5 Smoking Mistakes to Learn From | How to Make BAD Brisket on a Traeger Pellet Grill

making barbecue is a labor of love and that means at some point it's going to break your heart what you're about to watch is me ruining a brisket I considered not sharing this footage with you but I want you to see it I'm going to point out my mistakes along the way so that hopefully you can learn from my mistakes so that you don't make the same mistakes let's go well here we are it is 3:18 on a Saturday morning and there are only two reasons to be up that early number one is to go to Vegas which sadly we are not and that other reason is to start making barbecue that we are doing [Music] welcome back to the midlife ride today we are doing brisket and we're doing it Texas style the first time I cooked a brisket it was pretty early on after buying the Traeger which was what I mean maybe three or four years ago and back then I just didn't know what I didn't know and I'm pretty sure I am 99.9% sure that we only made the flat part of the brisket on that on that first cook I know for a fact I used like three different rubs on it I also know for a fact I did not trim any fat from it I mean it's just you just don't know until you start doing and start getting into it so that's what we're doing today we are cooking a whole packer brisket prime from Costco and we're going to keep it really simple Texas style just rub with half kosher salt and half coarse black pepper rubs done but first we're going to start trimming it we already have the grill going outside it's coming up to temperature at 275 and that was possible mistake number one cooking at 275 instead of 250 I went back and forth all week long but I think that was the wrong choice you can watch all the videos you can read all the books and I have but it really comes down to knowing what you're cooking and knowing your grill and that's what we're gonna cook at for the duration of the cook we're using oak pellets and we also have our water pan in there already like I've mentioned we found this brisket at Costco and it's a USDA prime brisket we got this for forty seven seventy eight and I think this I think that's one of the intimidating things about brisket at least for me anyway you spend so much money on a cut of meat and you only have one shot to get it right this is my first whole packer brisket to smoke so we'll see how it goes but I mean I think that's a pretty decent price it certainly wasn't the largest brisket they had but it was the prettiest the fat looks amazing as far as the way it's shaped this one is really good the other ones they had even though they were bigger at the points were huge I mean they were like this compared to the flats which were paper-thin so I went with this one and we're gonna cut it open now and start trimming say another thing we also just we just got this boning knife off of Amazon and if you do something like that please note these things are super sharp this is my first time using it I got it specifically to trim the brisket you know unfortunately these things are priced by the pound also unfortunately you're going to be trimming a lot of fat off this and we're going to take the fat side part down to about quarter of an inch and we're just going to start that process and it's always better to trim a brisket when it's cold rather than when it's warm I could also see some some parts that turn brown on the brisket anything we see like that on the edges we are going to trim off but if you can see this part right here see where it's already starting to turn brown I'm just going to go ahead and trim that off so we're exposing red meat right there and that's starting to look pretty good I think and you can really trim on this as long as you want to but I think we may flip it back over and check it out before we actually put it on the grill but uh I'm pretty happy with that part I think that's looking pretty good not too bad for a first time I think so let's check out the other side and again we have a lot of a lot of browning already going on right here so we're going to just go ahead and trim that off okay so I think let's stop there I'm pretty happy with the way it looks yeah I think it's time to rub it down and like I said we're just gonna stick with a really simple Central Texas style today with salt and black pepper oh yeah this also this is not cinnamon this is just an empty container that we saved specifically for stuff like this so we're just gonna get a nice layer okay and that is it we are going to what to sit for just a little bit longer to come up to room temperature you know you wouldn't want to do that with something like pork or with chicken but with beef you can and we're going to go that side up I would show you when we get out there and we'll still try to but like I said it's now 407 in the morning and still really dark so uh yeah we'll see you outside here in a minute okay so we have our oak pellets going for your up to temperature at 275 we had our water pan and the grill already when I put the brisket on the grill I've decided to put the point towards the pellet box so that the flat is facing the smokestack I feel like there's more heat that comes out from the smoke stack and you know with the flat being smaller than the point I want that exposed to less heat that is my theory we will see if it works and we're going to say goodbye to it for about three hours because if you're looking you ain't cookin we're just gonna let it go for three hours without opening the lid we're gonna come back out and we're going to spritz it at that point with some apple cider vinegar of water just to prevent the bark from drying out and hopefully at that point we'll start