Are you making these 100 brisket mistakes?

hello barbecue family i'm steve gau and this video is very special because we're covering all of the mistakes you can make with smoking a brisket and how to avoid them we're going to cover mistakes from selecting a brisket all the way to slicing it and serving it and everything in between and trust me guys i've made all of these mistakes so you can learn from my failures and you can make an amazing brisket your family will love you your friends will love you heck strangers will love you after watching this video you're gonna know so much about brisket your family is gonna be asking over and over again what is your secret there's gonna be smiles across the table reaching for seconds because that's what it's all about guys so sit back and relax we've got a lot to cover because here at smoke trails barbecue we're all about breaking it down step by step making things simple so you can elevate your barbecue game and become a barbecue legend at the dinner table so let's get to it buying a low quality brisket this is the number one mistake that people make when they're smoking brisket they go to the store they buy the cheapest cut of meat they can usually it's a select grade brisket and it turns out dry and they don't know what happened what happened is select-grade briskets do not have enough fat content to make a super juicy brisket so you want to get either a choice certified angus beef prime or wagyu buying a small brisket and following the recipe for a large brisket this is the number two mistake people make they go to the store they buy a two to five pound chunk of brisket they take it home they follow a recipe from the internet for a full packers cut of brisket which is 12 plus pounds and they can't figure out why their brisket didn't turn out well well you need to go find a recipe that is specifically tailored to a small cut of brisket buying the wrong type of brisket you want a brisket that is 10 plus pounds it's a full packers cut it has the point muscle and the flat muscle attached you don't want to buy a corned beef brisket you don't want to buy a brisket flat by itself you don't want to buy a brisket point by itself buying a brisket with too much hard fat on it if you need to stand in the grocery store and pull out all the briskets look for the best one don't settle for one with a ton of hard fat in it you can usually tell if you bend it a little if it's super stiff it typically has a ton of hard fat if you're at your butcher ask your butcher to bring out a few briskets and look for one with as little hard fat on the fat cap as possible you're just gonna be carving all that fat off anyway and you're gonna be throwing in the garbage buying a thin brisket some briskets are 10 plus pounds so they're in the normal weight range of a brisket but they're really long and skinny you want to get a brisket that's shorter and thicker that thicker meat is going to survive better throughout the cooking process and it's going to produce a way more tender and juicy final product buying a frozen brisket freezing a brisket can rob it of its ability to retain moisture throughout the cooking process so if you can at all possible buy a brisket that hasn't been frozen and it's completely fresh not buying a big enough brisket to feed everyone if you're going to go through all of the effort to cook a brisket for 12 plus hours then you might as well get one that is going to feed your family your guests and you for the rest of the week buying a brisket that is too big for your smoker you don't want to buy a huge brisket trim it get it all prepped and then you're ready to throw it on the smoker and it doesn't fit being afraid of weird colors when you're buying a brisket it's okay to have a little bit of browning on the edges of the brisket in fact the brisket is treated a little bit after it's cut and that's what that brown color on the one side of the brisket is if the brisket is fuzzy or it's like smelling gross or something obviously there's something wrong with it but if it's not bright red or like a steak that you see at the grocery store it doesn't need to be perfect there can be some brown spots on it it's all right following a recipe that's not meant for your smoker for example following a oven brisket recipe always look for a recipe that is for your specific smoker going only by time or only by temperature time and temperature are only a guideline of when a brisket is getting to certain stages in the cooking process the real test for when to wrap a brisket is the color of the brisket the real test for when a brisket is done is when it probes tender going off random advice from facebook or a friend a lot of people have really good ideas about how to cook brisket but it might be very specific to their situation so always be careful when someone is giving you advice and check a bunch of different sources on the internet going off an old family or friends recipe a lot of brisket recipes can be really old and they might result in kind of a dry brisket so again check a bunch of different recipes on the internet and just make sure you're following one where the person is showing you the end result and it looks super tender and delicious not giving yourself enough time to smoke a brisket you're gonna need anywhere from 12 to 20 hours for this entire process so make sure you get up early and you plan out your cook and you plan when you're actually going to serve this brisket not having a rough plan for your cook a lot of people just follow a recipe off the internet and they just go by the recipe step by step that's not the best way to do it you want to look at a bunch of different recipes you want to plan out exactly when you think that your brisket is going to reach the stage of wrapping it it's going to reach a certain temperature and then when you think it's going to finish within a degree of error of like plus or minus a couple hours this gives you a rough plan so that if you reach a stage within the cooking process that your brisket is doing something that doesn't really jive with the plan you can kind of adjust what you need to do for example you can cook the brisket faster at a higher temperature or you can wrap it sooner that's going to ensure that you get your brisket done at the right time for dinner not accounting for trimmed fat so a lot of people go on a time per pound recipe on the internet for example 1.5 hours per pound at 150 degrees fahrenheit well if you do that and you calculate it based on the full brisket size that you get home from the grocery store you might trim off five to eight pounds of fat depending on how much fat there is on that brisket so always go by the fully trimmed weight and take that into account not carving enough fat off your brisket if you don't carve the fat cap down to a quarter inch you're going to have a lot of fat on that brisket and if you serve it to people they might throw that fat away and that's not a very nice feeling so you want a quarter inch thin layer of fat on the outside that's going to give people a nice little bite of fat and they're not going to be ripping it off and throwing it away if you like a really fatty brisket if that's your style then all the power to you but most people like a little bit less fat trimming too much fat off of the fat cap you need a quarter inch continuous layer of fat over the full surface of the brisket this is going to help you get a nice consistent smoke ring so it's going to look nice and pretty and it's also going to help retain moisture and it's also going to protect your brisket from the heat so make sure it's a nice even layer of fat trimming too deep into the point muscle there's a seam in the point muscle where it meets the flat where there's this large vein of hard fat you want to carve into that and carve a lot of that away but you don't want to keep going and going until you're making a huge cavern in the middle of your brisket you just want to go until you have a little flap on the outside but it's still got its structural integrity don't go too far and totally separate that flat and that point muscle not freezing your brisket before trimming it now i know i said don't freeze your brisket but you can freeze it for about 30 minutes to an hour and that's just it's not going to freeze it it's just going to firm up the fat so it's a lot easier to carve if you're trimming room temperature fat then it's going to be really hard to trim that fat nice and evenly so always freeze it for about 30 minutes to an hour before you start trimming not trimming the silver skin on the bottom of the brisket this took me a long time to learn as well if you flip the brisket over to the meat side there's a small little thin sheet of silver skin and you need to trim that off it's just tissue that doesn't render down and it just tightens up and it gets kind of chewy at the end of the brisket cook so take a really sharp knife lift the brisket up with your hand underneath it and then shave that silver skin off scoring the fat cap this is something that i used to do when i first started smoking brisket and honestly it's not a really good idea it involves scoring little squares in