Brisket Experiments - Hot and Fast vs Low and Slow

welcome back to barbecue and bottles on today's brisket experiment we're going to be comparing two briskets one done low and slow the other done hot and fast so we've got two of these 20 pound guys and we're gonna prepare them using those two different techniques to see if we can tell a difference in the taste the tenderness the juiciness how the bark forms the smoke ring all that good stuff so if you're into that kind of thing stick around so as we are editing these videos we realize just how long these brisket videos take and we realize some of you might actually want to just skip to the finish and see the conclusions so we've got this table of contents right here with some time stamps so if you're one of those people that doesn't want to watch the full video here you go so it's the day before we're actually going to be serving these briskets to our family and we're just going to get this brisket trimmed up seasoned up but it's not going to go on the pellet grill until probably midnight or 1am and this is going to be our low and slow brisket so i just want to take you through our brisket trim here first off and we'll prepare our second brisket in the morning for the hot and fast brisket but it'll be done the same way using the same seasoning so first off just get into the backpack seal here you'll want to try and pull your brisket out of here while leaving as much of the juice from the brisket still within the packaging and that'll just save you a little bit of mess and clean up so i always like grabbing the decal here it's a good handle for the brisket now you can see in our packaging we still have all that juice so we'll wrap that up get that in the garbage no mess no fuss okay first step in trimming your brisket have a sharp boning knife if you don't have a boning knife like this then use a chef's knife the reason a boning knife is a little bit more handy is just its flexibility it's got a relatively sharp point on it here at the end so as you're trimming and you're getting into some of the nooks and crannies of the brisket it's just easier with this so our first cut we usually make right along here so we're going to take off the oxidized edge of the brisket you can see here this is brown and that's just because as the meat was hanging at the abattoir it oxidized so we'll come down with a straight cut all the way down the side of the brisket like this we're going to be saving our trimmings because we're gonna be making a video on how to make beef tallow and we'll probably do that tomorrow given we're gonna have so much trimmings here off our briskets from these two cooks try to come down the side get this as even as you possibly can now we're going to take out the decal so this is a hard a really hard piece of fat that's not going to render down through your cook so you want to get in here and carve that out just a huge piece of fat like that here we'll try to get a little bit more and this is where it really helps to have a boning knife getting in here while trying to get as much of the fat out but leaving as much as the muscle tissue as you can now on the bottom of the brisket here we have a little bit of fat and we've got some silver skin so we'll try and trim that up a little bit this doesn't have to be perfect this is the kind of stuff that will render down but if you've got the time and we've got the time here tonight you can trim this off this would absolutely be something that you'd be trimming off if you were doing competition brisket you don't want to be serving the judges a brisket that's got all this silver skin on the base of it all right now we're going to flip this over onto the fat cap side now on the fat cap we're going to want to trim this down to about a quarter inch of fat across the entire brisket now we're going to want to leave that on because the fat cap helps to protect your brisket from the heat while it's on the pellet grill now our pellet grill the heat source comes up from the bottom so we cook fat cap down and it just acts as a bit of insulation and a barrier so that your brisket doesn't get hit with direct heat and you're not going to dry out your brisket let's get trimming and this is where it really helps to be using or trimming a cold brisket you want to trim straight out of the fridge it's just going to make it easier for you to actually slice off all of this fat the warmer your brisket gets the more easily your knife will potentially slip and you could really hurt yourself as you're trimming this up and again we're just trying to round out the brisket here so we're just trying to shape each of the ends just to be a little bit more rounded to avoid points or pieces that are sticking out because that'll have a tendency to catch a lot of heat and just burn off in our cook so that applies both to this end but also this end as well here and we're gonna trim this up a bit here try to even that up so this is a really nicely trimmed up brisket here now like anything in barbecue or anything in life frankly it just takes a little bit of practice and then you'll get better at it now what we're going to do is we're going to get our rub on here we are going to get some coarse ground black pepper keep in mind our portions here for two briskets so we're gonna go in with one and a quarter cups of coarsely ground black pepper and this is gonna be a central texas style rub so it's just salt and pepper we're not gonna be adding anything funky in there and now we're gonna add in another amount of salt here until we get up to two cups ratio here is about two parts coarsely ground black pepper to one part salt let's just mix this up and then we can get applying it on the brisket all right now to apply the rub and this is where it's great to have nitrile gloves like this where you can just quickly swap in and out to keep your hands nice and clean first off we're going to use a little bit of a binder here so we're just going in with yellow mustard this will not change the taste of your cook at all this is just a neutral flavor and it's going to help our rub just stick to our brisket as we apply it so we're going to use half of this rub on this brisket so we want to take our hand up high like this and apply across the brisket and that's just going to make sure we get an even application and then you'll want to pat in your rub you never want to rub your rub around the brisket rubbing it will cause a tendency for the rub to just clump together and you'll lose the even application that we're looking for here and then get the sides we usually get the sides just by doing this and patting it in kind of drop