How to Smoke Brisket + Smoked Beef Tallow | Mad Scientist BBQ

hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder today i cannot wait to show you how to smoke a brisket i decided not to do a sponsorship today because i want to make today's video all about barbecue and one of the ways i want to do that is i want to tell you how you can ensure that i see your questions and i can answer it meaningfully and thoroughly a lot of people are asking me questions on instagram and youtube comments via email and it's just hard for me to get to all of them but by all means you can keep sending those questions i do my best to get to them but to ensure that i see your question you can click on the link in the description for wizio basically you ask me a question and i respond via video because i want to make sure that i really do answer your question and i don't have to give you just like a one sentence response or a one word response but if you contact me on wizio i will see that question and i'll respond with a video message where i can really give you a good thorough answer also people have been asking me if i can do some kind of in-person barbecue boot camp and i've looked into that and from what i can see from other people who do that sort of thing it's kind of a canned presentation where they have a raw brisket and then they trim it and season it and put it on the smoker then magically a perfectly cooked brisket and then they show you how to slice it i'm not really interested in doing anything like that but you guys can help me out if you let me know in the comments if you're interested in something like what i'm about to describe basically we show up and we go through the entire process of the cook it would be a long period of time right we're talking 16 hours for a cook but that's the only way i think you could really learn exactly what i'm looking for when i'm cooking briskets you could see it you could feel it you could smell it you could be involved in the process and if you have any questions i'm there and i'm happy to answer them so if that sounds interesting to you let me know in the comments below if you think that's too long and you wouldn't be interested let me know that as well but back to the video today's video is an update of a video i did a few years ago where i showed you how to smoke a brisket but i've learned a few new things since then and i want to pass those on to you so you have the absolute best information at your disposal when making decisions about how to smoke a brisket so let's talk about the meat we're using today this is a 15 pound brisket that i got from costco it's prime grade and this is something that most people across the country are going to have access to when you're using a technique to cook something like this it will apply to higher grades of beef but it doesn't always work in reverse so if you can take this and turn it into amazing barbecue then if you get a wagyu brisket that's just gravy it's easier and there's more forgiveness there if you do it right with this you can basically apply it to any brisket that you get and you're going to have great results now this brisket is about 15 pounds that's pretty average anywhere from 12 to probably 18 or even 20 pounds is pretty normal but i think 15 is just about right because if you get a brisket that's too small a lot of times it can dry out if you get a brisket that's too big a lot of times the cook time is so long that you're going to give up on it before it's done so 15 pounds is great if you want to go smaller not a problem at all if you're unfamiliar with a brisket let's talk a little bit about its anatomy a brisket is a really tough cut of meat and because of that you have to cook it for a long time so all the stuff breaks down and it becomes very tender so i like to think of it this way you cook it so long past tough that it loops all the way back around to being tender again now there are two parts to a brisket there's the part called the point right here this thick part and there are actually two muscles in there and then there's the flat over here where it's just one muscle running underneath this layer of fat so where a brisket is on a cow would be like your chest muscles in human terms it would be like the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor so the pec minor does this movement the pec major does this movement well a cow has equivalent muscles it's called the pectoralis profundus and the pectoralis superficialis that's not important but what is important is that you know that there are two different muscles and we're going to have to slice them differently in the end because their grain structures run differently now this part on top is the fat cap so we're going to call this from now on the top of the brisket even though when it's actually on the cow it's the part that's facing the ground but for our terms this is the top and then the underside is the bottom so the top has a layer of fat on it and the underside is mostly lean our goal in trimming is going to be to make sure that nothing burns so pieces that are kind of hanging off like this we're going to cut those off because it's not going to survive there's no point in keeping it on there also this fat cap on top right now the fat is too thick for it all to render well during the cook so we're going to take that down to about a quarter inch and if you're doing this trimming and you get some bald spots where you're trying to trim the fat but you actually hit the muscle underneath don't worry it's not the end of the world you come back up it's