the fat cap and the theory is that it lets more smoke and spices get to the meat the problem is it also lets a lot more moisture out and it also lets a lot more heat get to that meat you want that continuous layer of fat on the outside of the brisket not landmarking your brisket when you're trimming your brisket it's a really good idea to go to the flat end of the brisket make a small perpendicular cut to the grain of the meat and that is going to tell you which direction to slice your knife at the end of the day when you're slicing your brisket because otherwise it's really hard to see through the thick dark bark at the end of the cook which direction the grain is running so you can slice directly against the grain not following proper hygiene it's always a good idea to wipe the cryovac bag down when you get home from the store just to clean up that brisket make sure there's no pathogens getting on other stuff in your fridge obviously it's all going to be burned off when you cook it but it can also get cross-contaminated with other stuff in your fridge always make sure you have a dry hand and a wet hand when you're applying rub and you're touching other things that you're not necessarily going to clean off later and just be mindful that there's brisket juice flying everywhere when you're trimming and try to keep clean at all times not trimming off bits of the brisket that won't survive the cook it's hard to trim off brisket and throw it away because i know you spent a lot of money on it but it's a good idea to trim the thinner edges of the flat off because those are just going to get really crispy and they're not going to survive the cook anyway using a sugar heavy rub you don't want to use the same rub that you're going to use for ribs on a brisket brisket is way better without a lot of sugar sugar is great with pork ribs or a pork butt or a pork shoulder it just doesn't go as well with brisket using too much salt this is a big mistake that i see a lot of people make they go and buy a commercial rub with a lot of salt in it already and then they apply a little bit of salt on the outside of the brisket and then layer that rub on top of it very common mistake because a lot of recipes call for applying the salt separately and then people put their rub on you're basically double salting your brisket and that can lead to a very salty brisket not using sharp knives this is something that i'm personally guilty of i went a long time without getting a really sharp knife and it makes trimming a brisket really difficult and actually dangerous because you can cut yourself if you're really trying to struggle with a dull knife and it slips and cuts through something and then it cuts into your hand you're gonna have a bad day and if you're on a budget all you have to do is get a 10 knife like this get a 10 sharpener off amazon like this and every time you go to trim your brisket or cut into your brisket just give it a sharpen on this cheap sharpener a couple times it's like honing it but it's better than honing it because this thing actually shaves the metal off and sharpens it a little bit and you're not worried about screwing this knife up because it's only a 10 knife so get yourself this 20 bucks total and this will give you a good knife system to trim up your brisket not using enough salt in your rub if you're making your own rub at home you have to keep in mind the ratio of salt to everything else in a rub there's two main ingredients salt and all the other stuff you want to add in salt is the most important thing you're adding to your rub so if you have one tablespoon of salt in your rub mixture and you have one tablespoon of pepper then that's gonna be a lot saltier than a rub with one tablespoon of salt one tablespoon of pepper one tablespoon of paprika chili powder cumin all this other stuff that is going to bring the ratio of the salt down so you always want to keep that ratio of salt that you're aiming for consistent because you don't want to dilute it in the rub with other ingredients that you're adding not pre-resting your brisket before you put it on the smoker pre-resting your brisket is when you apply the rub you want to let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes to an hour that salt is going to draw out some of the moisture from the brisket it's going to co-mingle with all the rest of the spices in that moisture and it's going to help with the bark formation so if you don't let it rest and let the salt do its magic for about 30 minutes to an hour then you're gonna put it on the smoker and you might still have really big grains of salt that never get a chance to draw out that moisture and dissolve and create that awesome bark layer letting your brisket pre-rest for too long a lot of people they apply their rub and then they wrap it in either foil or plastic wrap and leave it in the fridge overnight that's probably fine but if you leave it for a couple days then you're actually dry brining it and that brisket could turn out a lot like pastrami or taste like beef jerky it's a little bit too much time for that salt to penetrate too deeply into the brisket and the flavor is just not what we usually expect when we want brisket not letting the brisket temper at room temperature tempering is when you bring your brisket out of the fridge and you leave it at room temperature so it can rise in temperature a little bit so it has less of a temperature journey when you put it onto the smoker this is going to allow you to cook the brisket faster and more evenly so what i like to do is i take the brisket out of the fridge in the morning it's already been trimmed the night before apply my rub and then i just leave it there at room temperature for about an hour to an hour and a half and when i do that i'm letting it temper and come up in temperature and also i'm letting it pre-rest so all those spices and the salt can work their magic on the outside of the brisket wet brining your brisket now brisket is probably one of the only cuts of meat where i wouldn't recommend wet brining it as part of the cooking process now if you're doing pastrami or montreal smoked meat then you actually do need to wet brine it as part of the process but for a traditional texas style brisket or any type of barbecue brisket that you cook on a smoker it's not a good idea to brine it because it's gonna taste a little bit like beef jerky and the texture is just not gonna be the same as if you didn't wet brine it now for the purposes of this video i'm going to wet brine this brisket just to show you guys how it turns out but i typically would not recommend wet brining a brisket for any length of time not cleaning your grates this is a big issue that i have because after a long day of smoking a brisket the last thing i want to do is clean my grates but then the next time you go to cook your brisket you're going to open up your cooker and it's going to be gross and nasty and it's just one more step when you're already really busy and you need to put that brisket onto the smoker as fast as possible because it's going to be a long day so i really recommend after every time you finish a cook to give your grates a clean they're already hot and warm and they'll be easy to clean off not positioning your brisket correctly on your specific type of smoker this is a big problem that people have they always have the fat cap up versus fat cap down debate and i actually believe that you need to add the fat cap towards the heat source that's always worked the best for me so on a pellet smoker you want the fat cap down and for the purposes of this video i'm going to smoke this brisket with the fat cap up at 275 degrees fahrenheit so you guys can actually see what happens when you don't cook on a pellet smoker with the fat cap down on an offset smoker usually the fat cap should be up because the convection current and that heat that's going from the firebox to the stack is going over the brisket it's kind of like an airplane like aaron franklin says it's going like that so you want the fat on the top so it's protecting that brisket from that current other smokers the master built electric smoker or any electric smoker the heat source is usually coming from the bottom so you want your fat cap down similar to on a pellet smoker a drum smoker usually you want the fat cap down a weber smoky mountain you want the fat cap down with a weber grill i usually smoke it with the fat cap up because i do a two zone cooking process so the heat is really coming up from the coals on the one side and then it's going up and over the brisket it's not coming from underneath so that is the only exception where on a weber kettle i would smoke with the fat cap up incorrect meat placement on your smoker you want your brisket positioned so that the point muscle is facing the heat source because that point muscle can take a lot of heat and the flat which is thinner cannot take a lot of heat so you want the brisket as far from the heat source as possible so on an offset smoker that's as close to the exhaust on the far side of the cooker as possible and you also want that point facing the heat source and you want it positioned in the area that