Well folks, I finally used the smoker that my wife got me for my birthday. I have cooked many a thing, and have tried my hand at light smoking on my gas grill, but never have actually fully smoked anything. So in the tradition of many a newb cook, I immediately went for the most difficult thing known to man. A Brisket. That's right, Brisket. Delicious if done properly, but chewy, dry and tough if done wrong. What was I thinking...Delicious beef, that's what I was thinking. So here is a tale of beef, smoked wonderful beef. (I will apologise now for the lack of pictures. I am new to this, but I wont forget next time.)
I began my smoking adventure on Saturday at work, wondering exactly how I was going to cook it. After much investigation I decided to go with a Texas Style Brisket recipe that I found on http://www.smoker-cooking.com/. After coming home, I began to assemble the herbs and spices. I put together the dry rub, and then followed up with the mopping sauce. I wont bore you with the details, but it smelled wonderful. For the rub and sauce recipe, go to the above web site and give it a try. I then lavishly coated the beef with the rub and wrapped it up in plastic for a nice rest in the fridge.
The next morning, I began to get everything ready. I got the smoker out to the deck and began to get it preheated. Using mesquite wood, I brought the temperature up to 225. At this point, in went the brisket.
I will speed up the time here a bit, for the next 5 hours we smoked. Mopping the brisket every hour till it was done. Now many of you might be thinking, 5 hours??!?! That's it? Yup that's right. Remember I am a newb at this. First, I was only using a brisket flat, not a full brisket. Second, the recipe said to smoke it for 4-6 hours for a full brisket, so i adjusted a bit and went with it. After 4 hours of smoking, I wrapped it in foil (so it would not dry out) and cooked for another hour. I checked the temp and it showed 145. Medium rare. Wonderful. Pulled it out of the smoker and let it rest for 30 minutes. My wife had the sides put together, an excellent soft corn cake ( I will give you all the recipe someday), and a homemade potato salad. I sliced the brisket (against the grain, that's important. If you slice it with the grain, it will be chewy not tender). We plated everything and dug in.
Flavor: Spot on. Spicy, smoky, and delicious. The chili powder and paprika combined wonderfully and gave the meat quite kick. Almost overpowering, but not quite.
Moisture: Excellent. By keeping it mopped every hour and making sure that the water bowl was full, the brisket was not allowed to dry out.
Tenderness: Well, cant get everything right, now can we. Here is where I made my mistake. The recipe said to cook till 190 degrees. I thought that it couldn't be right, medium rare is 145. No way did I want to over cook the brisket. So here I am, total newb in smoking, thinking that I knew more than a competition smoker. So I pulled it out and sliced it up. Guess what, he was definitely right. It was tough. Not horrible, but most certainly not fork tender. After a bit more research, I discovered that brisket needs to get to 185 to 200 degrees to fully tenderize. I wont make that mistake again.
Well there you have it folks, my first misadventure in smoking. Not bad, but not great. The main thing is that you learn from what you do. And next time, I will take pictures. :)
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