Brisket Wrap Test

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder and today we're going to do an experiment we're going to find what is the best way to wrap your brisket so the three methods that we're going to test today are going to be cooking a brisket completely unwrapped cooking it and then wrapping in butcher paper cooking and wrapping in aluminum foil the reason people want to cook without wrapping is because they want as much smoke flavor on the outside as possible the downside of that is it can tend to dry out the exterior surface can get a little too crisp and kind of crunchy so not an ideal perfectly tender outside when you use foil you get everything very moist on the outside it retains lots and lots of moisture but the downside is it can make everything inside kind of soupy it can wash away the bark that you've worked so hard to create and then the third option is butcher paper a lot of people prefer this because they think that it allows the brisket to breathe a little bit so just imagine if you took something made of paper put it in water the water wicks up the paper and then can eventually evaporate so you can lose some water but it retains still a good portion of water within the wrapping itself to soften up the exterior surface so generally speaking we have crunchiest with unwrapped and then softest with foil and then butcher paper seems to be a happy medium but we're going to test that out and find out which one really is the best so i have my three costco prime briskets and that's something you can find all around the country so it's kind of an equal playing field hopefully that allows you to interpret these results according to stuff that you have locally so what we're going to do is we're going to test one thing at a time so we're going to do everything exactly the same way and only change what we wrap these things in we're going to wrap at the same time if we do in fact wrap we're going to season the same way we're going to trim the same way we're going to treat them equally as much as possible having the same part of the smoker so that they get the same temperature the same airflow all that stuff because if you change more than one thing at once you don't know what to attribute the difference in results to so if i change 10 things i don't know what had what effect but if i change only one thing i can usually attribute the final difference to the one thing that i changed so without further ado let's get these things trimmed up seasoned and put on the smoker [Music] it's time to put these guys on let's see what happens as you can see there's a lot more on the smoker right now than just those three briskets so i'm doing quite a few experiments all at once some of them will be filled today and some of them won't but i'm always experimenting trying to find out what's useful information and i try to put that in videos so if i look at these briskets right now i see they have good red color i see some things starting to dry a little bit so that means it's time to spray so i'm going to use apple cider vinegar usually i use a 50 50 mix of apple cider vinegar and water and some of you have seen me using the spray in the past like the sprayer itself and you know you might think it's overkill but when you're cooking on something like this this is a wonderful tool so i'm going to spray these guys and keep them moist when i'm barbecuing i always have two things with me number one i have my phone for a variety of reasons number two i always have my headphones because when i'm barbecuing i have grease on my hands i'll have dirt i'll have ashes all kinds of gross stuff and there are a lot of things i can't do but one thing i can do is listen to audible i want to thank audible for sponsoring today's video audible is a platform that you can access through an app that makes the world of books available through audio so you can listen to books rather than having to physically read them so for me while i'm doing all the barbecue stuff reading a book physically would be impossible but i can definitely listen to books and i've done that many many times because over the course of 16 hours there's a lot of stuff i can learn now i can waste that time or i can use that time to learn more and expand the horizons of the things i know the things that interest me are usually non-fiction so most of the titles that i look up on audible are non-fiction for instance the last one i just listened to was called never split the difference by chris voss and it's a book all about how to negotiate tremendously helpful i cannot tell you how valuable that's been to me especially in the last few weeks audible has thousands of titles fun fact if you listen to all the titles on audible you'd be listening for over three centuries if audible interests you you can try for 30 days for free so there's nothing to lose just go to audible.com forward slash mad scientist bbq or text mad scientist bbq to 500 500 so again i want to thank audible for sponsoring today's video i really encourage you guys to check it out seven hours in and these three briskets are looking really good they have really good color but the fat's just not quite rendered yet so when i poke it just wants to bounce back so i just need some more time to soften that up and at that point we're ready to wrap until then i'm just going to keep spraying about