you're collecting the temperature for so you always want to collect temperature at great level so make sure you're cooking that brisket exactly where you're collecting that temperature messing up the presentation side of a brisket a lot of the brisket cooking process is kind of a little bit of theater in my opinion like if you're serving it to a large group of people or your family you want it to look as good as possible you want to carry out this brisket take out your big slicing knife and then carve it in front of everyone like that's part of the experience of barbecuing a brisket for me so when you're prepping your brisket you always want to make sure that you don't mess up the rub on the presentation side so if you're cooking your brisket fat side up you want to apply the rub on the bottom non-fat side first flip it over because that rub is getting a little bit messed up but it doesn't matter because it's going to get messed up when you put it on the grate anyway and then you carefully apply your rub to the fat side and you make it all nice and pretty and then you put it on the smoker and you're not going to be messing with that top spice rub layer anymore and it's going to look really nice at the end of the cook giving up when you think your smoker is too small for your brisket there's always a way in most cases to cook your brisket on any size of smoker you can always separate the point from the flat and cook them on top of each other or you can wrap it around itself in like a c shape and then once it shrinks down a little bit you can lay it flat again or on an electric smoker you can smoke it on an angle with an angled rack and then again once it shrinks down a little bit in the cooking process you can put it back down on the horizontal rack and it'll fit so never give up before thinking through the process and thinking about how you can fit that brisket into your smoker not using real wood on an offset smoker there's a reason that offset smokers are called stick burners you're supposed to use them with actual splits of hardwood so if you have an offset smoker and you've been trying to get the temperatures consistent and get everything right with charcoal alone you're just shoveling charcoal in there every hour that's not really the best way to do it it's always a good idea to get yourself some nice dry preferably kiln-dried splits of hardwood and that is going to make your life 100 easier if you're cooking on an offset smoker using green wood in your offset smoker this is a big mistake that people make on an offset smoker they go and they buy the cheapest wood they can get that's hardwood and then they take it home and they throw it on the smoker and it starts steaming and smoking and bubbling that's because the wood is wet and it hasn't had a chance to season or dry properly yet so you want to bring that internal water content of your wood down to around 10 preferably so usually you get that by either kiln drying it or you can season it it has to be seasoned for a year or two before you can actually burn it if you burn green wood if it even burns at all in your smoker then you're going to produce a lot of creosote you're going to produce a lot of bitter flavors in your meat so you want to stay away from it not using a moisture meter you can pick up a moisture meter on amazon for about 20 bucks and you're gonna have it for the rest of your life and you'll be able to always know what the internal moisture content of the wood that you're burning is so the wood should be below 20 at the very least if it's any higher than that then it's considered green wood and you don't want to burn that it needs to be seasoned for longer or kiln dried and i actually use my masterbuilt electric smoker to kiln dry my wood to a moisture content of about 10 percent it works so much better on the offset smoker when you're burning wood that's that dry burning the wrong type of wood so this goes hand in hand with burning green wood you don't want to burn green wood you don't want to burn a lot of mesquite because mesquite can give you a really intense flavor so if that's not what you're going for then stay away from mesquite hardwood also don't smoke any soft woods do an internet search before you buy some wood to make sure that you can smoke that wood and it's a hardwood smoke that is actually safe for barbecue now one thing i would say is a lot of people smoke with mesquite i'm just talking to the majority of people who have never barbecued before and they're picking up mesquite expecting it to taste like oak or cherry or something more mild and then they get like a really intense powerful flavor without actually going for that bad fire management you really want to make sure that you are dialing your temperatures in so that they're consistent if they're going up to 300 and then down to 200 and then up to 300 in the next 20 minutes after you add a big chunk of hardwood then you're going to have a bad day and you're not going to produce really good barbecue so if you have an offset smoker a camato a water smoker like a weber smoky mountain where fire management is very important do a couple trial runs to make sure that you can get a nice consistent temperature before you actually start barbecuing it i did a great video on offset smoker fire management that i'll link right here if you guys want to check that out running out of fuel this is one of the worst things that can happen and i've been on long cooks on my pellet smoker where i've actually run out of pellets and then you're kind of screwed because you have nothing to smoke with anymore on an offset smoker i've run out of hardwood splits and then i have only charcoal left over to burn which is not the end of the world but you always want to make sure that you're fully stocked on the type of fuel that you need before you actually start the cooking process it can burn a lot faster than you think if it's windy outside if it's rainy if it's cold so always be prepared and have a stockpile of enough fuel for your entire cooking process not using thermometers do yourself a favor if you don't have a instant read thermometer go out to the store and buy one it helps out a lot for knowing where the brisket is at different stages of the cooking process and it's also very helpful at the end of the cooking process to probe the brisket for tenderness which is the real test of when a brisket is done the second piece of thermometer you need to get is a probe thermometer something you can put at great level directly before the heat hits the brisket where you can measure that ambient temperature because that is going to tell you your fire management temperature that you need to maintain consistently going off the dome thermometer or another built-in thermometer this is a big mistake i see a lot of people making they go off of the built-in dome thermometer on their offset smoker or their weber smoky mountain or their kamato style smoker that can be off by up to 50 degrees from what the temperature actually is at great levels so a lot of people post briskets on forums and they're like what happened to my brisket and in a lot of cases they're just not cooking at the temperature that they thought they were cooking at because they're going off of an incorrect temperature reading on the built-in dome thermometer which can often be wrong going off of temperature alone temperature is only an indicator of when your brisket is reaching different stages of the cooking process so when it hits around 165 degrees internal temperature that's usually in most cases when people wrap it because that's the temperature when the bark starts to get nice and dark but sometimes it could take all the way up to 195 degrees fahrenheit to get that bark at the right color where you want it so temperature is always just an indicator incorrect probe placement so if you're going off a recipe that goes by temperature then always put that temperature probe in the thickest part of the flat right underneath the point that is the spot that is going to cook the slowest and it's where the most accurate temperature reading will be if you put your probe in the tip of the flat where the meat is really thin it's always going to cook faster and it's going to have a really high reading that's going to be a lot higher than that actual sweet spot in the middle of the brisket same with the point if you put it just on the tip of the point it could give you an inaccurate meeting so always put it right in the center of the brisket thickest part of the flat right underneath the point not having heat resistant gloves to handle your brisket a lot of people use tongs to pick up their brisket and then they end up messing up all that bark and scraping off that bark from the brisket so you need to get yourself some nice gloves what i use are some really heavy duty black leather gloves and i bought a whole bunch of cotton gloves to protect myself from the heat so i put one hand in a cotton glove and then i put one hand in my big thick rubber gloves here and these are reusable that's why i like them but i also sometimes use disposable gloves and that gives you a little bit more dexterity because the rubber is not as