normal to have a few bald spots then on the underside we're going to be doing very little trimming we'll show you that when we get there but one other thing to note is right here there's a chunk of fat we have the thick part we have the thin part and here's a chunk of fat that's not going to render so we're going to cut that out as well let's take a look at the underside now now on the underside we have a little bit of fat that's running over the grain of the muscle here but the thing we want to focus on is this big chunk of fat right here we're going to kind of take it at an angle we're not going to trim it all out or else you have kind of a cave in the meat that's not good we're just trying to avoid any huge amount of fat that ends up in the final cooked product [Music] so [Music] now two important things the first is we're going to actually cut off some of the meat so this is going to be painful to some of you but it will end up with a better product after you've put in all the work so it's worth it and what we're going to do is we're going to take some of this flat where it's really thin and cut it off the rule i use is if the meat is thicker than the width of my thumb it can stay if it's not it goes so on this brisket we're probably going to have to make a cut that looks something like this so this corner is all going to be gone the reason we want thicker meat is because that way will survive the cook if it's too thin it'll dry out and not be good and it's not worth taking the time to cook it all if it's not going to end up being something that you want instead you can take this off and use it for burgers or use it for sausage or some other purpose where it'll be you know something that tastes good rather than something that just gets wasted then the other thing we're going to do is if you're a beginner to cooking brisket and you're afraid that when this is cooked you're not going to know which way to start slicing it what you can do is on this thin end you can make a cut like this so you know oh that flat spot that's where i start cutting because at the end we got to slice this thing up and if you slice it incorrectly you got a big problem on your hands [Music] all right we got this guy trimmed up enough to go on the smoker but it still needs to be seasoned and to season it i'm using salt and pepper so kosher salt coarse ground black pepper what i do is a 50 50 mix so i you know fill up maybe this much with salt and then an equal amount with pepper i shake it up and then i'm ready to go now there are lots of brisket rubs out there that you can buy if you find one that you love by all means use it but for me a lot of those rubs aren't really worth it to me because number one you're paying mostly for salt and the number two is a lot of those rubs that have really kind of fine powders in them cover up the brisket so much that i don't think that smoke penetrates as well as it could otherwise so i like to keep the rub simple and for me salt and pepper is the way to go because if you have great smoke flavor you don't need anything more than salt and pepper it's like a great steak if you cook a great steak and you cook it properly you don't need anything more than salt and pepper to make it taste amazing same thing with brisket [Music] at this point we have a nice even coat of rub on here and we're ready to put this on the smoker now i'm cooking on an offset smoker and there's going to be some temperature fluctuation because it's just the nature of burning you know an open fire so i'm going to keep the temperature between 225 and 250 to start off with and we're using pecan wood it's my favorite wood you can use oak you can use hickory lots of options my favorite is pecan that's what we're using so we're gonna take this guy put it on there and we're not gonna do anything to it except maintain the temperature for the first three hours so putting it on we're gonna go thick side toward the fire we're gonna go fat side up now one important rule for cooking brisket is start before you think you need to because the brisket can rest for longer at the end but if it's not done it's not done so usually i'm starting a brisket at three or four in the morning right now it's daylight because we want to be able to see everything that's going on for video and if i were just out here and it's dark just messing around wouldn't help you out so start early if you're cooking a brisket on an offset smoker it's very very very important that you get clean smoke what clean smoke means is an oxygen-rich fire and you produce really good tasting compounds in the smoke itself now if you have questions about this i'll link my fire management video and i go into depth and detail about the whole process so you can make clean smoke in your smoker as well if you're looking for clean smoke it looks like a mirage so you might see a faint bit of smoke but really you should see waves of heat coming out so right now i can see my own breath a lot more than i can see the smoke that tells me that that smoke is clean you remember i said we want to save all these trimmings because we have a purpose for them and what we're going to do with them is render them into beef tallow so that chunk of the flat that i cut off that has a lot of meat on it what i'm going to do is put it in there for a short period of time and then i'm going to pull it out chop it into cubes and add it to chili you can just leave it in there and let it go forever and try to run it out as much fat as possible that's totally fine but i think you get more mileage if you use this in chile