Norm Matthews

I faced a challenge that I had avoided for a long time: do a brisket in the smoker. It turned out pretty OK.

It's not as daunting a task as I feared but I'll be doing bacon sushi or fatties on Fri. or Sat. for a party I'm going to.

Yeah now. That isn't what they were saying yesterday. Brisket turned out really well, better than any I've had at restaurants around here. More details at the link at the bottom.

My nephew is having a bacon and bourbon party on Sat. I plan to make some bacon sushi, bacon and bourbon BBQ sauce and take some brisket too. I have pickles, slaw, potato salad and will start on the beans shortly. I have some pickled onion too now I think on it.

Choice grade. I am kind of glad it shrunk. I was wondering how we'd ever eat all that meat.

I have no qualms about using the crutch. Crutch is just a word and I don't have butcher paper. I call foil a finishing tool instead of a crutch. Click on the link at the bottom of my post for a blow-by-blow of the progress of the brisket up to a few minutes ago.

I only wrapped it in foil after it got plenty of smoke and was almost black on the outside. i have been up since 4:30 this morning with the brisket, battling heavy rain at times and almost losing. I think things are going well now, and I'm keeping a log of everything I do.

Rotuts: A friend or mine, a retired Italian plumber in New Jersey gave me these guidelines for what he does with store bought corned beef at St. Pat's Day dinner. "rub the corned beef with fresh garlic, lots of coarse ground peppercorns, a little fresh ground coriander, double wrap it in foil, place in a covered roasting pan and slow roast in a 250°F oven for 5 to 6 hours depending on size. The flavour is closer to pastrami when roasted this way." I had made corned beef from scratch for Irish day but bought a couple of corned beef packs when they were on sale afterward. I made one as he described it and it was good. I did the other one later in the smoker instead of wrapped and in the oven. As for the discussion about Franklin Brisket, I felt I could use some more information about just briskets. It is an area I would like to have more confidence in before i attempt another one. I thought I'd get the book and maybe get some insight on doing briskets since I haven't really tried to do a whole one after the first one I did a couple decades ago. I thought the book would be a little dialog and a lot of recipes but instead it was all dialog and a couple recipes at the end. I think i realized from reading this book that my offset smoker is not too small to be a wood burner. Another veteran smoker told me it was but I think I can manage a good smoke with smaller logs and a smaller fire. After reading the book and watching some of the videos, i have some extra insight in the way I can get more out of my smoke. It didn't hurt to find out that he just won this years James Beard Best Chef award. So tomorrow I am going to try to do a whole brisket once again and spend the time to do it right this time. If it turns out well, I will be glad that I succeeded. It's like one of the things to check off my bucket list. I don't think I will do another one soon if this one turns out well. Quote from chileheadmike: Check out Bichelmeyer's. The last time I tried to get a whole brisket from Hen House the butcher looked down his nose at me and said they don't really deal with THOSE kinds of cuts. " I got a similar remark from one of the meat cutters last year when I was looking for nice big ham hocks. I found McGonigle's Meat Market here in Kansas City and they the kind of brisket I was looking for.

I found a meat market that sells whole, untrimmed briskets. It is in Missouri and not far from Penzey's The brisket was about half what I expected to pay for it. It is 11 lbs USDA Choice. I plan to smoke it on Wed. Look at the size of their smoker. This is standing outside next to Penzey's. On Saturdays and Wednesdays, it is not a parking lot but filled with farm trucks selling all kinds of goodies. I like this time of year in Kansas City.

That's what I told myself when I got the Classic smoker. And it's true, I'll probably never really need more capacity, but every once in a while I catch myself kind of wishing I'd got the bigger one. ps my son and I got to looking around and found there are several meat markets in the area. I plan to check one out tomorrow. It's over on the Missouri side via Penzey's and an antique store.

As I recall it is a nice mild mustard sauce.