thick if you're more budget conscious you can also use these silicone mitts as long as they're heat resistant and waterproof then you're good to go cooking at the wrong temperature for your smoker if you're cooking a brisket at 300 degrees fahrenheit give or take on an offset smoker that is producing much more gentle heat because it's a lot of convective heat and air currents coming from the firebox it's a lot more gentle than say a pellet smoker that has a big heat deflector on it a drip pan that is absorbing a lot of that heat from underneath on the firepot side and it's transferring heat and energy to the brisket via radiant heat off of that heat deflector plate so you're getting convective heat plus the radiant heat from that heat deflector and that radiant heat is not so gentle it can actually burn your brisket if it's too high and that's why i'm showing you guys in this video an example of cooking on a pellet smoker with the fat side up and the meat side exposed to that hot deflector plate at 275 degrees fahrenheit because i want you guys to see that it actually dries out and can burn the underside of the brisket quite easily so all of that is to say that on an offset smoker you might be able to smoke all the way up to 325 degrees fahrenheit because that convective heat is a lot more gentle and won't burn your brisket but if you're cooking on a pellet grill you might not want to bump it up to 275 or 300 because you've got that heat plate and all that radiant energy to deal with cooking at the wrong temperature for your brisket so myron mixon cooks hot and fast at 300 degrees fahrenheit because he's using wagyu beef this is a super high quality cut of beef with a ton of fat in it and it can handle the heat if you're getting a select brisket or even a choice brisket it doesn't have a lot of that fat in it and if you're cooking it at high heat it might not turn out the same way that myron mixon's wagyu briskets turn out for example so always cook low and slow on lower low fat content cuts of meat and if you're gonna cook hot and fast get at least a choice grade or a prime because it needs that fat to protect itself from the heat and retain that moisture cooking at the wrong temperature period now there are some temperatures where you just don't want to cook a brisket at those temperatures 180 degrees fahrenheit you don't want to cook a brisket throughout the whole cooking process at 180 because it's gonna dry it out and it's gonna take forever it'll take days to finish now the only exception is if you're on a pellet smoker and you smoke it at a 180 to 190 just for the first few hours to give it a bit of extra smoke and then you bump it up to 225 plus that's more than okay but don't go at super sub 200 degree fahrenheit temperatures throughout the whole cook it's just not going to turn out the way you think it is and on the other end of the extreme don't cook your brisket at 325 degrees plus anything over 325 degrees fahrenheit is generally considered crazy for a brisket misusing your water pan now if you're smoking on an offset smoker it's always a good idea to have a water pan right in the main cooking chamber right by the firebox because it's going to provide a little bit more moisture and it's going to even out the heat in the cooking chamber now if you're cooking on an electric smoker like a master belt electric smoker i usually do not have a water pan going for the first half of the cook because there's not a lot of airflow in these units and there's already a ton of moisture in that brisket that's getting trapped within the cooking chamber so you're almost creating like a steaming effect inside of the electric smoker you don't need to add a full water pan and make the problem even worse if you do want to add water to the water pan in an electric smoker then wait for about four hours first because you want to give that brisket a dry enough environment for that bark to set up all that moisture and steam inside of an electric smoker is going to really inhibit bark formation for any other smoker offset smoker weber smoky mountain a weber kettle always a good idea to have a water pan have it from the very start and continue to refill it this is very important because it's going to evaporate and it could actually empty completely so you want to make sure that thing is always full of warm water not understanding how a smoke ring is formed now for those of you that don't know a smoke ring is that nice pink ring around the outside of your meat it's formed by a chemical reaction that happens when you have combustible gases from either fire or charcoal they burn off and they produce nitrous oxide this nitrous oxide interfaces and interacts with the outside of the meat it gets mixed in with the myoglobin in the meat and it produces a chemical reaction that produces that pink ring it's not undercooked meat it's just a chemical reaction now if you're using an electric smoker you might not be able to get a smoke ring because it just doesn't reach the combustion temperatures and the flame and the fire that is needed to produce enough gases to produce that chemical reaction so a lot of people get around it by adding curing salts to the brisket beforehand to create a sort of fake smoke ring and the other thing about smoke rings is people often post pictures of their briskets and they're wondering hey why is my smoke ring patchy or it didn't form nice and uniform it's usually because there's like a patchy layer of fat on the outside and in order for that chemical reaction to happen the gases need to get through the fat and they're not interacting with the fat or changing the fat pink and then only when they hit the actual meat layer are they gonna start changing it pink so if you have a brisket that is not uniformly carved with a uniform fat cap then you might have a little bit of a patchy smoke ring on the outside of the meat smoking with thick white smoke now when you're smoking barbecue you always want to go for thin blue smoke this is kind of the gold standard that everyone's shooting for you should barely be able to see the smoke coming out of your vent stack and you just have like a little wavy puff of smoke and like a steam of hot air coming out that is when you know you're getting the right type of smoke if you're smoking with thick white smoke the brisket is going to turn out a little bit acrid and bitter it's going to have a lot of big smoke particles on it and it's going to get really dark and black the only exception would be on electric smokers you're always gonna get thick white smoke that's just how electric smokers work looking too much now there's that old saying if you're looking you ain't cooking and this is so true if you're looking at your brisket every hour and opening that lid the ambient temperature is plummeting and it's also bringing down the internal temperature of the brisket so when you close it the ambient temperature has to come up to temperature and then it actually has to pull that brisket temperature back up from the low it just came to when you opened it to look at it so if you're doing that every hour that's gonna add up it's gonna add probably 20 minutes to your cook time every time you open it up and take a quick peek not looking at your brisket enough okay so now that i've said don't look at your brisket too often there are two essential times when you need to look at your brisket the first one is to check on color this is going to tell you when you need to wrap your brisket so at around the four to five hour mark you want to check on your brisket and see how the color and the bark formation is doing and whether the bark is setting up if the bark is set up and it's at the color you want it then you're going to wrap it right there so you've only opened it once at this point the second essential time when you want to look at your brisket is when it's getting close to done so when that internal temperature is getting to the 190 to 200 zone that's when you want to start doing your checks for doneness and you want to keep checking probably every half an hour after that so you're going to be checking a lot during the end of the process to make sure that you're pulling it out at the right point but otherwise in the first half of the cook you really want to aim to look at it as little as possible preferably only once and maybe a couple more times if you're spritzing your brisket not paying attention or trying to do too much if you have a bunch of chores to do during the day while smoking your brisket you might want to rethink your plans a little bit especially if you're using an offset smoker offset smokers need constant babysitting to ensure the temperatures stay consistent on a pellet smoker or electric smoker you might be able to get away with it but you still need to pay attention to what's going on with that brisket so always make sure you carve out a day to sit by the smoker have a couple beverages enjoy it enjoy the experience enjoy the barbecue lifestyle try not to get too stressed out doing too much and your brisket is going to turn out way better not spraying your brisket so this is a controversial one because there is some evidence out there