It's Grilling Time! The Official Stangnet Grill/Smoke Thread

The Brisket I smoked for 4th of July with the family.

Noobz347 said:

This is what I want to do next.


If you [loved] the recipe you used, how about hooking a brother up?

Click to expand...

It's pretty damn simple actually. Below is *My thoughts*, but at the end I'll also add in a few of the videos that started my Brisket cooking love almost 10 years ago by one of the best to have ever smoked a brisket, presented in the DIY version in your own back yard. In fact, my smoker is similar to what he uses in the videos.

First and foremost, use an OFFSET smoker, no cheating, no Treager or easy bake oven BS... put in the work and you'll be rewarded. If you have an offset, make sure you know it's personality, hot spots, true temps, etc. so that you can do your best to keep an even cook temp the whole time. Use Oak wood, with the splits sized appropriately for your smoker so that you can burn a CLEAN fire that isn't too hot for your smoker.

Second, get at least choice grade meat, and be picky when selecting it. Try to find one that has a fairly even thickness between the flat and the point (now is a good time to learn the difference in the two muscles of the brisket as it also comes into play when trimming and slicing), and the fat isn't rock hard or too thick.

Third, the seasoning, for me it's really simple... 1:1 ratio of salt and coarse ground pepper, then add in 1/3 part of garlic powder. Everyone is different in the flavor profile but that right there is as basic as it gets GOOD Texas BBQ, but add whatever you like! If you like other seasoning, sugars, whatever... do it, you're the one eating it.

Fourth, this is redundant to point number one, but run a clean fire, I like to try to keep my temp where the meat is at around 225-250 for the cook... but you want a thin blue smoke coming from the stack, not heavy white smoke which will give a bitter aftertaste.

Full honesty here, and what the big names on youtube won't tell you, once it's done getting the smoke and you've wrapped it (butcher, foil, whatever), you can honestly move it to the oven at 225 to finish it. I've done two at a time, one finishing in the oven and the other finished on the smoker and NO ONE could tell me the difference when I asked them to. I've also cooked them a few days in advance (to full done-ness, ready to serve) then put them in the fridge for a few days for transport to the lake house, heat them at 215 for a few hours until ready to serve and they are quite literally as good as the day I smoked it... just like the one in the picture.

Resting the meat is very important if you are going to smoke then serve, budget a few hours of rest in a cooler before serving if it's a straight through cook. If you have an oven like I do that goes down to 170 (or even like 155) and you want to serve the brisket for lunch Saturday for example, cook it Friday on the smoker and plan to pull it off before you go to bed. Then you put it in the oven in a foil pan covered tightly at 150-170 and let it sit there until lunch time and it will be perfect. If you go to any GOOD BBQ place in TX this is how they do it. They smoke them the day before, then put them in the warmers at 150 until service the next day.