Smoked brisket is time-consuming but worth it

I broke out the smoker recently and a bit of yummy goodness came out. I smoked a large brisket.

You’re familiar with a brisket. Think back to St. Patrick’s day and that corned beef and cabbage you ate. Likely the corned beef was a piece of brisket.

Brisket is a tough piece of meat that lends itself to low and slow cooking styles, which will help break down any connective tissues and help the meat to become very tender. Cooking at very low temps for a period of time allows enzymes in the meat to become much more active than they would be at refrigerator temps allowing them to also tenderize the meat. It’s kind of like the aging process of meat, but you incorporate it for a short time while your meat comes up to a cooked temperature. In beef, that enzyme actions stops at 140 degrees. At that temperature, the meat is still considered too rare for most people, so you need to bring the temperature up to a more suitable degree. For my brisket, I was shooting for 170 degrees in the thickest part, so I knew it would be cooked through.

I use a sweet/spicy rub on the brisket, then cook it low and slow with a lot of smoke. My smoker is a two-stage offset smoker, meaning I can build my smoky fire on one side, and have the meat in a cooler spot on the other side. It also has a thermometer in the lid that measures the temperature of the cooler side for me.

For brisket, you want to smoke no higher than 230 degrees. This would give you an approximate cooking time of about 1 1/2 hours per pound. This will help break down the tougher part of the meat.

Put the brisket on the cooking grate fat side up. I had to turn my brisket after a few hours to keep it from drying out. Whether you want to baste it or not is up to you. I won’t. I also did not have a pan of water in the smoker to keep the moisture up.

When is it done? Using an instant-read thermometer, check in the thickest part of the meat. You are looking for a temperature of 170 degrees. If you take it out of a hot smoker, the temperature may continue to climb. Knowing that your meat is close to that temperature, you can let your fire start to die down. This can help with drying the meat out too. When you pull it out, let it sit, covered, for at least 45 minutes, to allow the meat to relax. This can be really hard to do!

When the brisket is ready to serve, you want to cut across the grain, but keep in mind that grain runs in a couple of different ways.

Sliced leftover brisket is a real treat here. I like to slice it paper-thin and then lightly fry it like you would for bacon. What I’d really like to try is thin-sliced brisket piled onto a meat pizza.

SMOKED FLAT CUT BRISKET

1/4 cup salt

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons dried garlic powder

2 tablespoons dried onion powder

2 tablespoons paprika

1 1/2 tablespoons celery salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground white pepper

1/4 cup aged balsamic vinegar

1 (5- to 8-pound) beef brisket (flat cut)

4 cups oak or hickory wood chips

Combine all the spices in a bowl with the vinegar. Brush onto the meat, making sure to cover the surfaces completely, using up all the mixture. Cover and let rest for one hour. Start grill.

The grill is ready when the charcoal has turned to white ash. If using a grill instead of a smoker, arrange the coals on one side of the grill, leaving an area large enough for the brisket to cook indirectly with no coals directly underneath the meat. Place meat on grill, and scatter a handful of wood chips on charcoal. Close the lid. Add fresh coals about every 2 hours or so. I use a charcoal chimney and allow the coals to get to that white ash stage before dumping them in. Remove the meat while you put in the new coals, to keep any ash from getting on the meat. Place the meat back on the grill, adding more wood chips. Check the temperature of the brisket after about 4 hours. When it finally reaches a temperature of 165 degrees, remove it from the grill and wrap well in foil. Place new hot coals in grill again and place wrapped meat back on grill. Allow to cook another hour or so until the temperature reaches 170 degrees. Remove meat from grill and allow to rest for 45 minutes before removing foil and slicing.