that spraying your brisket doesn't really do as much as people think and it might not actually do anything at all but it is part of the barbecue religion and a lot of people do it a lot of pit masters will swear by it so the one thing i will say for sure is if you're smoking on an offset smoker a weber smoky mountain a weber kettle something where you can get wild temperature swings if you're not careful or hot spots easily you want to open up and look at that brisket and if there's some crispy edges to it that's when you want to spritz and you want to spray those crispy edges because you want to slow the cooking process down on those particular parts of the meat that is usually when i use my spray bottle spraying too much it's really easy to over spray your brisket and wash off all the spices and the bark on the outside of it so be really careful and only hit the dry areas that brisket is going to sweat out a lot of moisture so just trust the process and trust that your brisket has enough moisture that it's going to hydrate itself without your help spraying your brisket too early if you're spraying your brisket before about the four hour mark the one to four hour mark you're inhibiting bark formation and you're making it a lot harder for that bark to set up so always wait at least four hours before you start spraying it bad drainage on your brisket so at about the four hour mark when the brisket really starts sweating out a lot of moisture you can get a little pocket or a pool in the middle of the brisket where all that moisture is coming and it's bubbling to the surface and if you leave that pool as it is it's going to really inhibit the bark formation in that one area and you'll have this spot with no bark so a lot of people will stick a beer can underneath their brisket or a chunk of wood to make the brisket have better drainage and also sometimes i will just go in with a paper towel and kind of mop up some of that liquid as it comes to the surface because it can really inhibit your bark formation not using your discretion and intuition throughout the cooking process now cooking a brisket is not an exact science you can't follow a recipe and expect to consistently reproduce the same results it's an arc you have to look at your brisket if the edges are getting a little bit crispy spritz it down a little bit if the bottom is getting a little bit burnt then move it to a colder spot of the smoker or flip it over or rotate it use your brain and think about what you need to do and what is going to turn out a better brisket not understanding the stall the stall is what happens when the brisket hits a certain temperature zone it's anywhere from 140 to 165 degrees internal temperature it'll start sweating out so much moisture and steam that'll actually start cooling the brisket by evaporative cooling so you'll get this period where you're ramping up in temperature and then it's just going to flatline and some people panic at that point and they do some bad things like raising the temperature way too high or doing some other crazy things so there's three ways to get out of the stall you can just wait out the stall this is what a lot of people do they just wait out that stall and when the brisket loses enough moisture it's gonna start rising in temperature again after a few hours second thing you can do is you can raise the temperature on your smoker usually not recommended but if you want to finish your brisket faster you can pump it up by a couple degrees just to power through that stall the third way is you can wrap your brisket so you can wrap it in aluminum foil that's called the texas crutch or you can wrap it in butcher's paper that lets a little bit more of the steam out and produces a better bark because you're not dissolving the bark as much not wrapping your brisket at all now some people like to do naked briskets they don't wrap it at all throughout the cooking process they wait out the stall and they wait until it probes tender takes a lot longer to finish your brisket but you get better bark usually so if you're doing it that way then you're gonna have to do some more spritzing and spraying throughout the process to retain that moisture that would have been retained by wrapping it not wrapping by bark formation and color so this is a common mistake people are going off a recipe that says wrap your brisket as soon as it hits 165 degrees fahrenheit now in most cases the bark color and the bark formation will be set at that 165 degree level but in a lot of cases it might not be as well so it might take all the way up to 175 185 to get that bark to the right color and to get that bark set on your particular smoker wrapping too early this is a big mistake if you're wrapping your brisket at like the three hour mark when it's only 140 degrees fahrenheit or it hasn't gone all the way through the stall and evaporated a lot of that moisture out that brisket is going to leak out all its moisture into the foil or the butcher's paper it's going to ruin any bark that you had a chance to form and it's just going to be like a really soggy exterior so always wait until you get that nice color on your brisket and then wrap it at that point not wrapping tight enough so with aluminum foil you want to really tightly wrap that brisket to hold everything in to hold all that steam and the liquid in you don't want any leaks because your brisket could dry out if there's a pinhole leak and it's leaking everywhere with butcher's paper it's also important to wrap it tightly because the brisket fat is coming to the surface of the brisket it's soaking that butcher's paper and then that greasy paper is actually forming a protective layer on the outside of the brisket that is holding all that moisture in so with butcher's paper it's very important to have it super tight so it can get greasy and it can create that outer layer not wrapping select grade briskets early now this is the one exception to the don't wrap too early rule that i said earlier select-grade briskets just kind of suck they don't have a lot of fat in them so it's better to wrap early and retain as much moisture as possible not using the right type of wrap now if you're doing texas crutch with aluminum foil use heavy duty aluminum foil double up on it if you need to you don't want any leaks if you're using butcher's paper this is the kind of butcher's paper you want you want unlined butchers paper and you shouldn't be able to feel any sort of plasticky kind of surface to it it should just feel like paper that's the kind of butcher's paper you want it's going to soak up all that grease and it's going to produce that protective layer and it's not going to have any nasty bpas or plastic stuff leaching into your food this is the type of butcher's paper that you don't want to get it's got a little bit of a sheen to it that's a plastic layer on it and i did use this butcher's paper for a long time until someone pointed out to me that this is lined butcher's paper and you know i feel fine it didn't really hurt me and it did the job but i highly recommend that you get the unlined butcher's paper because that is going to produce the best brisket and it's going to be the safest not adding liquid to your wrap now this applies only when you're wrapping with aluminum foil i usually like to add at least a third of a cup to a half a cup of beef stock and maybe some other stuff just to provide some extra liquid because i push my briskets through the stall until they've lost a lot of moisture before i wrap it because i don't want my bark getting soggy when i wrap so it's important if you do that to add back a little bit more moisture to the bottom of that layer of foil it's just going to add more moisture to the brisket and when it's done it's going to suck that moisture back into the meat as it cools back down and rests checking your temperatures too early after wrapping your brisket this is a big problem when people poke their thermometer into the tin foil or through the butcher's paper it lets a lot of that steam out and it breaks the continuous barrier that is keeping all that moisture in and if they poke too far they can actually poke through the bottom of the wrap and they can actually drain all that liquid out through that hole so it's always a good idea to wait at least two hours after you wrap it to start checking your temperatures because you want the internal environment of that wrapped brisket to get up to temperature and start creating steam and retaining moisture waiting too long to check your temperature after you wrap your brisket so i just said that you should wait at least two hours before poking into that wrap but you shouldn't wait too much longer after that before you start checking for temperature and doneness because it can start going off like a freight train inside of that wrap job that temperature is going up like crazy after the two hour mark so you want to make sure you're not leaving it too long because you could overcook your brisket rushing the finish so a lot of people will have a dinner deadline coming up in the next two hours and their brisket is only at like 165 degrees fahrenheit so they crank the temperature up and