the rub down onto your hand like this and then pat it along the edge all right now we're gonna flip over the brisket now we'll get the other side here again same step a little bit of binder so you can do this as well just lift up your brisket and sprinkle the edges if you prefer okay so i think we've used up about half of our rub this is looking pretty well seasoned here as well now one thing you want to remember we can see the striations in the grain of the protein running this way through the brisket so we'll just want to remember this furthest end of the flat here is where we're going to carve into because once we're ultimately carving we're going to be wanting to carve against the grain of the brisket and that's just going to make for a more tender piece of beef so there we go this is done we're gonna put this guy in the fridge and then we'll bring you back at midnight when we fire up the pellet grill and get this guy started nice and low and slow all right it's midnight we've got the grill preheated to 200 degrees fahrenheit so we're going to get the brisket on here oh get that bad boy right on now you'll see what we're doing we've got the point at this end we've got the flat of the brisket at this end that's because our heat source starts over here so we want to have the point pointed toward the heat source just that's the fattier part of the brisket so it can absorb more heat we're really running the risk of drying out the flat if we put it toward the heat source now we'll get in our temp probe and we'll get that into the middle of a thick part here on the flat and we're just putting in a tray filled with water so because we're not going to be around to spritz this brisket every 90 minutes we've just put in a pan full of water and we've just set that on that side of the pellet smoker here so we'll close down the lid that water it'll just maintain a little more moisture in here and again try to keep our brisket nice and juicy and tender so it's 7 30 in the morning it's about seven and a half hours into our cook here we still have loads of water in our pan so we're going to turn this up to 250. the internal temp of the brisket's only 153 but we've got a nice bark coming along here so we've been cruising at about 170 here for the last hour and you can see with this brisket we don't have any pools of water forming that's actually exactly what we're looking for if you get a pool of water or juice that's building up on the brisket that'll prevent your bark from forming so at 170 we're now going to wrap this guy so let's take it over to the butcher's paper so now we're going to drop this down in the butcher's paper we're going fat cap side down here and this butcher's paper there's no wax on it we're wrapping in butcher's paper because it's a little bit more breathable through our cook than say aluminum foil but it's also better than not wrapping because that tends to dry out your brisket the aluminum foil tends to braise a little bit beyond what i like and it destroys the crust that you've worked so hard to form here so we're going to go in one quick wrap that way one more fold over and now we're going to tightly hold this butcher's paper in underneath like that on this side now we've got a second pellet grill that we've already preheated to 250 so we're going to put this fat cap side down on that other pellet grill and then we're going to show you the hot and fast brisket on this grill here so we've had this grill now running for coming up on 10 hours here and we've actually only used this amount of pellets which is pretty impressive now we're gonna go in with some more maple bourbon pellets i'm gonna just load this back up okay so for our hot and fast brisket we're just gonna get this guy on so we're getting this oriented with the point on this side the flat pointed that way again the heat source is over here so we want to put the point side on the heat source now we're going to remove this tray we'll get our temp probe in here now we're gonna remove the water tray and the water tray helps to moderate the temperature of the grill and we don't need that here because we're going hot and fast so instead we're just gonna take that off crank this guy up to 400 degrees fahrenheit so our brisket's at an internal of 175 here so we're just going to wrap this again we've got fat cap down move that out of the way we've got one roll one more roll then we're just gonna tuck this in underneath the brisket like that just like you're swaggling a baby perfect now that we've got this all tightly wrapped like this we're going to get this back on the grill and we're going to let it go until we hit an internal of 195 and then we'll start probing for tenderness here's our hot and fast brisket we're gonna get that down into the cooler it just tested probe tender in a cook that was just under four hours i can't get over how quick this cook was we still have the low and slow brisket on and it's only at a temperature of about 190 right now all right we're at an internal temp of 196 here so we're gonna start probing and make sure we get this probe tender oh that's just like butter this is definitely ready to come off the grill all right this guy's super juicy super tender just look at the flex in this brisket it smells incredible so we're gonna get that in the cooler here as well so the beauty about putting your briskets in the cooler like this is it allows them to relax and they've just been put under a lot of heat you want to give them some time just for the juices to redistribute through the brisket so that you get a really nice even juiciness and tenderness throughout your cut the other thing is depending on when you're actually going to have dinner you can just leave them in here and if someone shows up late you can just let them sit in the cooler a little bit longer it's just provides a little bit more flexibility around the timing of when you're actually going to eat as a nice feature here too now we checked the times and the timing for the hot and fast brisket it was actually about three and a half hours and the timing of the cook for our low and slow brisket it was 13 and a half hours now we went really low and slow we were at 200 fahrenheit overnight so that's a little bit longer than you'd normally expect but we've cut at least two-thirds of the time off of a normal brisket cook just by going hot and fast so i'm really anxious to see what the taste test reveals here so we've had the briskets in the cooler for about two hours now i cannot wait to dig into these when you lift up the lid of the cooler all you can smell is incredible brisket so we've got our first one this is the