bark was looking good. I was surprised to see the flat was about 10-12degrees behind the point. I opted to wrap it to not dry out the flat. Around 7:40 am the flat was probe nearly everywhere except one side of the fat part of the flat (point tender at 203). Since I had the temp probe in the point I reset it to 205 for the point and that’ll be good for that one area of the flat I think. Then I’ll hold it in the oven until late lunch, early dinner.. lowest it’ll go is 170 but I think that’s ok to hold it.

So far (knock on wood) this has gone smooth. The temps were right around 220-235 whenever I woke up to check the temp. Once down at 215. Not really sure if it ever stalled since I slept through the whole thing. Should have put my MEATER probe in to see a graph. May peek at it when I take it off otherwise I’ll post pics before dinner!

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Ok I peeked.. only took 11hrs and probe tender throughout

 

[Stingerhook]

It would be hard for me to wait for the rest Mike.

 

[Mikhail]

Looks great. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

 

[LloydQ]

Looks really good, Mike!

 

[Big George's BBQ]

Looking good to me Mike

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Came out good! Next time I probably won’t hold it as long, went like 8hrs so I think it kept cooking a bit past what I wanted when I pulled it, but the flavor was great and the wife loved it! I was going to make some smoked cornbread for a side but felt a bit lazy and we wanted to eat an earlier dinner so didn’t have time to make it. Just picked a few things up.

Definitely will do this again, maybe will try injecting beef broth rather than try brining. That may have added a bit more moisture to the flat. Also probably would put my temp probe in the fattest part of the flat. Otherwise would do it all the same, very happy with my first brisket! Also it ran 11hrs and there was a ton of charcoal left after, that Summit Kamado is so efficient. Ran like a dream all night.

Thanks for following along!

 

[bowhnter]

Nice first brisket! Holding for 8+ hours shouldn’t be an issue. Did you let it cool down to ~160 before putting in the oven?

I made that mistake the last 15 hour rest. I don’t think I let it cool down enough before the oven.
The first two with long foil boat rests were my best yet.

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Nice first brisket! Holding for 8+ hours shouldn’t be an issue. Did you let it cool down to ~160 before putting in the oven?

I made that mistake the last 15 hour rest. I don’t think I let it cool down enough before the oven.
The first two with long foil boat rests were my best yet.

Thanks!! It was a fun cook, looking forward to getting creative with left overs too.

No, I didn’t let it cool down before the rest and I agree I think that was the mistake… Learning to BBQ even recommended that above but for some reason I was hesitant to let it come down before rewrapping to hold it. Will definitely do that next time

 

[cowgirl]

Looks great! Nice job!

 

[Shadowdog500]

That is a great looking brisket!

 

[sudsandswine]

Personally, I would keep it simple and not get caught up with advanced techniques like injections until you have the 101 down. The more variables you introduce, the more points of potential failure you introduce and you’re not sure which one contributed to a positive or negative outcome. Heat, smoke, and probe tender. Maybe wrap around the stall, but not required. If you’re planning on a long hold like 8 hours, you’ll need some way to keep the heat in your holding vessel up. Also, letting it bleed off some heat before you put it into the holding vessel will help keep carryover heat from overcooking.

Dry and crumbly = overcooked, dry and tough = undercooked

Good job :thumb:

 

[frognot]

Great job on that brisket!

 

[SmokinAussie]

Your first brisket is always a major milestone. Advice here is correct. Do it the same way for a while otherwise when something goes wrong, you won't know what to fix.

Cheers!

Bill

 

[Meatsweat Mike]

Thank you all for the suggestions! It does make the most sense to make a small change or two and fine tune that initial process before doing “varsity” moves like injecting. Only thing I would really change for the next cook is vent it’s before I hold it if it’s going to be a while and probably a touch less salt. I tried to dry brine it like I usually do with steaks but it didn’t seem to absorb like it does with other cuts of meat.

For your leave in probe, do most of you temp the fattest part of the flat or temp the point?

 

[bowhnter]

The flat