it turns out to be a dry brisket you don't want that to happen to you so you can increase the temperature a little bit after it's wrapped so if you're cooking at uh 250 degrees fahrenheit you could go all the way up to 300 once it's wrapped because that wrap job is going to protect the meat from all that extra heat you don't want to go much higher than that though and if all else fails you can just take your brisket cook it normally finish it the correct way rest it and then just reheat it the next day order some pizza for tonight's dinner if the brisket isn't done on time it's going to turn out to be a way better brisket and you don't want to serve up a brisket to your family and guests that's overcooked or dry because that's going to affect your reputation you don't want to be known as the guy that can't cook a brisket not using the three finishing tests so a lot of people just go by temperature and when it hits the temperature that the recipe says a brisket's done they pull it out and it's too tough or it's overcooked you need to know the other two finishing tests the first one and the most important one is it needs to probe like room temperature butter so get yourself a thermometer probe and when you probe into the brisket it should almost feel like room temperature butter there should be very little resistance and the third test is the field test so take your heat resistant gloves your silicone gloves put your fingers underneath the brisket and you know give it a little jiggle make sure that it's nice and flexible it's not too stiff if it's kind of wobbly and like jello then it's probably getting close to being done or it's done already not waiting until your brisket probes tender this is probably the number one brisket mistake from this whole video people don't go by the probe test your brisket needs to probe tender so when you insert your probe into the thickest part of the flat in the middle of the brisket right underneath the point it should probe like you're probing into room temperature butter if it's not at that stage and there's still resistance do not take it out of the smoker continue cooking and just trust that it will get tender over time a lot of people will pull their brisket before it gets probed tender and then they'll rest it in a cooler and the cooler actually saves them because the temperature doesn't go down a lot when you put it in a cooler so it could stay at that 200 zone for quite a long time up to an hour before it starts going down to 190 and lower so it's actually continuing to cook and it might actually get probed tender while it's in the cooler so some people are saved by that but you don't want to leave it up to chance you always want to continue to cook it until it probes tender in that thickest part of the flat not knowing what probe tender means okay so i told you guys that you need to finish your brisket when it's probed tender but i could tell you that you know it's like inserting your probe into room temperature butter it's like putting it into a bag of melted butter it's like putting it into a container of peanut butter or something like that but even those rules of thumb might not be accurate in some situations what i like to tell people is you always want to start checking it when it hits the 190 to 200 degrees fahrenheit zone and it's probably not going to be done at that point but you get a benchmark you insert your probe into the thickest part of the flat under the point and you can feel the resistance and then you have something to go off of so in the next half an hour to an hour when you check it again you'll slide your probe in and you'll remember how it felt and if it's way more tender than when it felt before it's probably done and if it feels exactly like it did when you checked it the last time it's probably got too much resistance and it's not done so you won't have to really do this as much when you get more experienced and you learn what probe tender means for your specific cooking process and your specific cut of meat that you buy you'll just get that ingrained into you and you'll become a more experienced pit master and you'll just know by feel when it's done the other thing is that the gauge or the diameter of your probe is very important some people say it needs to probe tender with like and they use a toothpick and some people use a therm pen like me which is a much wider diameter so you need to get the feel of what a therm pen feels like and the resistance that it needs to have when it's probe tender versus if you're using a toothpick that might be completely different so always use the same diameter of probe and that is going to be your brisket probe for the rest of your life and that's what you're going to go off of to know when your brisket is done pulling your brisket when the point probes tender this is another big mistake people probe into the point muscle which is a lot fattier it's a lot it gets a lot more tender a lot faster and that might probe tender but the thickest part of the flat is still pretty tough and you're gonna have a tough brisket so always probe into the thickest part of the flat right underneath the point don't just check the point or the tip of the flat for doneness overcooking your brisket this is another big mistake that people make there's a point in time that the brisket will probe tender in that thickest part of the flat and it'll be perfect when you slice into it it'll just have a little bit of elasticity and resistance but it'll break apart easily it'll be tender and moist if you pull the brisket too soon before it reaches that point it's going to be really tough but if you wait too long it's going to be really crumbly and dry so you're going to slice into it it's going to kind of mush into the brisket and then when you pull it apart it's almost going to fall apart so it's going to have more of like a pot roast type taste and consistency and that is not the flavor of brisket that we normally want to go for not pushing past the second stall a lot of people don't know what the second stall is the second stall happens when you hit around the 190 to 200 degree mark i would say in about 10 to 15 percent of briskets that i've cooked i've hit a stall where it stops in that temperature zone and it doesn't increase in temperature for even up to two hours you kind of just have to push through that and keep waiting and always remember that the final test and always go by this test is the probe tender test not resting your brisket now this would be just crazy if you didn't rest your brisket at all it's going to be really dry because when you cut into it it's going to be so hot and it hasn't had a chance to reabsorb all of that moisture and the juices it's just going to shoot out all this steam and moisture and you're going to be left with like a really bone-dry slice of brisket so always rest your brisket for at least one hour it's doing two things you're giving it time to reabsorb some of the moisture in the juices that are surrounding it and recirculate those within the meat and you're also lowering the temperature which is also helping it to retain more of that moisture not venting your brisket before you rest it so if you've wrapped your brisket in butcher's paper or aluminum foil it's always a good idea to open up that foil or that butcher's paper and let the steam vent out for about 15 minutes because you want to stop the cooking process you've already done the probe tender test you know that your brisket is perfectly cooked you don't want it to continue to cook while it's resting so vent your brisket for 15 minutes then cover it back up throw a towel on it and then let it rest for at least an hour not resting your brisket for long enough so some recipes say rest your brisket for 15 minutes that's just not enough time to rest your brisket it needs to be at least an hour and if you're checking temperatures this is another time when you want to check temperatures you want to come down to around 140 degrees fahrenheit that is the perfect temperature when you know it's got a good rest period and you know it's had a chance to reabsorb a lot of that moisture and it's also going to oxidize less because it's at a lower temperature when you slice into it resting your brisket for too long now if you get below the 140 degrees fahrenheit mark that's when you start getting into food safety issue territory so i think a few hours at that 140 or below mark isn't gonna hurt you like you put a ton of salt on that brisket it's a big cut of meat it's probably not gonna get exposed to too much bacteria i personally wouldn't leave it out on the counter overnight i'd put it in the fridge so just be careful that you're not leaving your brisket especially like on a hot day or in the sun for hours on end as soon as it drops below that 140 mark then that's when you have to start worrying about it and either put it in the fridge or reheat it back up to 165. using a cooler improperly so there are circumstances where i would recommend using a cooler if your recipe calls for resting it in a cooler after pulling your brisket at a certain temperature then follow the recipe you want to go by that recipe and maybe part