brisket. the holy grail of barbecue.

Cooking a whole brisket comes with a big responsibility. It is a big, uneven and quite frankly, an ugly chunk of cow. If you over cook it becomes dry, under cook it and it will be tough and chewy. But get it just right and it tastes out of this world!

After a week (or five) of research I was actually quite nervous not only about cooking the brisket but even just purchasing one. While there is plenty of advice out there most recipes and opinions differ slightly. After reading a few articles you can’t help but feel more informed yet slightly confused at the same time. Quite often when reading about brisket you will hear the term ‘but that’s barbecue’. This refers to the many factors that can influence your successful (or not so successful) cooking of a brisket and how there is only so much control you have.

The ingredients and directions below should be considered more of a guide rather than strict instructions. The directions are more about what happened during my first brisket cook, not what I initially intended to happen. That said I was blown away with how good this brisket tasted and I won’t be veering too far off this path next time. Marina and I both agreed the ‘burnt ends’ section was the best tasting piece of meat we have ever eaten and that’s no exaggeration.

Stay tuned for a more definitive method because it won’t be long before I cook another big, bad brisket!

ingredients

• 1 whole brisket, weighing approximately 5.5kg
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt for dry brining
• for the rub – 1/4 cup coarse black pepper, 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tbsp garlic powder, 1 tbsp onion powder

preparation directions

1. Rub the brisket with kosher salt and dry brine for 24 hours. You can read Meathead’s article on dry brining here.
2. Fire up your cooker aiming for 240f. I was actually aiming for 250f ‘but that’s barbecue’.
3. Cover the meat with the remaining rub using a shaker to create an even spread over the meat.

cooking directions

1. Add the brisket to the cooker and add 3 fist-sized chunks of your preferred wood on top of the charcoal. I used applewood this time.
2. Monitor the temperature of your cooker keeping it steady around the 240f to 250f zone and when the internal temperature of the meat hits 165f sneak a peak at the meat. You’re looking for a well formed bark with a dark mahogany colour.
3. When you’re happy with the colour, it’s time to wrap the brisket. Use a double layer of foil and return to the cooker. This will help you avoid the stall* and to help the meat retain moisture.
4. When the internal temperature of the meat reaches 190f or thereabouts open the foil. Check the bark and move the temperature probe to a different part of the point section. For me I wasn’t happy with the bark. I thought it was lacking colour and formation. It was clear that there was plenty of moisture in the meat so I decided to unwrap it and let the bark form. The final colour of the bark should be jet black or ‘black gold’ as it’s known. Having unwrapped the meat I spritzed the meat with a 50-50 mix of apple cider vinegar and water every 30 minutes until the meat was cooked. If you’re happy with the bark and the moisture levels then wrap it back up   and leave it until it’s done.
5. When the internal meat temperature hits the 200f mark you want to start probing in different areas to make sure you’re getting an accurate reading. This is the moment when you’re juicy brisket can quickly turn to a dry and flaky waste of time and effort. Meathead believes the magic mark to be 203f and I think he’s about spot on. No cut of meat is the same so this is where a little of the uncertainty comes into play. Aaron Franklin relies solely on feel to judge when his briskets are done which, after cooking thousands of briskets, I’m sure comes easily to him but to us mere backyard grillers, we need a little bit more assistance. When you probe the meat it should feel like butter. Again, this notion of ‘probing like butter’ is a little vague and will, I suspect, require a few attempts to fully understand.
6. The readings I got at this point ranged from 203f to 205f. Next time I will aim for the 200f to 203f range as the flat section of the brisket was a little dry. This is not uncommon. If you manage to produce a juicy flat section along with a fully rendered point section then you truly have mastered the art of barbecuing brisket. All told, my cooking time was 9 hours, much shorter than I expected. A cut this size can take up to 13 hours.

*The stall refers to the phenomenon where the internal temperature of the meat rises for the first few hours of cooking then plateaus in temperature for up to 4 hours. The way to avoid this is by wrapping the meat in foil. You can wait it out without wrapping, it’s probably more a question of much time you have on your hands.

carving directions

An unfortunate reality of brisket is how quickly the meat dries out once its carved. Because of this I recommend carving and serving straight away. Cut only what you need and leave the remainder as one piece. This should help to retain some of the moisture. If you’re not planning on eating all of the leftovers the next day one thing you can do is pull or shred the meat, mix in some of your favourite barbecue sauce, put it in a zip lock bag and freeze.

As for the carving you must slice against the grain. For an in depth look into how to carve your precious brisket you can find Aaron Franklin’s method here.

You can find our recipe for Messy Coleslaw here.