Brisket Foil Boat Method

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder and today we're going to be doing a technique you may not have heard of we're going to be cooking a brisket but we're going to be wrapping it in an aluminum foil boat the first time i heard about the foil boat method was a few years ago when i actually let somebody borrow this pit to cook for a tv show and when i got my smoker back i found these pieces of aluminum foil but with butcher paper wrapped in with it and i was like well that's strange somebody used both butcher paper and aluminum foil in addition to that i found about 10 gallons of water in my firebox and my shovel was missing but that's beside the point today what i want to do is i'm going to try it out because some people say it has the benefits of foil and the benefits of butcher paper it could be a perfect marriage between the two techniques to get a superior result to see if this is a gimmick or if it actually helps we're going to test it out today with a costco prime brisket and we're going to trim it and season it like i always trim briskets to keep everything the same so that nothing changes except the one new thing we're adding it's been about two hours and we can see that it's got kind of a reddish color nothing's even looking like it's close to burning this fat is still like a rubber ball is what it feels like it just bounces so we need more time for fat to render and we're going to keep going until we have to start spraying and when we do we're going to use a 50 50 mix of apple cider vinegar and water but until then let's keep cooking [Music] do [Music] our brisket is ready to wrap and so i've seen a few different variations of the foil boat method but the one i'm going to use is where you wrap it in butcher paper and then put that in a foil boat so you still get some breathability you still get some of the protection that the butcher paper offers on top but then you get the protection of foil on the bottom [Music] so [Music] so we have our foil boat set up with butcher paper on top foil underneath and we're going to see how this turns out i'm thinking it might protect the point and the flat ends a little bit better but i really don't know so i'm gonna finish this off and the next thing you're gonna see is after we've let this thing rest for eight hours it's gonna be eight in the morning we're gonna be slicing this thing open so we pulled this guy off last night and we put it in the cooler to rest overnight so we let it rest 10 hours the internal temp right now is 150 degrees so when doing this test we were trying to answer the question of whether or not this is better than butcher paper or foil alone and one thing that i did notice when i was cooking it is this thing once i wrapped it it cooked at like lightning speed as if it were wrapped in foil so usually butcher paper still takes quite a long time after you wrap it to finish it up usually for me it takes about an extra four hours or so maybe even five or six depending on how big that brisket is this one finished up in two hours after putting in the foil boat so i think one thing we do know for sure is this dramatically speeds the cooking process but we have to unwrap it look at it and taste it to see if it improves the product so [Applause] [Music] hmm [Music] so on first inspection this brisket looks beautiful a lot of times when you wrap in foil it kind of washes away the bark and it lightens the color this doesn't have any of that so it looks great and then one other thing is the fat on top is rendered extremely well one way you can tell is if it's sticky so what you can hear on my gloves my fingers stick together because the fat is well rendered and sticky so as an example check this out that is a good sign that's exactly what you want to see when you cook a brisket you want your gloves to be sticky you don't want it to be too slimy because that means it's probably a mixture of water and red fat on your gloves what you really want is rendered fat so let's slice this up and see how it does with taste and tenderness [Music] my [Music] first thing i'm going to taste is the end cut because if there's any part of a brisket that's going to be dry it's going to be this right here so let's see how we did wow so in terms of flavor excellent i mean top-notch flavor in terms of tenderness perfect it wasn't falling apart it wasn't mushy or mealy but it was perfectly tender each bite you you know feel the meat just give way as far as moisture goes it wasn't quite as moist as i would like i don't know if that's a function of this brisket or if it's a result of this method in particular but right now i'm looking at a slice i took off the point and that's looking really juicy so let's try that out and see how that is if that's not juicy i don't know what is perfectly rendered fat juicy meat underneath i'm gonna take a piece of this and see how it is you kind of get that stickiness on your fingers again but this is kind of pinkish looking from all the smoke flavors so this should be an absolute bomb of flavor let's check it out oh yeah that batter biscuit right there is everything you want in brisket rendered fat salt pepper smoke it's phenomenal that is absolutely one of the best bites of brisket you're ever going to have perfectly moist i have nothing bad to say about that but as far as whether this method is superior to butcher paper or foil i'm not sure i got to be honest when i did this test i thought it was just going to be a gimmick and it was going to be a waste of time but the bottom line for me is if using this method can give you results that are as good as butcher paper which in my opinion is the best way to do it but you can shorten the cook time by hours by putting a foil boat underneath i think that's worthwhile if you're willing to sacrifice a few pieces of aluminum foil to save yourself hours and hours of cook time i think that's a good deal so what i'm going to do in the future is try this a few more times if each time ends up being as great as this was i'm going to keep doing it in the future but what i would encourage you guys to do is try it out at home and give me some feedback in the comments below tell me if you've ever tried this or if you think that there's a better method a different way to wrap that you know about that maybe i've never heard of so to sum this up with this method i think that you get the same kind of bark that you can achieve with butcher paper and you get lots of moisture retained but the key difference between just using butcher paper and using the foil boat is at least for this experiment that the cook time is hours shorter so if this video has been helpful to you hit the like button down below and subscribe to the channel you can also follow me on facebook instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 273,081

Rating: 4.9567008 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ymwtIZwaMwI

Length: 8min 53sec (533 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021