of that recipe needs the extra cooking in that cooler to make that brisket as tender as the recipe intends the second reason i would use a cooler is if i was at a barbecue competition or if i finished my brisket too early and i wanted to hold it within the safe temperature zone before i actually hit the dinner or the competition turn in mark so if you finish your brisket a little bit too early and it's like four or five hours until dinner you can put some hot water into a cooler dump that hot water out so you're just preheating it put the brisket in there with some aluminum foil fill it up with towels to get rid of the dead space the dead air inside the cooler and it'll keep that brisket above 140 degrees fahrenheit for probably about four hours maybe as much as five hours or more depending on how hot it is outside giving up when you get bad bark so there might be cases when you open up the aluminum foil or the butcher's paper you look at the bark and it's kind of all dissolved off and it doesn't look the way you want it to don't give up at that point you can always let it rest normally and after it's rested you put it back on the smoker for an hour or two to build up that bark again the brisket is going to turn out just as juicy as it was because it's not going to rise in temperature too much it's already in the rest zone and you're just giving it a little bit extra time to get a little bit more bark formation on the outside so you can always do that if you need to firm up the bark giving up if you get a tough brisket so in a lot of cases people will take their brisket rest it normally follow everything and they still slice into it and it's tough don't give up at that point there's a couple things you can do to help with that you can slice your slices thinner so it'll pull apart more easily or you could slice everything up and drizzle some beef stock all over top of them in an aluminum foil pan put them back in the oven and then cook them at around 300 until they start getting tender again or you could make a chili with them or you could just put it back on the smoker and continue to cook it more until it gets tender not understanding if your brisket is under done or overdone your brisket is under done if it's tough when you slice into it it's overdone if it crumbles and falls apart and it tastes like a pot roast it's perfectly done if you slice it into quarter inch slices against the grain and when you pull apart the strand of brisket it'll have a little bit of elasticity and resistance but it'll break apart easily not slicing your brisket correctly so you always want to slice your brisket against the grain starting at the flat you have your landmark that i suggested earlier in this video you go off that and cut the brisket slices in quarter inch slices directly against the grain and then you switch the direction of your cuts when you reach the point muscle because those are running in a different direction if you need to know what direction the grain is running you can always take a fork or a knife or something and just peel back some of the bark and then you'll be able to see the strands underneath and see what direction they're running not having a sharp slicing knife so i use a really long slicing knife to carve my briskets and it's incredibly sharp and you need that sharpness because you need to slice through the sort of delicate crispy outer bark without crushing it and then you have this really tender meat on the inside that you need to slice through if you have a dull knife you're just going to mash everything together so you need something with as little resistance as possible and these slicing knives have these little divots in them and this helps reduce the amount of friction and resistance so these are really nice you can also get serrated ones that look like this or serrated bread knives that look like this and they're really good for cutting brisket or if you have an electric knife get an oversized electric knife and that'll work just fine making your brisket slices too thick so it's usually recommended that you do a quarter inch slice on your brisket that's kind of the perfect amount of food that someone needs they can always eat more if they want but if you slice it like an inch thick and it's super long that might be too much meat for a lot of people so usually it's a quarter inch is the standard especially for barbecue competitions not having a big enough cutting board a brisket is a pretty big cut of meat and if you're going to be cooking a lot of them you want to get a pretty big cutting board you can get a cheap one from like a restaurant supply warehouse and they're just made out of plastic and they're usually around like 10 to 15 bucks or you could spring and and pay a lot more money for a big wooden one but you always want to make sure that you have a big cutting board because you don't want some dinky little cutting board with a huge brisket sort of overfilling all the surface area it just makes it way too hard to catch all the juices and to cut it properly not having a way to capture all the juices as you slice into your brisket even if you have a huge cutting board when you slice into that brisket you could be getting juices everywhere and they drip and it's annoying and you also want to save those juices because you can take them and brush them back onto your slices of brisket and serve them as a jew so a lot of times what i'll do is i'll take a big tray and i'll set it down and then i'll set my cutting board inside of it so even if the juices drip off they're all dripping into that tray not coating your slices of brisket with drippings as soon as you slice into a brisket and expose that meat to the air it's gonna start oxidizing it's gonna start drying out so i'll take a slice right down the center of the brisket and then i'll set it on top of the cutting board so that the meat area is not exposed well i work with the second chunk of brisket and every time i make a slice i take my silicone brush and i dip it into the drippings and then i brush each side of it then i put it to the side i take another slice and i do the same thing and what you're doing is you're protecting the surface of the meat with all the fat from those drippings and you're preventing it from oxidizing and drying out the second thing this does is it makes your brisket look a lot more juicy and your guests are going to be really impressed expecting a super juicy brisket now when we look at barbecue pit master tv shows and instagram photos of restaurants that cook awesome briskets the briskets look so juicy and the reason they look juicy is because they're using really high quality briskets like wagyu or prime grade which have a lot of fat and interconnective tissue in them and when that fat melts and when that interconnective tissue the collagen renders down into gelatin that's what is producing the visible moisture and tenderness that you can see in the photo and they also brush the outside of it with its own juices to make it look more tender but if you have like a select grade brisket or even a choice brisket it might not have as much of that fat the interconnective tissues that render down into those things that make a brisket really juicy you might just be left with a little bit of water that hasn't been squeezed out through the cooking process so a lot of people will post the pictures of their brisket onto facebook or instagram and they'll say oh why is my brisket so dry it's not really dry that's what a brisket is supposed to look like you've cooked it to heck for hours and hours and hours it's squeezed out all of its moisture so just be aware that that is completely normal if your brisket is not as crazy juicy as you see on instagram or those tv shows don't worry that is what a brisket is supposed to look like not reheating your brisket correctly so the correct way to reheat your brisket is the same way you cooked it low and slow you want to put it into an aluminum or another baking pan cover it tightly in foil so there's as little air left as possible make sure there's some extra juices in the brisket it's not just completely dry if you need to add a little bit of extra beef stock so there's a couple millimeters on the bottom with some liquid and then put it in your oven at 200 degrees fahrenheit super super low and you're gonna reheat it for four to five hours until it comes up to 165 degrees fahrenheit then you can pull it out and it's going to be super juicy it's not going to be dry searing your brisket before smoking it so i look at a lot of recipes on the internet and some of them call for searing your brisket before you start smoking it that's not really a good idea if you want to go for that traditional texas style crusty bark on the outside because it's going to ruin the meat's ability to form that nice bark so if you want to try it out go for it but if you want traditional texas style crunchy bark then i wouldn't recommend it cooking your brisket the same day you want to eat it so a lot of people think that they need to get up at 2 a.m in the morning and smoke their brisket for like 20 hours and then it's going to be done for dinner you don't have to kill