to have some color on that brisket so for now the question is do we make coffee already or do we not make coffee already or do we just go back to bed for a little bit you know what just tell us in the comments below what you would do welcome to daylight if we are first of all it's really freaking cold out here for a May Day but we are about three hours into our cook we're going to open the lid for the first time to check on the color of the brisket and probably spray it with a combination of apple cider vinegar and water if you're wondering what my measurement is it there really isn't one is probably one part vinegar to four parts of water it really doesn't matter we've been going at 275 and the reason I decided on that temperature is my Trager tends to run cleaner at 275 as opposed to 250 I didn't want a bunch of that dirty smoke to affect that brisket and that's why I decided to go with 275 so let's open up a lid real quick and check out what we have with their water stop the tape I made another huge mistake right here I should have checked the temperature at the three hour mark and I didn't I was basing it on color and the video really doesn't do it justice right here it looks a lot more uniform on video than it did in real life and I can't even explain that little white bubble that's right in the middle of the brisket right there I should have checked the temperature I mean the bark is really important don't get me wrong but the bark can lie the internal temperature can't and I suspect because it was cooking so fast that I should have rapped somewhere around the four hour mark but let's keep going so it's about two hours later now which means we're about five hours into our cook and we're going to check the brisket but one other thing you need to make sure you check even though these electric pellet grills are kind of set it and forget it you have to remember to check your pellets on occasion so since we're five hours in I mean you can see I got that so he annoyed refill our pellets okay so we have our hopper refilled and now we're going to open up the lid and see how it looks now the last time we came out which was two hours ago I expected the BART to be better form than what it was so hopefully it's better formed now oh yeah even though that looks a lot better than it did before instead of letting it go for two hours this time I'm going to check it after another hour because I want to wrap it based on color I don't want the bark to get too dark because I know it'll finish when we wrap it in butcher paper so instead of two hour increments now I'm going to check every hour so we will see you in an hour and yet another mistake because I was so determined to wrap based on color once again I did not check the internal temperature at the five hour mark I should have because I can tell you if it wasn't time to wrap at the three or four hour mark with as fast as it was cooking it was definitely time to wrap at the five hour mark as you can see I did not we are about eight hours into our cook and we're going to check and see what it looks like right now [Music] [Music] now we're gonna put this back on for maybe another hour let's check it our every hour to make sure it's thought let's face it at this point it was probably already done I don't know what I was thinking I was just so fixated on the bark and how it looked when it comes right down to it I am NOT an expert at smoking brisket on the Traeger I mean this was a first and may I was it a painful one okay we let the brisket rest for an hour and even though this got done a lot faster than I thought it would now we're gonna find out what we have here I can tell you right now I think this is overdone I think it's overcooked and I think it's going to be awful is way over that's it this is way overcooked I don't know why it cooks so fast but there you go not everything comes out perfect on the grill and I don't know what else to say what we did end up with is kind of this beef spaghetti which tastes a lot like pot roast so we'll still even though it's not brisket you would get a restaurant it's very much like pot roast so that's the way we'll eat it we're certainly not going to throw it away it's not bad but I would not I would not serve this to anyone to be quite frank with you so we did get lucky like we didn't have to throw away the entire brisket the bark was awful but we were able to salvage the inside of it both from the flat and from the point we took it and chopped it up simmered it in some barbecue sauce I would compare it to barbecue you would get from a fast food place it wasn't bad surf with sides and but it wasn't it was not the brisket you would and should get from a really good barbecue place or from a person who knows what they're doing with barbecue so anyway I hope you enjoyed this fail be sure to hit the thumbs up button if you liked this video hit the thumbs down button if you didn't like it subscribe if you haven't already hit that little notification bell so that you know every time we release a new video and hey it's just further proof that barbecue is a life long learning process sometimes you're going to win sometimes you're gonna lose that's just the way it goes but we will see you on the next episode of midnight ride [Music]

Channel: The Midlife Ride

Views: 62,264

Rating: 4.7490883 out of 5

Keywords: trager grill recipes, trager pellet grill, bbq brisket, how to smoke brisket, pellet grill brisket, smoked brisket recipes, smoked brisket rub, smoked brisket traeger, smoked beef brisket traeger, smoking brisket, smoking brisket electric smoker, pellet grill fails, cooking fails, bbq fails

Id: N6kWUYcHP78

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020