every 30 minutes which is what i'm doing right now now it's time to wrap so we're going to do three different methods one is no wrap at all one is butcher paper one is aluminum foil so let's take a look at these briskets and see how they're doing oh that's good we have the color we want we have the internal temperature we want so we're looking at about 170 looks like 168 169 but the real test is going to be is the fat rendered properly so if i poke this fat and it gives way that's what i'm looking for let's test it out that's good so these three briskets right here are the ones that we're going to be using for the test now i've debated about this point for a while and that was am i going to add beef tallow to the wrap like i would in regular butcher paper when i'm cooking briskets and i thought best not to add anything because we want as close to an apples-to-apples comparison as possible so what i'm going to do is add nothing no cider vinegar to any of the wraps no tallow to any of the wraps i'm just going to go directly into foil or right into butcher paper and put them back on the smoker and see what kind of effect that has i have not wrapped a brisket foil in years so this feels strange to me [Applause] and this guy can hang out one tip if you're cooking a brisket unwrapped what you might do just to make sure nothing burns is anything that's looking a little too crispy you can take a little cone of foil and put it over the top so if part of the brisket right here is getting a little too crispy you can put foil over just this part and the rust can continue to cook same thing for the front same thing for this end of the flat wherever it's drying out you can kind of tint it in foil and it seems to really protect it all right we pulled these guys off they rested overnight the foil wrapped brisket finished in about 11 hours total the butcher paper wrapped brisket took about 12 and a half hours and then the unwrapped brisket took 14 hours to finish so it's a long time but we're going to see if that difference paid off so let's unwrap these and we're going to compare the appearance the taste and the texture [Music] [Music] so [Music] by the appearance we can tell that these were definitely cooked a little bit differently by far the lightest is the one cooked in foil it looks kind of reddish orange whereas these look nearly black especially the one that went unwrapped the entire time looks pretty darn close to black this one looks like a dark dark dark dark dark dark red brown and this one looks kind of reddish orange which is strange now for the one that's unwrapped we see that there are a couple spots here that might look weird to you but that's just the result of me taking it off the smoker putting it on the cutting board handling it just because the fat on top has rendered so well every time i was grabbing it with gloved hands i would just poke a hole in it and that's where those spots came from so it's not necessarily a bad thing it's just that i'm not very delicate with handling it so we see a spot here a spot here one here one here one here kind of all the way around where i was grabbing the brisket and moving it so now we're going to slice them and taste them we're going to take the same cuts off of each one and compare those so what we're going to test is the end cut right here because in my experience that's the most likely place to get really dry and crusty and then we're also going to take a slice from the point and compare that for juiciness [Music] my now [Music] um [Music] now [Music] hmm [Music] uh so let's talk about some of the things we saw when we're slicing these things open so definitely the crustiest on the outside is the unwrapped brisket but also something that was strange and counterintuitive for me was that the one that was wrapped in foil is a little bit firmer than the one that was wrapped in butcher paper maybe it's because i didn't cook it properly in the foil i'm not sure i pulled them off at the same temperature same feeling of tenderness so i'm thinking it could be an effect of the foil but it might just be something that happened to this individual brisket also when comparing the juiciness of the briskets i think that the butcher paper brisket was the juiciest and then probably the one that was unwrapped was the second most juicy and then the foil was the least juicy of all three now the reason i think that the foil brisket tends to be less moist than the other two is because something i've said a hundred times that what you perceive as moisture is usually rendered fat i think when you trap in all of that water vapor inside the wrap then the fat doesn't render as well and so it ends up not being as moist in the end when you use foil so let's taste them and then see if that's true or if it's just an appearance from slicing into it all right starting with the end cut good flavor it is nice and moist i really don't have any complaints i didn't think it was going to be that good but it was great so i guess if you're using foil maybe you're doing it right now let me try this bit from the point on the bite from the point i noticed a couple things number one is still had really good flavor it was nice and tender but the juiciness wasn't quite up to where i like it to be so notice that the fat on top was kind of chewier it wasn't just filling the whole mouthful with lots and lots