Last week was my birthday, I celebrated it as any american male would, by cooking large amounts of meat for others to enjoy! The cooking included slaving over my side box smoker for 10 hours smoking a 5 1/2 pound beef brisket that I procured from El Toro Gourmet Meats. I woke up at 7:30 AM on Friday, removed the brisket from the refrigerator, slathered it with mustard, rubbed it with seasonings, and prepared my smoker for an all day smokefest! This was my first attempt at brisket smoking and I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. As with earlier smokes, I prepared the meat the day before it was to be enjoyed. The brisket turned out very good and was a complete success, with only a couple of slices left over.
Here is a picture of the brisket on the smoker. I cooked it in the pan the whole time and flipped it a couple of times during the smoke. I didn’t get a bunch of bark but it worked well. To the right is a pan with Dr. Pepper in it that I used to keep some moisture in the smoker and as a base for the pan drippings. I saved the drippings in the pan and skimmed off the fat. The next day I used the jiggly meat jello drippings in my slowcooker with the sliced up brisket and set it out to warm for 4 hours. The brisket turned out moist and juicy and I ended up with a number of compliments. Here are all the picture we took from the smoke.
I’m always looking for tips and advice when it comes to smoking meat so if anyone backyard smokers want to chime in, please give me suggestions! I’m working on making some improvements to my smoker soon attempting to contain the smoke better, but even without further changes I have been very happy with my smoker. Here is to more smoking in 2011!
2 thoughts on “More Smoking in Orange”
There’s a couple schools of thought on brisket. There’s the traditional low & slow (@225F for ~6 hours on a brisket flat like you got there) and there’s hot & fast (@350 for 3-4 hours).
To get more bark, you might try the hot & fast method. Inexpensive stick burners are notorious for leaking like a sieve, which makes heat control and smoke retention difficult, and tends to have a lot of hot / cool spots because of the way it’s made. Therefore, keeping it in pan like you did is probably a good idea. Did you have some water in the pan?
I stick with the traditional low and slow, since that’s what I’ve always read on Smoking Meat Forums and other message boards I read. But I’ll try hot and fast next time on the beef. I like pork a lot more, :).
I know if I had smoked on the grill for the first couple hours I probably would have had more bark, I wasn’t really worried about bark too much since I was preparing for the next day anyway (especially since I drenched it in the meat jello the next day).
I’ve got a nice little remote thermometer that I use so I can keep my grill between 215-235 without much hassle. I purchased some wood burning stove gasket that I’m going to add to the grill to give a bit better seal for the next smoke.
I had some of the Dr. Pepper in the pan from the start and then added the other pan about an hour in when I decided it would be a good idea to do it. 🙂
I had a bit too much white smoke this time whenever I was filling the side box. I need to work on smoke management a bit more. I think there were some ash on the meat since my wife said it sort of tasted like cigarettes. Another reason why the next day preparation actually worked out better, the meat got washed off by the juice.