So if you've watched enough of my videos, you know that
I like to do things out at the grill and have a good time at it.
I don't like a lot of stress.
If I can get some things done ahead of time,
I love to.
And that's what we're doing today
because this is going to be a no stress brisket
that we're going to smoke up out on the Weber kettle.
And what we're working with today is a 13 and a half pound USDA prime brisket.
You could do this with a choice brisket.
If you have a select, you can do it with that, too.
But really, if you can stick with a choice and above,
you're going to have much more flavor, much more juice in here.
And because this is no stress,
I am not really going to worry about doing some super trim on this.
I've done really, really good trims on briskets before
where I take a lot of time, get every tiny little piece off.
It just takes so much work.
And this isn't for competition.
This is for cooking in your backyard and sharing with family and friends
and enjoying it. So let's enjoy the process of trimming this.
We're going to get the majority of the fat off
that we need to, take the fat cap on the other side down a little bit.
But we're not going to stress and obsess over this.
So I just want to get under these bigger pieces here
and try not to lose too much of the underlying meat.
Go ahead and square up this edge here.
Get some of that sort of oxidized meat off.
You know, the little stuff that turns gray.
Nothing really wrong with it, but just want to get that off.
And this is perfect
if you're going to be making burgers
and you need some extra fat that you're grinding.
This is perfect for that.
I'm guessing by the time we're done trimming, we'll probably be down
closer to a 12 pound brisket, and that's fine.
That's a great size for the kettle I've found.
The other thing is you see all this little bits of some silver skin here.
Yeah,
we can spend a lot of time trying to take all that off.
Get down to bare meat.
I've done briskets with that left on, little bits of it.
Not a whole lot of it.
I've never had anyone notice, complain, comment on it.
These little bits really don't have much of an effect.
Clean up this edge right here.
This fat, especially, this really sort of hard fat,
that is great for grinding up and adding fat to burgers.
Let's say
you have a really lean cut that you're grinding to make your hamburger meat.
This is great to add to that.
Let's see right here.
A lot of that just pulling away from the underside right here.
Just turn this around real quick here.
Point end I just want to trim this little bit off here.
Got some floppy bits.
For me, this side is fine right now.
I don't need to go in and try and pick off every little bit.
Get this turned over here.
And we actually have a fairly thin fat cap across a lot of this.
So I'm not going to dig in too much.
You can even see we got some bare spots there.
You will see sometimes people see this very thin part of the flat.
People just trim this off around here to get a rounder brisket and thicker.
That's meat.
I want to leave that there.
I'm not going to mess with that.
Just got a little bit of an excess bit of fat right over here by the edge.
Not a whole lot.
Give this one more little cleaning trim right here.
And again, all this meat
we trim off here with fat attached, especially, grind it in with burgers.
It's great for that.
And as you see, this is not some competition brisket.
This took me all of 10 minutes to trim up.
I don't want to spend a ton of time if I'm making this out in my backyard
for just like I said, me and the family and other friends to enjoy.
It's going to taste great at the end of the day.
And we don't have to put a lot of that stress into it.
So if that's really what you're into, you want to be able to cook a brisket,
have it turn out great,
but not stress over all the little bits and getting every little bit off,
that's what this is about.
So I'm going to transfer this into a tray and we're going to go ahead
and get this seasoned up.
So I have my brisket on a wire rack in a baking sheet.
I like to do this especially when it's going to sit
in the refrigerator overnight, which this is going to.
I always like to get things done the day ahead before
I'm going to be out at the grill, if possible.
That just removes a lot of the rush that can happen
when you're going to be making something like a brisket,
especially those larger cuts that are going to take longer.
So I love to get these seasoned up the day before.
And the seasoning I'm using today is Big Poppa's Sweet Money Rub.
We've got a good amount of surface moisture here,
so I'm not going to add any binder to this. If you want to add binder, mustard works
well, just regular yellow mustard or Worcestershire sauce.
But I don't like to use a binder unless I absolutely need to.
So we're just going to start giving a good
layer of flavor here.
A good dusting of our seasoning.
And you can use any rub you want.
Pick your favorite rub.
Or just use some salt, some pepper, some garlic powder. An SPG rub.
Part of having no stress when you're doing this is just use things you enjoy.
You don't have to use the exact rub
I'm using.
You don't even have to use the same grill I'm using.
I'm using the Weber kettle because
it's really one of the simplest things you can use to make a brisket.
If you don't have a larger smoker, an offset smoker or a pellet grill.
I've done briskets many times on the Kettle and they come out great.
But we'll talk more
about the process and keeping it stress free out at the grill tomorrow.
Let's turn this over and get our fat side,
and then we'll come back and give another dusting to our meat side.
Turn this back over.
