- A short story by Paul J. Davis
So you want to smoke your first brisket. This is a quick introduction on how you might accomplish that.
A brisket is two overlapping muscles from the front of the cow. On a human it'd be where the boobies are, except cows have udders so the boobies got moved. The two muscles are called the flat (which is a big flat part) and the point (which is the pointy end). Briskets usually come in one of three shapes. At the grocery store you can usually find brisket flat that's been separated from the point and trimmed by a professional. Often times you can also find "full packers" available which is both the flat and the point that are still connected by a large vein of fat called the deckle and an untrimmed fat cap on the flat. Occasionally if the butcher was high you can also find just the point at a grocery store as well.
The flat is generally what most people think of when they see sliced brisket. Although, folks that prefer a higher fat content will often ask for slices from the point.
A flat usually weighs somewhere in the four to eight pound range. A full packer usually weighs anywhere from about twelve to sixteen pounds. A point is I dunno how big cause I don't buy those.
You can get full prime grade (At this point I assume the reader is familiar with the basics of grading beef in the United States) packer for roughly $3.00/pound. Most any grocery store should have brisket flats for sale for a bit more per pound since they've been trimmed. Though I've not seen prime flats regularly anywhere.
I tend to prefer just buying a flat as I'm not a huge fan of the point muscle. Though if you're looking to make an authentic beef brisket most folks would say you have to cook a full packer. The major differences between cooking a flat and a full packer are the effort for trimming, time for cooking, and obviously a flat doesn't come with a point if you're into that sort of thing.
The general advice is trim the fat cap on the "bottom" of the brisket to about 1/4". I tend to just try and remove any huge hunks of the hard white fat but have a hard time getting an even 1/4" across the entire flat. Its not a huge issue because when you slice the brisket after cooking you can just chop off the fatty area.
Any fat on top of the flat (the side you can see is mostly muscle) its just a matter of removing all surface fat. Any fat on that side will just prevent rub and smoke penetration. That said, its not the end of the world if you don't get every last bit of fat off.
For the point I tend to hate it. The general advice is to remove as much fat from the point as possible so that you can get as much rub and crust on it for either slices or burnt ends (I wouldn't attempt burnt ends on a first brisket cook though). So basically I just hack off fat from around the point until it looks nice.
The two important points that I'd stress are to be careful cutting too far into the deckle. Its easy to start following that fat vein and accidentally separate the brisket into its two muscles. Although I tend to do that on purpose these days as well, its mostly because I plan on making burnt ends out of the point. Secondly, do not remove the entire fat cap. That took me years to learn. I used to go all the way down to the meat thinking that even more rub and crust formation would be better. Turns out after a dozen or so briskets coming out dry I found out that just leaving the damn thing on prevents the flat from losing all its moisture during the cook.
Also make sure to note the direction of the grain of the meat on both the flat and point when you're trimming. They're roughly perpendicular, when you slice a full packer you'll have to turn it about 90 degrees half way through. This will be covered in more detail in Step 56.
Just remove any fat on the top of the flat. Don't touch the fat cap. Another reason that I prefer smoking flats is that its less work for me. Make sure to note which direction the grain of the flat is going for when you start slicing.
You can do whatever the hell you want for this step. This is the reader participation section of the recipe. Some people just use salt and pepper, some will go full SPOG (salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder), some folks go with salt, pepper, and Lowry's. I found a rub I like that I buy called Kosmos' Cow Cover. If you ever need BBQ supplies I'd suggest visiting Helping U BBQ (HUB) in Omaha on 156th and Dodge. They're decent people other than the whole being Nebraskan thing.
Start your Traeger and set it to 250F. Put your brisket on it, fat cap side down. Leave the brisket alone until the temperature plateaus. Assuming your Traeger is new enough that its got a meat probe, just wait until the temperature doesn't change for an hour. This should happen when the brisket is somewhere between 145F and 165F. Most recipes will say "pull at 160 and wrap". This is wrong. Different briskets cook differently. If your brisket happens to stall at 155F, by the time you've hit 160F you'll have pushed through the stall and lost a significant amount of moisture which makes for dry brisket.
This step should take somewhere in the range of four to six hours. Though if its shorter or longer its not a big deal. Just trust the meat thermometer and pull when the temp hasn't budged in about an hour.
