Buoyed by my successes so far, I thought it was time to tackle the holy grail this past weekend: brisket. From what I've read, the main takeaway is that everyone has a different way to do it, and nobody seems to agree on what the "best" way is. The main point of agreement, however, is how tricky it is to get right. I headed to my favorite local grocery store for meat. I picked up the last five fresh polish sausage they had, plus a nice flat cut brisket, just over 6 pounds. Wanting to have the brisket done for the next day, I decided to inject, and I "cheated" a bit on both the injection and the rub, by using store-bought versions of both (I usually like to make my own stuff, but time was a factor).
The original plan was to throw on the sausages and a pan of mac and cheese (more or less the recipe the
Smoking-Meat.com guy posted, with modifications I described before) in time to be done for dinner Saturday, and then later that night start the brisket for Sunday. By the time I got to the store, though, the sausage and mac and cheese went on later than I planned, so it ended up getting saved to go with the brisket for a Sunday BBQ smorgasbord. Put them both on for about 3 hours at 225 with 2 or 3 oz (I forget which now) of apple chips.
Then prepped the brisket. As I mentioned, I "cheated" on the injection, and used Stubbs BBQ's "Texas Butter." I also cheated on the rub, and used some "Steakhouse Rub" from Willams-Sonoma that my inlaws sent me--mostly salt, pepper, garlic, and brown and white sugar, plus other random spices, so I figured it was a good match for brisket. Used some yellow mustard as a binder, then put that on, and popped it into the fridge to cool its jets for a few hours (about seven or eight, as it happened, with about five in the fridge, then a couple out). At about 11:30 or so that night, I figured it was go-time. The smoker had cooled down from the earlier batch, and the hope was that the brisket would be done by noon to 2 the next day. I loaded it up with about 6 oz of hickory blocks (the last of the sample that came with the #3), stuck in my iGrill probe, put in a little water in a mini-loaf foil pan, and fired it up to 225.
I know there's a LOT of debate about whether and when to wrap the brisket in the process. I decided that I was going to go the old-fashioned way, and have it cook the whole time unwrapped. I knew it would take longer, but I wanted that nice bark. It did hit a couple of stalls, and ended up taking until about 4:40 pm to hit 195. At that point, it came out, went into a double-foil wrap, and into a cooler with two bath towels above and two below it, to hang out for about two more hours. Meanwhile, the stuff I did the night before went into the oven to heat back up for a bit.
At the appointed time, I got out the brisket, which despite two hours out of the heat was still plenty hot. And it turned out pretty close to perfect. I had gotten one of those long, granton-edged slicing knives (the fancier Wustof kind will set you back about $125, but I settled for a much cheaper $30ish version that works just fine) and it sliced through like a hot knife through butter. And there was a perfect bark on the outside, while the inside was almost ridiculously tender. My mother-in-law was in town and raved, as did my wife.
I've posted the before and after pictures. Next time I may try one of the brine methods described here, or some kind of different injection, but I think I'm sold on not wrapping it mid-cook so far. But I luckily knew from the forums that I'd need to leave a LOT of time for it, and it actually took even a bit longer than I thought it might.
