Yeah, that's where I am. I think a lot of it is grade of meat. That's what I'm being told, anyway. A guy who owns one of the local meat stores (been around forever) told me that it's really hard to get "the best" meat because most restaurants have people buying the best cuts up before they hit the open markets. You can get SOME stuff locally, but it's hit or miss. And with the expansion of restaurants all over, it's getting harder and harder.
I love brisket, but the more I study it, the more it looks like going from "good" to "amazing" breaks the line of being worth doing myself. I mean, doing the rub and all with the smoker work, eh, that's not too bad, but when it comes to crap like "and you inject 2.347 cc's of the dip that you make every .75 inches along both sides of the brisket, but only go between .25 and .27 inches or it's ruined" and "you smoke it for the first 4 hours, then you wrap it, cook it in the oven for 3 to 3.1 hours at 225 degrees plus or minus a half a degree, then unwrap it, put it back on the smoker for ten minutes, mop on the sauce, smoke it another hour, take it out and wrap it in new foil, oven cook it another two hours, and then wash off the sauce and put new sauce on, wrap it back up and oven cook it fifteen minutes, and it's done . . . and yeah, it's just THAT EASY!"
Meh . . . I've ordered some brisket online that was amazing . . . and it wasn't that much trouble. LOL!