or if you don't put it in the smoker at all and grind it up for burgers or something like that so i'm going to show you two ways that i do this one would be the way i actually do it the other would be a cheaper way that you can do at home so to render your own tallow from the brisket trimmings is a cheap way to get use out of those trimmings what i like to do though is i like to take wagyu tallow and put it in the smoker because that way it absorbs smoke flavor and then still gives the mouth feel of wagyu beef so you don't have to spend a bajillion dollars to get a wagyu brisket but you still get that same mouth feel that you get with a wagyu brisket that nothing else is like so i'll do it both ways you choose which one you want to do i prefer the wagyu tallow but rendering the trimmings yourself is a great way to do it i just don't think it has the same kind of mouth feel that the wagyu does so i would suggest you save this container because what i do is i smoke this white utallo and then i'll use some of it for the brisket and then once it's cooled i put it back in the container and then i use it whenever i want to sear a steak or if i'm putting wagyu towel on anything else i get smoked flavor from the towel that i smoked but i don't have to go through the trouble of firing up the smoker and doing the long cook there we go so we're going to leave the trimmings in there and we're going to leave the tallow in there for a long time to absorb lots of smoke flavor the tallow when it's done we're just going to take it out let it cool put it back in the container use it whenever we want the trimmings we're going to have to filter those out i'm going to show you how to do that in a few hours people ask me all the time what kind of wood do you use well i'd usually tell them i use pecan and oak but really more important than the specific kind of wood you're using is that you're using the right size of wood so i take time to split down the chunks so that they burn cleanly when i put them on the fire so i don't have a bunch of white smoke coming out of the stack and when you have clean smoke you produce far better flavor so something like this would be appropriate for this backyard size smoker something like this totally not appropriate it would sit there smolder produce a bunch of gross white smoke and then your brisket would taste bitter and if you put in 12 14 16 hours to cook a brisket you don't want it to taste bitter you want to taste really good so this size is what you need it's been about three hours so we're going to start making some changes now the first thing is we're going to start spraying so every time i put a piece of wood on the fire i'm going to spray the brisket any parts of the meat that are exposed not the fat because i want the fat to continue to render so i don't want to cool that down i want the meat to cool down on the outside surface so it doesn't burn now you can use vinegar you can use distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar you can use water you could use anything you want really but what i found to produce the best results is actually a 50 50 mixture of cheap beer and apple cider vinegar so i think the apple cider vinegar kind of gives a little bit of nice flavor kind of fruitiness but there's no sugar so nothing is going to risk burning but the real reason is because beer is about five percent alcohol it has a boiling point of 173 degrees fahrenheit then water has a boiling point of 212 degrees fahrenheit then the acetic acid and vinegar which makes up about five percent of the vinegar has a boiling point of about 244 degrees so i get rapid cooling a long period of cooling from the water and then some high temperature cooling from the acetic acid in the vinegar all together they work out to keep that outside moist and i think the low ph of the vinegar kind of breaks down some of the stuff that's crusty now it's a long explanation to tell you why i do what i do but the short version is half beer half vinegar and i've gotten the best results that way the other thing we're going to change is i'm going to up the temperature so i've been cooking between 225 and 250 now i'm going to move that up to 250 to 275. one important thing to note is on a big offset smoker you'll end up cooking hotter than that so on my 500 gallon offset i'll cook you know at this point anywhere between 275 and 300. so you have to make sure that you're cooking at the right temperature for your smoker with a smoker this small i found that lower temperatures work better if you look at our trimmings they're starting to render down so they're still not rendered the way we need it to but they're starting to liquefy and so we need several more hours for that to happen the tallow itself is already all liquid and it's absorbing smoke so that's a good sign you can also infuse this with herbs and spices if you so choose but i like the simplicity of the tallow and smoke so we're cooking at 275 and we're going to spray about every 30 minutes until we check back in but one thing important to notice is clean smoke you see waves of heat coming out of that stack that's what you want to achieve great flavor instead of the billowing white smoke keep it clean until you wrap it's been about six hours now and so i just added some wood to the fire and i'm gonna spray this brisket so we can check the temperature but the temperature isn't the be-all end-all of when it's time to wrap there are things that i look for that are more important than temperature number one is fat render so when i push on this fat right here it's