Let's give it a nice top coating here.
All right. I am happy with that.
This is going to go in the refrigerator overnight uncovered.
Let all these seasoning sort of soak in there, really get into the meat.
And tomorrow,
I'll see you out at the Weber kettle when we are going to smoke this up.
So the Weber kettle is lit.
I'm using the Malory Firewall today, but really, you can use any method you want.
You could use a Slow n Sear. You could use the snake method.
You could use charcoal baskets. Whatever you like to use for a low and slow cook.
Make it no stress for yourself.
Now, I have a
foil pan in there with water to create some moisture in the chamber today.
And we're just going to let this temp
build up because that's what this is about when cooking a brisket.
Time plus temperature equals tenderness.
Remember that. One of the biggest ways
you can remove stress from doing a brisket is to remember patience.
Now, when I put a brisket
on, I will put a temperature probe in to track the temperature towards the stall.
You don't have to do that.
You could let it go until you get the color
you want, usually around 4 or 5 hours.
And that's what I'm going to be doing today.
I'm not going to have an internal temperature probe in out here,
because we're
going to finish this in the oven because that really reduces the stress.
If you want to keep going at this for, you know, nine or 10 hours, that's fine.
You could wrap it and leave it on the kettle
and just make sure you have enough fuel to keep going that long.
But once it's wrapped, heat is heat and you're not
going to get any more smoke flavor.
So wrapping it and getting it into a foil pan and into an
oven is really a great way to finish this.
A lot of times I will just finish it out on the grill
because I like sitting out here.
But we're removing stress today.
We're taking some of the variables out.
Now, once it goes inside into the oven, we are going to have
an internal temperature probe.
And I encourage you to get two things-- a remote temperature sensing device,
one where you can plug it
in and have a readout outside, and an instant
read thermometer.
Those two things really can help reduce stress
when you're cooking a brisket or any other large cut of meat.
So let's get the lid on here and start building temp
because we're going to be going for a range of 250 to 275 today.
And before you ask, what should
my vent settings be to reduce stress, there is no one vent setting.
Every cook is different. Every cooker is different.
You have to get to learn your cooker and how to set it for the temps you want.
I know that on this Weber kettle, this performer,
which I modeled with a couple of different things from SnS Grills, I'll be able
to just almost close the bottom vent and use what's called the smoke hole.
But again, every cooker is different.
You just have to learn yours to dial in those temperature settings.
And one thing about stress is,
you don't have to deal with this, but I do--filming through smoke.
So we're gonna let this build temp.
I'll bring you back when we're putting the brisket on.
All right. The Weber kettle is up to temp.
Let's get our brisket on.
Let's get a piece of our red oak on here for some smoke.
You can see this brisket fits
on there, but it is a tight fit.
Weight doesn't always determine the shape and size of a brisket.
I like the 11 to 14 pound.
But I've done a 17 on here before.
All right, let's get this closed up and get smoking.
We'll come back and check this in a couple of hours
and see if we need to spritz.
So we've been going for
2 hours, and about an hour ago, I added another piece of wood.
The temp's been holding really steady between 250 and 275.
Let's check our brisket.
That's looking really good.
Nice color
developing
It is looking a little dry, so I'm going to go ahead and spritz just
with some plain water.
We're going to get the lid back on
and let this keep going and we'll check in two more hours.
All right.
We've been going four hours now.
Let's check our brisket, see if it's time to wrap it
and then get it inside in the oven.
Oh, that's looking really good.
That color is looking good.
That's what I want.
So we're going to wrap this,
but I want to do a quick temperature check and see where we're at.
Let's get down in here.
And we're showing 163.
See that?
So that is right in the stall range.
So let's get this wrapped up so we can get it inside of the oven.
Let it finish.
Or we could get it right back on here if you want to stay out at the grill.
I do that a lot of the times.
Just wrap it up, get it back on here.
Get the lid on. And let it keep going.
But let's wrap this.
So I'm gonna go ahead and
spray some water here on the paper.
Just some of our spritzing liquid.
Moisten it up a bit. A little bit on our brisket.
One thing I don't think I mentioned was I like to do brisket,
things like that fat side down.
I like the fat to protect the meat on the grate
because if you move the meat off the grate,
a lot of the times you're going to get a little bit of marring of that bark.
So I want that meat side on the top to not get scratched up.
So fat side down, that's how I do it.
You can do it any way you want.
Slide this to the side real quick.
Here is a foil pan we're going to use,
and I have two balled up pieces of foil in here.
And what this does is it
helps keep the brisket from settling into any juices it releases.
All it takes is a little bit like that.
Gonna get this in here.
I'll get that inside, get a temp
probe in it and get it into a 275 degree oven.