yourself doing that you can wake up at a reasonable time on the weekend sometimes i wake up at 9 or 10 and then i throw my brisket on and then i just cook it throughout the day i have dinner like i'll order a pizza or something for saturday night and then my brisket will finish around like 9 or 10 at night i'm still up at that point and i can do everything i need to do to make sure it probes tender and rest it properly i put it in the fridge and then the next day about five hours before dinner i preheat it in the oven at 200 degrees fahrenheit it turns out just as good as it would if it just came off the smoker and it was fresh so don't think that you need to kill yourself and wake up super early or do like an all-night smoke if you want to smoke a brisket there are other ways around it to do it within a normal lifestyle number 100 we finally made it here and you'll notice that my beard is a little bit longer that's because i'm filming this about three weeks after i did all the rest of the footage i just realized when i was editing the video that i forgot one of them barbecue jesus forgive me i'm so sorry the final mistake is overloading your smoker with too many briskets if you're cooking multiple briskets keep in mind on an offset smoker if you have a brisket that is closer to the firebox side than the one on the cold side that brisket is gonna cook a lot faster because it's exposed to a lot more heat so make sure you're rotating those briskets frequently if you have a pellet grill make sure you're not overloading it with briskets moving the brisket too close to the edge that could cause the fat from the brisket to drip down onto the fire pot and you could get a grease fire in extreme circumstances so you always want to make sure that all those drippings are being caught by the deflector plate and if you have an electric smoker don't overload it with briskets because it's going to create a lot of steam and you're not going to get really good bark because there's a ton more moisture when you add a second brisket into that electric smoker than if you just have a single brisket the biggest challenge to overcome when cooking multiple briskets in the same smoker is you have more moisture you have more thermal mass to heat up so it's going to take longer there's going to be more moisture so give yourself more time and you might not need something like a water pan you might not need to spritz it so often because you're already going to have a really humid moist environment with all of those briskets in your smoker all right guys those are a hundred brisket mistakes the last thing i wanted to do before we wrap this up is show you the results of our sacrificial brisket now i made a lot of the mistakes i talked about on this brisket during the cooking process i wrote them all down here so first i got a select brisket a select brisket doesn't have as much fat content it doesn't turn out as juicy as a choice grade brisket or a prime grade brisket so that was the first mistake i made i brined it overnight in a salt water solution so i'm interested to see how this is going to taste i scored the fat cap so a lot of the moisture was allowed to escape and it just looks kind of weird i didn't trim the fat to a quarter inch thickness so we've got this huge chunk of fat on the outside that is like an inch thick that nobody is ever going to eat i cooked it fat side up on the traeger so the opposite side from where the heat is going so i suspect that the bottom is going to be a little bit burnt uh too high a temperature on the tragger so too high temperature for the cooker i was using i was cooking this at 275 bad drainage so i had issues because i didn't put a pop can or a chunk of wood under here and the water started to pool on the brisket and the bark didn't really form that well on that one area because of that i didn't add liquid when i wrapped it bad wrap job i did a really terrible wrap job with aluminum foil there was like a big hole in the aluminum foil where all the steam could escape and when i opened this thing up it had very little liquid left on the bottom of the foil which is not a great sign and the final mistake is i didn't let this thing rest now obviously it's resting right now as i'm talking to you so it's probably rested about 15 minutes usually i would let it rest for an hour or two until it comes down to 140 degrees fahrenheit this thing is 198 degrees fahrenheit so i'm going to cut into this thing right now and we're going to see how it turns out all right so here's my landmark cut so i know that the grain is running this way so i'm going to make a cut right in the middle of the brisket luckily i have a really sharp knife let's take a look at it you can see all the steam escaping and that's because there's a lot of heat still left in this brisket you can see all the moisture is now sort of drizzling out of it it's getting squeezed out now that this is cut open nice smoke ring which is great you can see where this fat is that the smoke ring did not go far enough through to get to the actual meat because this huge chunk of fat was blocking the smoke ring from going all the way through so those gases that i was talking about earlier that interact with the myoglobin and create that chemical reaction that creates that pink they only probably made it about halfway through this big chunk of fat it would have needed a lot longer to actually reach that meat part so that's what happens when you have an interrupted piece of the brisket that has a huge chunk of fat this is probably the perfect amount of fat the gases were able to get through that fat and do the chemical reaction magic with the outside of this meat and make a beautiful smoke ring now let's put this to the side it's still really hot and i'm going to take a slice from this part of the point and we got the point muscle up here and then we got the flat underneath it so i'm just going to take a really thin slice so let's take a look at this and this is almost too hot to handle but i'll take this part of wow so this is the point here you can see it pulls apart pretty nicely so that's pretty well cooked that point muscle but if we take a look at the flat so just for science sake i am going to cut off the point just get rid of that so we can take a look at the flat so here we're left with the flat and i'm going to take a cut of this guy so first of all if you look at the bottom look at that burning you can see on the very bottom of the brisket it's really hard and crispy and it's not very nice and that is because we had that non-fat capsid facing the heat source on the traeger and that is what happens when you do that and if you take a look at the bottom of the flat you can see that it's really burnt so it got really crispy because it was exposed to too much of that direct heat so that is why let me just give it a tap with a knife here see that is really hard we do not want a brisket to turn out like that but that is what will happen if you don't smoke with the fat side down in a pellet smoker and if you smoke it too high a temperature on a pellet smoker so let's take a bite of this first of all let's do a pull test it pulls apart actually really easily so this thing probably is a little bit on the overcooked side i would say so we'll pull that apart and we'll take a bite of this so what would i say about this brisket it's too salty i think the brining really added way too much salt and then we added salt afterwards in the dry rub so way too salty the fat cap is way too big i should have trimmed off way more fat so there's big chunks of fat that nobody is going to eat um the bottom of the brisket on the brisket on the flat side of the brisket is really crispy it got burnt because we were cooking it at too high a temperature with the fat side up on the tragger and that'll happen on any pellet smoker and it didn't retain a lot of moisture because we didn't add any liquid back in when we did the wrap we probably cooked it a little bit too long so it didn't retain a lot of moisture and we also didn't rest it so it didn't have chance to uh uh suck up a lot of that moisture so it is really dry but you add a little bit of barbecue sauce to that you put it in a chili or something you can make tacos with it it would still be pretty good so i'm kind of surprised how well this turned out despite all the things i intentionally did to try screwed up now if you guys are looking for the proper way to smoke a brisket and not commit any of these mistakes then check out this video where i'll walk you through the process step by step see you in the next video

Channel: Smoke Trails BBQ

Views: 46,451

Keywords: bbq, smoke trails bbq, smoked meat, brisket, how to smoke brisket, bbq brisket, smoked brisket, texas style brisket, brisket on an electric smoker, brisket on an offset smoker, brisket on the oklahoma joes, oklahoma joes, masterbuilt electric smoker, brisket mistakes, brisket bark, how to smoke a brisket, how to make a brisket, smoking a brisket, brisket on a pellet grill, brisket on a weber kettle, brisket on a masterbuilt electric smoker

Id: o8TS-UXcPzw

Length: 65min 10sec (3910 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021