starting to give now but it's still kind of cloudy it still needs to render down more it needs more time so it's not ready to wrap so i don't care what the temperature is it's not ready if i'm guessing i'd say the temperature is probably 165 167 something like that and then we can also see that the tallow that we're trying to render out of these trimmings is coming along nicely so we have quite a bit of liquid there and then finally this piece that i'm going to use for chili is starting to look really nice i'm going to give it a few more minutes to get some more smoke and then we'll chop that up and put it in chili later if you're cooking a brisket for the first time you might be asking yourself well how do i know when to wrap because that is really a difficult question if you've never done it before you don't have a lot of experience so i'm going to give you the five things that i look for before i wrap a biscuit number one is evaporation so the conventional wisdom on wrapping is you take a brisket you're cooking it until you hit 165 when the temperature stops changing then you wrap it up and then you finish it off to about 203 degrees now if your goal is to finish a brisket as soon as possible then yes that's the right move but if your goal is to make the best brisket possible that is the wrong move what you actually want is a lot of that water to evaporate away because it concentrates the flavor and for some reason i don't have an explanation for this it seems to make the brisket more tender in the end the second thing i look for is color so if i look at a brisket and it's got a nice dark dark color that tells me there's lots of smoke flavor on that thing it's gonna taste incredible the third thing i look for is bark so i want that kind of a little bit of crustiness on the outside of the brisket because when you wrap it there's going to be a lot of water vapor that gets trapped in the wrap and it's going to soften up that bark so what you want to do is cook the brisket so you have bark a little bit crunchier than you would normally want it in the end because after you wrap it it softens up to just the right level the fourth thing that i look for is fat render and this is a crucial crucial one so the fat layer on top you should be able to poke it it gives way and you see kind of a translucent yellow color it shouldn't really be cloudy anymore that tells you that the fat has rendered properly and it's not going to be chewy and for some reason it makes the whole brisket seem more moist and then fifth and finally is temperature that's the last thing i look for it's just kind of a mental check for me because if all those other four components are there the temperature shouldn't really matter that much so i'll usually check just out of curiosity it's not the main thing that i look for out of those five things it's the least important at this point we're eight hours in and so what i want to do is i want to check on that brisket see if it's ready to wrap and then i also want to check on those beef trimmings to see if we've got enough tallow that we can get that ready and then i'm also going to take out that wagyu beef towel because i don't want it to be super scalding hot when i add it to the brisket because i want to be able to spread it as like a semi-solid so that i get the kind of coverage that i want this guy's going to go for some chili we see that we've rendered quite a bit of fat out of those trimmings at this point i'm going to show you what to do with those and then let's check this right now we have good color but the fat just isn't wanting to give quite enough yet so we've got to render the fat more so we're going to give it some more time and hopefully it'll probably be able to get wrapped in i don't know 30 or 45 minutes you see it's starting to render starting to squirt out juice when i poke it so it's getting close just not there yet let's go inside and i'll show you how to deal with this beef towel now to separate out these trimmings from the towel that you're going to want to use you only need two things a metal sieve do not use plastic let me reiterate do not use plastic ask me how i know not to use plastic do not use plastic so a metal sieve and a glass bowl or a glass jar if you want to store it in a jar that's what i recommend doing so you don't have to clean more stuff than necessary but we're going to use a bowl today so all you do take the sieve put it on top of the bowl or jar and then pour over the towel and then right here you have beautiful smoked beef tallow now like i said i definitely prefer the wagyu i tried it both ways i think the wagyu tallow is just superior you get like this buttery mouth feel and kind of a better flavor it's wonderful stuff you can use this like i said on steaks you cook a steak and instead of putting butter over the top of it you put some you know smoked towel on top oh it's lights out amazing all right it's time to wrap because those things that i'm looking for are starting to show up we have great color it's nice and dark which means we should have great smoke flavor we have good bark on the outside it's going to soften up a little bit after we wrap it and the temperature is 178 internal right now so that looks good and here we go the important thing is fat render so when i poke this it just gives it just sinks right in just sinks in just sinks in everywhere on the top of this brisket it just sinks in so that tells me this guy's ready to go the fat is rendered and we're gonna wrap it but when we wrap it we're gonna have a special process and i'm telling you this