Gastonomical Cooking: Brisket Breakthrough!

I'm not going to claim that I'm a Certified Barbecue Expert, but I've smoked my share of meat over the years -- mostly of the porcine variety. I've smoked pork butt several different ways, including traditional pulled pork and an Italian porchetta, all to rave reviews. I've also had good luck with ribs. But the one time I did brisket was several years ago, and it was, well, disappointing. It was okay (it was barbecued brisket!), but it was on the dry side, and compared with the excellence I'd been able to produce from Our Friend the Pig, it led me to relegate brisket to something I get in restaurants rather than try myself.
But now, about ten years on from my last attempt, with better equipment and hopefully better cooking skillz, I'm going to try again.

I'm starting with the same root recipe I used before. It's from Cooks Illustrated, which is the source of most of my successful pork barbecue recipes. Their thorough approach to recipes leaves very little to chance except for the skills of the cook and the quality of the meat.

To address the latter, we sourced our meat from our always reliable neighborhood butcher, Let's Meat on the Avenue, where you can pretty much always count on finding a good brisket. We picked a solid eight pound specimen with a full fat cap (very important for smoking -- it keeps the meat moist during the lengthy cooking).

Late on Saturday night, we rubbed the meat using the Cooks Illustrated recipe with a few embellishments:
4 Tbsp paprika (the recipe calls for sweet paprika, but we did a mix of sweet and smoked)
2 Tbsp chili powder (the recipe didn't specify, and our spice cabinet had numerous choices, but we went with New Mexico chili powder because it smelled so earthy)
2 Tbsp ground cumin
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp dried oregano
1 Tbsp ground black pepper
1 Tbsp ground white pepper
1-2 tsp cayenne pepper (I always err on the spicy side for this)

The brisket, post-rub

We then used the vacuum sealer to seal it in plastic where it could mingle with the rub and refrigerated it overnight.

Mid-morning Sunday, I put some wood chunks in water to soak, pulled the brisket out of the fridge and let it sit out for an hour or more while the wood was soaking and the charcoal grill was firing up.

The subject of wood can be controversial in barbecue circles, with recommendations abounding for what wood goes with what meat. It can be a little dizzying, and I've compounded the problem by buying every type of wood chips and chunks I can find. Home Depot is actually a great place for this, at least during the summertime. I've got mesquite, hickory, pecan, applewood, adler (for salmon, of course), olive, cherry, chips soaked in cabernet sauvignon and reclaimed oak barrels that once held Jack Daniels. I have a big plastic bin of nothing but wood chips in the shed out back. They all have their different smells and some are very strong (like hickory), some are more fragrant (like cherry or apple) and some can be a little on the acrid side (like mesquite). For this recipe, I stuck with the basics. Smoked brisket evokes Texas and Texas means Mesquite. So Mesquite it is.

One of the things I like about Cook's Illustrated barbecue recipes is that they do a good job of helping you create smoky, spicy meat while recognizing that you're not a professional barbecue pit master and your ambition may not be to spend double-digit hours tending a fire for your piece of meat. And while purists might scoff, it's not like we skip steps. We still build a fire and tend it for a time reaching into the plural of hours, we still have hardwood chips and charcoal (not <gasp!> gas) and we do the rub -- it's real barbecuing. We just end up finishing it in the oven. I'm just not having to set my alarm for 5:00 Sunday morning so I can have something done in time for dinner. Not that I'd mind doing that sometimes, but we usually have a packed weekend agenda.
 

Onto the smoke!

I put the brisket on the grill -- the recipe called for two hours on smoke, but the wood was going so well at the two-hour mark that I decided to keep it going. I'd broken the recipe's admonition to not open the grill so I could replenish the fire and more importantly, the mesquite.
At around the 2:45 mark, or so, I pulled the meat off the barbecue. I got so preoccupied with the activity that I forgot to take a photo of it, but rest assured the brisket had gotten smaller and picked up a nice crust. The recipe then called for wrapping the meat in foil. About eight feet of it. To build a big enough foil package, I had to take two four-foot long sections and crimp them together in the middle. The length was very challenging in our small rowhouse where we don't have four feet of flat space, but with Patti's help, I managed. We then put the big foil envelope of meat in the oven for three and a half hours (the recipe said you could pull it at three, but our sides weren't ready yet and we figured it wouldn't hurt to cook it longer) on 300 degrees where it was to finish cooking, more of a steam than a smoke roast. But the smell filled the house.

Rested and ready to slice!

A quick pick at the meat during its resting phase (~30 minutes plus) told me the meat was definitely anything but tough. I sliced a few pieces off the pointy end for our dinner and saved the rest for leftovers and the freezer. But wow! Absolutely wow! It was so tender it almost fell apart. It still had a nice crust, but was moist from being cooked in foil. And the fat was everywhere. The jelly roll pan we'd cooked the meat in was filled with melted fat, as was the foil. Per Cook's Illustrated's advice, we actually took the fat and juice, put it in a fat separator and used the juice to help flavor the barbecue sauce we'd made for the occasion.

Purists might object -- because of the oven time, there was a bit of a braised affect on the meat. Or maybe that was just the fat. But you couldn't say the meat was tough in any way.

Bottom line:  this is going into the repertoire. It's a little more trouble than pork -- a little longer smoking time and a little longer cooking time and mostly just plain bigger. But after the trepidation I'd had all this time, it was definitely a breakthrough.

As I thought a bit about what I'd done wrong previously, I think I finally landed on the fact that I likely used a brisket that did not have a fat cap. I had probably bought the piece of meat without any plan as to what to do with it and just assumed a brisket was a brisket. I didn't know. I'm a much more experienced (and better read) cook now. 

So move over piggy -- barbecued beef has a place on the menu at the Chez Gaston.

Barbecued brisket (look at that smoke ring!) with beans and bleu cheese slaw, with a glass of Qupe Syrah from the Santa Ynez Valley on the side.