Also, to be thorough, when you probe meat for smoking the general advice is to put the tip of the probe as close to center of whatever is being cooked. This way you're measuring the least cooked part of the muscle. With a full packer brisket this can be a bit tricky. My recommendation is to slide the probe in the side of the brisket roughly where the point and flat connect about half way through. One trick I have is to hold the probe over the meat and then move your fingers to where they'll be just about to touch the meat once you've inserted the thermometer as a quick way to know how far in you need to go.
If you just throw your big ol' brisket on the smoker, you'll soon find out that the damn thing will go up in temperature and then eventually stop going up. And it can stop for literally hours. Its like the temperature stalled. Which is probably why they call this the stall. The Texas Crutch is a way to get through the stall without ruining the brisket. I don't know why its thought of as a crutch since its pretty key to consistently making good brisket.
If you read any articles on brisket cooking (or any large muscle like pork butt for that matter) you'll hear about the stall. What's happening is that the moisture content of the muscle is starting to boil off as steam. Losing moisture is bad so folks wrap their meat in foil and then put it back on the smoker (or in the oven if your smoker is expensive to run). The main point here is that you want to ensure that the brisket is wrapped tightly in aluminum foil so that no steam can escape. The idea here is that by trapping all that steam in a hermetically isolated environment is prevents the rest of the moisture from evaporating (cause its got nowhere to go). Thus, you get a fancier juicier brisket. Some folks will also wrap with pink butcher paper. I've tried it and my brisket was dry. I might try it again now that I know how to trim a brisket properly. But I'm also guessing you've not got any pink butcher paper lying around so I'd suggest using aluminum foil.
If you want, some folks will make this step a bit easier by using an aluminum pan and just using aluminum foil to cover the top. I've done this when I was low on foil but its a bit more wasteful and also takes more room on the smoker. The point is just to trap any steam coming off the brisket in an air tight environment. Once you have that then the world is your oyster.
Also, For the probe, I used to try and wrap around it. Lately I've been a bit more lazy and remove it, then wrap, then just poke the probe through the foil. My only recommendation is to try and get it close to the same position you had it in.
Once your brisket has been wrapped, throw it back on the smoker (or in the oven, BTUs are BTUs). When the brisket comes up to just over 203F you'll be nearly done. Preferences on what temp to pull at are anywhere from about 195 to 205. The professionals will say "wait until probe tender" but I think that's garbage for anyone that doesn't literally own a BBQ restaurant and makes like 50 briskets a day. 203 has been good to me. I've seen others that use that odd number and not being divisible by five has always tickled my brain.
Once your brisket has arrived at 203F, its time to not eat it yet. Or even unwrap it. First you need to find a cooler, and old towel that any significant other will not miss or be upset if it ends up soaked in delicious brisket juices. Take the towel, wrap it around the wrapped brisket, put it in the cooler and then go drink beer for an hour.
I don't have a fully formed theory on this just yet. Its not a traditional rest period like steak. But it certainly makes a difference. The brisket is obviously still cooking at this point. Proteins start denaturing around 105F and different proteins take even higher temps. I'm not sure if there's some sort of science around having a big parabolic temperature swing or what. Also if you slice your brisket at this point all the moisture will just shoot out and then you'll have dry brisket which is undelicious.
Anyway, after the brisket is in the cooler it can stay that way for hours. You want to leave it at least one hour. However, since it can go for four to five hours in this setup you can use this to plan your cook. If you give yourself a three hour window to hit for dinner you should be relatively easy to use the cooler time to make that happen.
Once your brisket has rested in the cooler for at least an hour its time to eat. At this point the only way you can fuck up is slicing the brisket wrong. As mentioned earlier, the grain on a muscle is important for slicing. There aren't many things you'll come across where its possible to fuck this up, but brisket is the first one most people cook.
Basically, if you cut your brisket the wrong way, it doesn't matter how well it was cooked, it'll be dry and tough as nails. The easiest way to avoid a tough brisket is to not fuck up the cutting.
The grain in muscles are the long twitchy fibers that let the muscle do what muscles do: contract. When you cut across the grain you're slicing these fibers which makes the meat easier to chew. If you cut a slice you should see these fibers that have been cut. If you see long parallel lines instead, you've fucked up and cut it the wrong way. Cut about 90 degress off whatever the first fucked up direction was. Also note that the grain in the flat may change slightly.
If you have cooked a full packer, this comes with an extra level of difficulty. The point and flat don't go the same direction. In about the middle of the brisket you'll transition from mostly flat, to mostly point. Somewhere in that region you have to change your slicing direction by about 90 degrees.
Fuck that. Have another beer. Cleanup is a tomorrow you problem.