And we're going to let that go until it gets to be about 203, 205 degrees.
And then we will check for tenderness.
So we've been going
almost exactly 8 hours and 20 minutes total. 4 hours
outside, 4 hours and 20 minutes inside, and we just hit 203 degrees.
I pulled the internal temperature probe
because I'm
not going to need that anymore, even if we're going to go back into the oven.
The reason is I'm going to do it at 30 minutes increments from now on.
So let's say it's not quite tender enough in the flat.
I'm going to put it back in for 30 minutes,
staying at 275, and then I would check it again.
And this is all about patience remember time plus temperature equals tenderness.
We want tenderness. That's when this is done.
And that really is a way to relieve stress
when you're doing a brisket, just get it into your head that it's about tenderness
and it may take some extra time. And a brisket can hold for quite a while.
So if you get it done early, it can hold for 3, 4 or 5 hours easily.
But let's see how we're doing on tenderness here.
I'm going to go into the point first,
and the point is usually tender by this point.
Got to get through the paper first.
Yeah, that's butter.
And the point temperature, if you can see that, is showing 206 right there.
And let's check the flat and I don't want to go all the way through
if I can avoid it.
So let's see how that's feeling
pretty tender.
I'm going to go one more spot over here.
That is feeling tender enough for me for the flat
because remember, this is going to rest now for a minimum of 2 hours.
I'm planning on a two hour rest.
So I'm going to double wrap this with foil just over this pan.
It's going to go back in the oven
that's turned off and just sit there for 2 hours,
slowly releasing its temperature and tenderizing more.
And one of the reasons I really like to do that in the foil
pan here is there's going to be juice that collects in this and
that juice is another thing you can use to remove stress from making a brisket.
Because if you've made a brisket before, you've probably come across that dry flat.
You slice into a flat and it's not quite as juicy as you want.
If you save that juice that's collected in this pan, it's a great like aus jus
that you can brush on those flat pieces to add a little more moisture.
I've done that frequently.
Not every flat
cooperates, and it's just more flavor and more moisture to add back in.
So a pan like this is a perfect way to finish a brisket, in my opinion.
Because you can collect that juice easily.
Let's get this foiled up and start resting it.
All right.
That's ready.
It's going back just to sit in the oven as it cools down a little bit.
I'll see you back here in about 2 hours.
Or maybe a little longer.
I have a meeting I have to do online, and it might go an extra hour.
So might be 3 hours, might be three and a half.
But this is going to be great.
All right.
Our brisket has been resting for 3 hours.
My meeting went a little bit long, but that's part of the thing
about not having stress here.
A brisket can hold for a long time in an insulated place.
This is in foil pans covered with foil in the oven that had just been turned off.
If I take my glove off and put it on here, it is hot still.
So let's open this up and take a look
and then we're going to get it out and slice into it.
All right.
I'm just going to cut through the paper here so we can get to the top.
Oh, yeah.
Woo hoo!
That smells so good.
Now, I've done this before when unwrapping briskets.
I'm just going to use my ThermaPen Mark One
and see what the temperature is right now inside of it
after resting for 3 hours.
You see our temperature is still
165 degrees internal after 3 hours.
So we still have a toasty brisket.
All right.
I'm going to get this out of here onto my cutting board and we're going to slice in.
So we're looking at an 11 ish
hour brisket here, probably closer to 11 and a half hours.
And let's just slice right across the middle here.
Here's our flat points over here. Underneath the flat.
See how we did.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, that is nice and juicy there.
Let's do a little slicing here.
Yeah, we are nice and floppy.
Nice and tender here.
And I'm just going to start tasting right now.
So here's a piece of the flat.
That is good, that rub on there, that Sweet Money Rub,
that is really, really awesome.
But now let me separate the rest of the flat here
so we can cut into the point.
You can just follow that seam between the two down,
slide the rest of your flat away.
We've got a little bit of a Juicealanche on the board here.
Turn the point because a grain runs the opposite direction.
Ooh, that is hot.
That is some juice.
That is looking delicious right there.
Time to taste the point.
Here we go.
What are you going to say?
The point is the point.
It's juicy, it's flavorful.
Great bark on the outside there.
Overall, super happy with this.
Is it the best brisket I've ever made?
No. It's certainly not the worst.
It's up there, though. It tastes great.
And bottom line, it was low stress.
4 hours out on the kettle, 4 and a half hours in the oven.
Let it rest for 3 hours
and it probably could have gone another 2 hours in the oven,
just sitting there resting if I needed it, too.
And you end up with a great brisket.
Didn't have to worry about it.
You just have to remember time plus temperature equals tenderness.
And patience is what gets you to the end there.
So you got to have patience and you'll end up with great brisket
with little stress.