of juice so i think maybe wrapping in foil trapping all that moisture might give a lot of water on the outside of the meat but it doesn't make the meat actually feel more moist when you take a bite all right end cut here we go all right wow that end cut was about as close to perfect as a bite of barbecue gets if you like the end cut you know packed with smoke flavor and it still has enough red fat on top to make the whole thing juicy wow that bite is hard to beat that but it's probably the best bite of barbecue i've had in a couple months that was phenomenal let me try the point and see how that is wow as good as the last bite was that one was even better so much juiciness so much smoke flavor like when you want to learn how to barbecue that's what you want to try to create a lot of people you go to a place and have incredible barbecue and you think i got to go home and do that myself that's what you're trying to recreate that is perfect to me in every respect the bark on the outside is set but it's not soft and mushy like on the foil brisket and there's tons of smoke flavor packed in the fat is rendered properly it's a perfect bite of barbecue all right and cut i can tell kind of by looking at it and feeling it that the outside is a little crunchy but we'll see how it tastes now on this one the outside was a little crunchy but not unpleasantly so it wasn't burnt it was just kind of dehydrated a little bit on the outside as will happen if you cook it for 14 hours without wrapping but the flavor on this was incredible the tenderness was great um you know i really don't have a lot of bad things to say about this i mean there's so much smoke flavor packed into each bite that this is a very viable way of cooking a brisket all right here we go with the point the fat on top looks rendered perfectly looks juicy on the outside let's see wow that's really good i think that that one is maybe not quite as pleasant in terms of my feel as the one that's wrapped in butcher paper but it is darn close it's still really juicy it's just on the outside that outside crust that bark hasn't been softened at all whereas the butcher paper it's been softened a little bit hasn't been washed away but i totally understand why people would prefer this over the butcher paper version i like the butcher paper version best i think it's just the perfect balance between getting the outside soft enough and maintaining the integrity of the brisket itself so those are my thoughts on tasting each one of these if i had the butcher paper one the foil one or the one that was unwrapped at any barbecue restaurant i went to i think this is good brisket but the one i prefer is definitely the butcher paper so to get a second opinion on this i did a blind taste test with my wife who chose not to be on camera today but i chose her because she has an incredible palette and like her sense of taste and smell are remarkable like for instance i can chew a piece of cinnamon gum in the morning and that evening she'll say i smell cinnamon so i trust her palate a lot so we gave her all three samples and what sample did you like the best c c c was the foil that was my least favorite but it was her favorite right which one did you like the least b all right b was the butcher paper which was my favorite so the the point of that is you have to choose the method that you like best and cook your briskets that way so if you look at franklin they use butcher paper make incredible brisket my favorite barbecue place in the world is snow's bbq in lexington texas they use foil to wrap their briskets so whatever method you prefer is the one you should use but there are definitely differences between the two so everybody who's tasted these has noticed differences between them even though we used the same wood we're cooking at the same temperature the same basic process it does have a different result in the end so find the one that works best for you my recommendation is butcher paper but you may have better luck with foil or you may have better luck not wrapping it all so in summation what i would say is try all three and the one that works best do it that way so the one that you prefer is the right answer it doesn't matter what other people do there are places that do it all three different ways and they make incredible food so whatever you like best do it that way and don't be ashamed to admit that you do it without wrapping with wrapping butcher paper or wrapping in foil now the best cookbook for barbecue in the entire world is one by meathead goldwyn he's the guy who runs amazingribs.com and he has the saying that is there are no rules in the kitchen and i like that because that way you have complete freedom to try anything you want and the thing you like best is the right answer so these are my results and you know my preference but i would encourage you to get out there barbecue up some briskets try them all three different ways and let me know in the comments which one you think is the best way if this video helped you out help me out by subscribing to the channel liking the video down below and following me on facebook instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 182,215

Rating: 4.9429164 out of 5

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Id: _Ldg73DumjI

Length: 19min 59sec (1199 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021