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!
the smoker for me is hit or miss because it takes so long, and I have an electric smoker with the auto loader you really just set and forget. or drink to much pass out rocket out of bed at 4am remembering you have something resembling meat in the smoker that now looks like coal fuel.....
Big Green Eggs are stupid expensive and I just don't see where you get that much of an advantage.
As far as brisket goes...I'm not sure what the trick to it is except maybe to just cook it for a looooong time. I bet if you smoked it for a couple hours, then wrapped it in foil and left it on there for about 6 more hours it would be pretty tender!
Guy I work with does a good bit of barbecue, and he told me when he does a pork butt he leaves it on there for about 10 hours...sheesh.
My wife and father-in-law went together back in January and got me one of those Char-Griller Duos with the add-on smoke box and I have been loving it. I have only done ribs so far, and brisket and pork shoulder once, but everyone has loved them. I got the ribs down pat (2 hours to smoke, 2 hours in foil, and then an hour or less to firm up a little...they come out fantastic), the brisket I may need more practice on, and the shoulder I made tasted good but didn't have enough time to really get tender. This thing makes some damn good slow smoked barbecue though!
Those LQQK Amazing!!!!
I saw a brisket at Walmart...had that big ol' piece of fat on the back of it. The ones I picked up were trimmed, and I'm pretty sure that made a difference.
Well that was my point...the ones I got at Kroger were completely absent of fat. I'm not sure why they would sell them that way, but now I know the difference.
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