low and slow brisket and now our one on the bottom this was the hot and fast and it's incredible i want to just show you how much liquid is actually left in the base of this cooler now we're just gonna open up these briskets oh that is beautiful now we'll get the next brisket oh just look at how tender that is you can already see the bark starting to pull apart it's going to be full apart tender now this is our low and slow brisket this is our hot and fast brisket first observation the bark on the low and slow brisket is way darker and way richer this one you know it just this was cooked in about three hours so you can see here it just didn't have quite as long of a time for the rub to set in and you can see with the finger test here some of that bark just never formed versus you do the finger test on the low and slow brisket and you know that bark really stays in there both of these still have a really good jiggle you move the picnic table around here and they both just keep moving so we're getting the sense that these are going to be very tender so without further ado let's cut into these guys all right we're just gonna cut about halfway down the brisket just look how juicy and tender that is incredible now we're gonna slide this over here and again the grain was running this way with the brisket so we're just going to slice off this end and now we'll start carving off little slices of flat so for these slices you want to be going about a pencil wood width in thickness and that's what you're aiming for just look at that so you can see here it's passing the bend test we've got beautiful beautiful smoke rings all around each of these pieces let's pull apart tender went in for a little taste just a little cheat we're not quite to the taste test but i just had to now to carve into the point remember the point has the grain that runs in the opposite direction we're carving this way versus the flats that way look at that just tons of marbling in these prime briskets and you really notice it when you're in the point so now let's get into the next brisket okay we'll cut in halfway through the brisket like we did last time beauty you can see the flat running underneath the point with the fat separation that fat seam looking really good now we'll carve in and we'll get rid of this point and now we'll just carve off slices of the flat okay let's take out a piece of the flat now the smoke ring's not too too bad but i want to compare it to the smoke ring from the other brisket here you can see we just got a much darker richer smoke ring from the low and slow brisket versus this it's just a nice light pink touch around the exterior so if your family doesn't like too much smoke flavor then that's probably not a big deal but just something to keep in mind now for the actual bend test here it's not bending quite as well as the other brisket and tenderness-wise it's still got a nice pull to it doesn't take much weight to actually separate that now for the point okay so we've got my nephew cam here he's in to be the independent judge in this brisket taste test so on this side of our plate we have the brisket that was done low and slow on this side it was hot and fast so cam we're gonna start with the flat so up here of the brisket that was done low and slow what did you think of that one hey guys no what was it it was a ten out of five it was a nine out of ten okay well he went back for some more now what we're gonna do let's go for some of the point so why don't you try that piece right there this is the point off of the low and slow brisket so tender so juicy yeah that is a fatty piece that's the point so the points fattier than the flat this had less of a smoky flavor than the flat because the flat obviously being thinner had more surface room to absorb smoke on but that was really really good i'm pleased with that outcome now we're going to switch over that's a 10 out of 10 after tasting the point okay now we're gonna switch over and try this this is the flat from the hot and fast brisket you know i don't personally i don't have a lot to complain about on that one yeah maybe i like it you like that one it's a little less smoke flavor did you notice that cam maybe a little less smokey than the other one but it's actually not that bad maybe a little less juicy as well but overall it's a pretty close outcome and now finally pam let's taste the point on this one yeah you might want to cut that in half this is very fatty yeah it's fatty okay let's jump into the point okay i'm definitely noticing this had less time to actually render down the intramuscular tissue this is a little more chewy has a bit more of a rubbery texture to it yeah i agree with the lovely so one of the things about brisket is it's one of the muscles in the steer that does a ton of work it's essentially the pack so the steer is just standing on it all day long and that that's why you really need to cook this low and slow for it to come out properly on the flat because there's less intermuscular fat and tissue in that part of the brisket it was a closer comparison to the low end slope but when we get into the point where there's all that fat and marbling it really pays off to go low and slow if you have the time now that being said a 20 pound brisket with a cook time of three hours is insane so if if you're in a pinch and you just really need to bang out a brisket go for it if you don't have the time go for it but you're not gonna get quite the same outcome as the low and slope okay good good yeah pretty good we got a 10 on 10 out of our long slow brisket very good i'd also like to say that kim had four plates of reheated brisket for breakfast this morning so he's free pizzas [Laughter] so this is a second meal of brisket for the day anyway if you like this video consider liking it oh yeah okay you do it kim comment down below so if you like this video give us a like below consider subscribing to the channel and we'll see you on the next one thanks for tuning in bye

Channel: BBQ and Bottles

Views: 1,520,396

Rating: 4.8494663 out of 5

Keywords: BBQ and Bottles, BBQandBottles, Brisket Experiments, Hot and Fast Brisket, Hot and Fast vs Low and Slow brisket, Low and Slow Brisket, low and slow vs. hot and fast brisket, Brisket Comparison, brisket smoking, Cuisinart Woodcreek Brisket, woodcreek 4-in-1 pellet grill, Smoking a brisket on a pellet grill, how to smoke a brisket on a pellet grill, smoked brisket, texas brisket, central texas brisket, beef brisket, hot and fast bbq, how to smoke a brisket, how to cook brisket

Id: rHAQSnUsqPg

Length: 22min 52sec (1372 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020