It has been a long time since I have made mustard and I had to look this one up in my old handwritten cookbook, but this one was pretty good, if I recall correctly. 1/4 C. dry mustard 1/4 C. white wine vinegar 1/3 C. dry white wine 1 Tbsp. Honey. Stir together and allow to stand 1 1/2 to 2 hours in the top of a double boiler. Beat in 1/2 tsp. salt and 3 egg yolks. Cook over hot water, stirring constantly until slightly thick (5 minutes) Pour into 8oz jar, cool, refrigerate until ready to serve.

I always use a probe thermometer when roasting a rib-eye in the oven. I usually check it with boiled water to check for accuracy first. They can get quite a bit off sometimes. It is such a prime piece of meat, I want it to be just right and I keep an eye on it with the probe. It seems to me that 2.5 # is going to be big enough to use a probe. Going in the side is the way I've seen pros do it. The center is the best place to put it, IMHO. You can brown it in the skillet, insert the probe and finish it in the oven. If not that, then you can check it with an instant read thermometer. Sometimes, with practice, you can tell how done a steak is by feel. The flabbier it feels, the rarer it is. Hope this is helpful.

I don't know anything about sous vide but adding smoke isn't the only reason for smoking. You want a crust on it too and both smoke and crust takes more than an hour. Two hours is the least amount of time things are usually smoked. After that, I don't see any reason why you can'f finish it in the sous vide. PS Tri tip is traditionally grilled rather than smoked, as in a Santa Maria tritip.

OK. It's clear to me now. Thanks.

Radtek, yes I know. Prime isn't easy to come by and the one or two times I got meat from Walmart (steak, not brisket) it was poor quality and stringy tough. But I will take your advice and check out Walmart and another couple of stores to see if I can get some good brisket. I suspect that Hen House is going through a phase of downsizing or cost cutting in the meat dept. Some of the workers behind the counter seem to not be as aware of cuts or terminology as they were 6 months ago. Once they had to call someone out from the back to cut some meat to my order. (and he got it wrong anyway) PS It was easier to get really nice beef before I moved back home to Kansas City 3 years ago. I lived near a cattle ranch and they sold direct to the public. The meat wasn't graded but you could tell it was better than grocery store stuff by a good margin.

He said (paraphrasing) that there was a fire at the place where he got his brisket and supply was cut off for a short time and that he had to get less than prime briskets. While he was using lesser grades of brisket, a writer visited and he got his only ever bad review. He discussed grading as prime being USDA judged "defined as being from young,(nine to 30 months in age) well-fed beef with abundant marbling." This kind of was discouraging to me, for him to admit in effect that his methods were not as effective with less than top quality meat.

It's the internal marble fat and the collagen along with slow cooking are wrapping at the right time that keeps the brisket tender and moist, but I'd like to have a fat cap anyway. I am not finding a good brisket to try out yet. The butcher at Hen House said they would have some brisket with the point in the next day but when I went in, a different guy brought out a 'whole' brisket and it was just the whole flat and most of the fat had been trimmed off. He said they didn't have any with the point. Franklin says he uses prime grade brisket and that will be even harder to source around here, IMO.

OK, thanks. I wondered because the smoke looked white like steam, rather than blue smoke, and appeared to be falling rather than rising. Is that standard for pellets? Were the chips or pellets wet?

Dcarch, what is the source of the smoke?

It had been my experience that a brisket flat that is tough has been cooked at too high a temperature and for too short a time.

This picture turned out really badly but I smoked some pastrami and pork butt. Along with it we had an Asian bean sprout salad, green beans and mashed potatoes. I was going to have cabbage too but it was taking too long to cook so i skipped it.

I went to Hen House market to get a whole brisket today but the butcher told me he wouldn't have any until tomorrow. I looked at other stores yesterday and no one had anything for sale except flats. I got a small pork butt instead and defrosted a corned beef and seasoned it for pastrami and am smoking the two of them. I expect to have them ready for dinner in 30 or 40 minutes. They both have shrunk quite a bit. I have figured out that Franklin smokes his meats with the firebox door open and uses just enough fuel to maintain temperature while I tend to build a longer lasting fire and regulate the temperature with the damper.

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Even in the long ago, Ernie Kovaks, when asked why TV was called a 'medium', said because it is neither rare nor well done.