changes the game so to get this paper ready to wrap the brisket i'm gonna take this smoked wagyu tallow and put it on the paper so the meat side sits on top of that and then we're going to be able to wrap it up and then get lots of moisture because what you perceive as moisture when you eat a brisket is usually rendered fat now the reason i'm using the wagyu tallow is because it's different than regular beef tallow so the fatty acid composition that makes up wagyu tallow is different now you don't have to know all the complicated chemistry as to why that makes a difference but i just want to show you this this is regular beef tallow the wag utah at room temperature has the consistency of room temperature butter so nice and soft this is hard you can scoop it out but it's got about the hardness of ice cream so the differences in the chemical composition of the fat actually have real world consequences both in terms of how it feels in your mouth and the taste that it gives so for that reason the smoke tower is the way to go so here i'm going in with the still warm smoked wagyu tallow so it's a little bit different color it'll lighten up as it solidifies but i want to get a good layer on this paper [Music] uh i found that spreading around like pizza sauce works best so meatside on the talon we don't need tallow on this side because guess what it's already got lots of rendered fat so now let's wrap it over once fat side down that tie down again and then finally that side back up we're going to put it back on the smoker this way [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay all right so one thing you can do when you put this back on after it's wrapped if your flat is way behind in temperature so you had to point toward the fire the whole time say its temperature is 185 but the flat is you know 168 and you need the flat to catch up one thing you can do after it's protected in paper you can turn the flat toward the fire so that it catches up in temperature and both sides finish at the same time now there have been lots of people i know they put it with a point toward the fire the entire time and in the end they say oh the point was amazing but the flat was tough and dry well you can avoid that by switching it if necessary so for you you may or may not need to switch the orientation depending on how your cooker cooks for me and this smoker i don't need to switch so we're going to keep checking back every probably 15 or 30 minutes we're looking for an internal temperature of probably about 203 degrees but more important than the temperature we're looking for feel so it should feel like softened butter when you put the probe in and also you don't need to unwrap it to poke the probe in just poke through the paper that tiny little hole won't make much of a difference in terms of how well this paper holds in the moisture and speeds up the cook all right this is ready to come off so i checked the temperature it's 202 but it feels perfect so i'm not going to keep it going i don't want it to overcook what we're going to do now is i'm going to take this thing off and i'm going to set it out at room temperature and let it cool rapidly i want it to cool to about 180 degrees at that point i'm going to unwrap it and wrap it new butcher paper that i treat the exact same way as i did when i wrapped it the first time so i'm going to add the smoked tallow then i'm going to put the brisket down wrap it up again at that point it goes into a cooler and i'm going to leave it in a cooler for a long time actually i'm going to leave it there overnight and i would recommend that if you can do that based on timing that you do because a long rest is great so for me i'm going to rest it 12 hours until tomorrow when we unwrap it and we slice into it and taste it but what i would recommend for you guys out there is please please please rest your brisket at least two hours preferably you'd rest at five six seven eight hours or longer for me i found the best results by resting a brisket 8 hours to 12 hours and anywhere in between has been phenomenal and the way you can do that is make sure number one you don't put the brisket directly from the smoker into a cooler or else it will overcook it'll get mushy you don't want that but if you let it cool to 180 then put it in the cooler the cooler will keep it hot for a long period of time and so you want to keep it above 135 degrees to be safe but if it kind of drops below that in the morning you can take it and put it in an oven set to say 170 fahrenheit and then bring the temperature back up so long rest is going to allow all the fat to distribute you're going to have a better product in the end that's the plan for what we're going to do with this that's a good looking brisket same process as before here i have the smoked wagyu tallow notice that it's soft so this is different anyway that's why i like it and tastes really good [Music] the aroma of brisket is filling the kitchen right now we've let this thing rest for 12 hours and i would recommend anywhere from eight to 12 hours as being ideal now you could rest it as short a time as five hours or maybe even push it as long as 17 without really dropping in quality but what you need to do is time it so that it works for you so for instance if you have you know a barbecue get together at noon on saturday then you could cook the day before pull the brisket off at midnight the night before then let it rest and then say you wake up at 7 or 8 a.m then go take your thermometer check the brisket if it needs to warm up a little bit put it in the oven and