OMG, Smoked Brisket
There’s been plenty of times when Bookface puts up “Your Memories on Facebook” and I groan. But a couple weeks ago Bookface reminded me of this tasty, tasty dinner from last year. A little backstory: A was having a no good, very bad week, and I figured what better way to cheer someone up than a big hunk of meat?
Dinner was on Saturday, but let’s go back to Thursday of that week because you need to get the meat in order to smoke it:
Raw.
First up: the brine…
Nothing exotic for the brisket bath: salt, molasses, and water. Notably, this is a cold brine — no cooking involved. If I were using more aromatics or other spices, that’d be different, but this is about as simple as a brine can get. So, in goes the brisket
Take my word for it, the brisket is in there
And then into the fridge to chill:
Into the fridge. Don’t judge my fridge contents!
I love using that little cooler jug as my brining vessel. And that’s a wrap for Thursday.
Friday night started with pulling the brisket, patting it dry while we assemble the rub…
Naked and afraid.
I should take this moment to say this brisket was inspired by my friend, Mark, who made the greatest brisket I’ve ever tasted. This was my attempt to try to replicate it as best I could. His spice rub started with a Santa Maria spice mix for a base. I improvised with my best make-shift Santa Maria base: salt, peppercorns, garlic powder, dried parsley, and a little sugar all went into the spice grinder. In addition, some cumin, fennel, coriander, chili powder, cayenne, paprika, and onion powder. One of Mark’s additions is some corn meal to try to firm up the rub into something more resembling a crust.
I can smell it from here
Now let’s dress up that shivering cold brisket:
All dressed up…
Now it’s time to set up the barbeque — notice I didn’t say smoker. I don’t have a smoker. Instead I have a standard Weber 22 inch kettle barbeque. Mark introduced me to the “snake” method of “low and slow” smoking on the Weber. Around the perimeter of the kettle go a line of briquettes laid up against each other like so:
2-row “snake”
The white cubes at the head of the snake are paraffin lighter cubes. Onto the back of the snake(s) go the wood chips:
Chips on its, err, shoulder?
Last bit of preparation, pour hot water into the pie tin in the middle. You could use cold water, but the idea is to keep a steady temperature in the barbecue and why waste energy warming water? Finally, light the “head” of the snake(s), put the grill and meat on (and any thermometers you may use), close up the grill and go to sleep.
Wait, go to sleep?
Yep. That’s one of the wonderful aspects of the snake method — it’s going to burn through its briquettes one by one (and its chips along the way) keeping the kettle at a steady temperature for hours upon hours. How long? I haven’t figured out a briquette-to-time formula (yet), but I lit it off at 10pm Friday night and pulled it around 6am the next morning.
But that’s hardly the end.
Brisket is a tough piece of meat and can use all the help it can get. So after pulling the brisket, it went into a pan with apple juice and into the oven at 350 for a couple hours. By that point I’d finished the other dishes — iceberg wedge salad, chili roasted sweet potatoes, and corn bread. How’d the brisket turn out?
Glad you asked.
Spring is here, and with it comes barbecue season. There will be more (and better documentation) soon!
