i’ve never made an awesome brisket. i’ve made a few ok briskets. this was neither. it was a lesson in humility. i am not skilled enough to take a questionable piece of meat and turn it into amazing bbq.
so please ruminate on this pic and leave your best desert puns below. but then please also leave me a good brisket chili recipe because i need one, badly.
I love Malcolm Reed’s videos. I make his Mississippi chuck roast sandwich all the time.
It was a 4 lb flat only from Costco. It was the last one they had at 6pm yesterday and it looked crappy. There was almost no intramuscular fat. It was pre-tenderized with most of the fat cap removed (which I didn’t realize until this morning when I opened and flipped it over).
I trimmed off a little more hard fat and did a simple spog rub. Normally I would cook this in my wsm. But today I took the easy route and used the masterbuilt electric.
The temp was set at 225. I didn’t set up an ambient probe, but in the past it ran reasonably true to temp when I did.
The meat stalled at about 160. I let it go a little bit and wrapped in brown butcher paper. I probed with the instant read at 199. The instant read showed 200 - 202 in several spots. Total cook time was about 7 hours.
It felt right so I pulled and rested in a cooler for a little more than an hour. I sliced at 165 and almost choked on the first bite.
The chuck roasts looked much better and I’m much more comfortable smoking those. That’s what I should have grabbed. What I really wanted were some beef ribs, but they only had back ribs and boneless rib roasts.
I feel your pain. When making my first few, I was temp probing at the wrong location and screwed them all up. I’m betting it’s the lack of fat/moisture that did it in this time around. Just keep cooking and you’ll find the process for your smoker.
Oh I have the process down. It goes like this: buy chuck roast instead. It’s half the price and less finicky.