bring it back up to a nice holding temperature that's safe so that way you can prolong the rest to suit your needs and keep it at a safe temperature now let's unwrap it and take a look [Music] [Music] so when we look at this we have all the signs that we're looking for we have nice dark color means there's a lot of smoke flavor there the fat's rendered really well it's actually kind of sticking to my finger when i touch it all those are good signs if you've done it right it should look a little bit like a meteorite now if you don't know the reason that briskets look like meteorites is because they come from heaven now i have it in documents from the top levels in cia that briskets are being shipped in from outer space i think they're shipping them in from the obelisk on mars they're next level good at this point all you have left to do is slice and taste so here we have a flat spot on this end where we cut off a piece earlier so that if you're not familiar with briskets you know to start slicing here so the process is going to work like this the thin end we're going to start slicing slice slice slice live slice until we get about halfway through when you see this extra piece of muscle laying on top of the brisket at that point we're going to turn it 90 degrees and slice that side as well so then you're going to have slices of point which are going to be a little thicker and slices of flat which are going to be a little thinner if you want an in-depth explanation of exactly how to slice a brisket i have a video all about that and i'll link that in the description but what we're going to do today is a little simpler we're going to separate the two sides and take some slices off of each and see how they turned out so [Music] [Music] this flap right here a lot of people trim it off i like to leave it on because i like to take that and i treat it carefully and turn it into burnt ends because it can burn on the cooker during the course of the cook but if you're careful it won't burn and they make the most magically delicious bites of barbecue you will ever taste [Music] now when we look at the slice of the flat we see it's still moist there's lots of juice running through here we see render fat on the top we see beautiful bark and then we see the smoke ring so all together this should be exactly what we're looking for now when you hold it up it shouldn't fall apart but it should tear apart really easily let's see if it does yeah that was pretty easy now all that's left is to taste it perfect when you render the fat properly it takes a good brisket and makes it a great brisket now in my opinion my favorite bite on the whole brisket is the side of the point so here you can see we rendered that fat beautifully now it's just almost all disappeared and then this a lot of pink in there from the smoke and there's a lot of intramuscular fat so when i squeeze this all that juice starts to come out this is going to be an incredibly moist smoky and tender piece of meat so if there's one bite on a brisket i'm having it's going to be this this is why i love barbecue this is exactly what i wanted to create when i first started barbecuing and when you introduce people to this your friends and family they're going to know oh this is what real barbecue is and then finally let's see how this burn end turned out wow best bite so far maybe i was wrong maybe that last bite wasn't the one i wanted this is the one i want moist uh so tender there's more flavor in this bite than in any other part of the brisket my goodness don't trim that off when you're getting this thing ready to put on the smoker leave it on there be careful with it and it's going to be worth your time so that's how you make a brisket now if you've never made one before and you're a little bit intimidated about doing it don't be give it a try the only way you're going to learn how to do it is by doing it and learning from your mistakes so what i would encourage you to do is follow this playbook on how to make a brisket and if you need to make adjustments or you want to change things to suit your tastes better then by all means do it but this is a great way to guarantee that you're going to be on the right track from the start now the reason people spend 12 14 16 hours cooking brisket is because it's worth it there's nothing else that's going to taste like this that's going to have the mouth feel that this does that's why brisket is a superstar in the barbecue world and even though it takes a long time people are willing to do it because there's nothing else like it if you enjoyed the video and if you found it helpful hit the like button down below and please subscribe to the channel it really helps us out you can also follow me on instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 1,158,505

Rating: 4.9467754 out of 5

Keywords: brisket, smoker, brisket recipe, smoked brisket, beef brisket, texas brisket, beef tallow, beef tallow brisket, beef tallow brisket wrap, offset smoker, simple brisket recipe, austin texas brisket, sugar free smoked brisket, homemade smoked brisket, passover brisket recipe, good beef brisket, make beef brisket, how to cook barbeque brisket, barbeque brisket recipes, cooking bbq brisket, brisket smoke ring, charcoal bark brisket, brisket prime, beginner brisket, tallow, yoder

Id: kE2RisA2mHY

Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/gheebuttersnaps18]

Chuds bbq on YouTube is pretty good

[u/LuigiLife69]

This dude is great! Love his content and he makes a juicy brisket!

[u/ArickxEightOne]

This guy rests brisket for 16 hours.