I Bought the Cheapest Offset Smoker at Home Depot and Made a Brisket

get that shot get that shot hey guys welcome to mad scientist barbecue i'm jeremy yoder and today i'm at home depot i'm gonna go inside and find the cheapest offset smoker i can and use it to cook a brisket before we get into today's video i want to take a chance to thank today's sponsor skillshare now if you don't know what skillshare is skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes where you can pursue your interest now for me when i was growing up i hated school i did well in school but i hated it because we had to learn things that i did not care about with skillshare you can learn whatever you want to pursue so if you'd like to learn things like how to brew a cup of coffee or how to make a youtube video or even how to start your own business skillshare has those opportunities where you can pursue your passion and learn things that are important to you now for me i just took a class on iphone filmmaking when i was in the mountains in colorado hunting elk it was tremendously valuable to me to be able to know how to get the shots that i need but the next class i want to take is from plant to cup brew an amazing cup of coffee by michael phillips now i've been somebody who's always been able to appreciate coffee that's not so great but i thought i should expand my horizons here and learn to appreciate great coffee and i think this class is going to help me do it the first thousand of my subscribers who click on the link below in the description are going to get a free trial to skillshare premium so you got nothing to lose and then after that if you want to get an annual membership it's less than ten dollars a month so great option i encourage you guys to at least check it out but now let's get into the video 199 bucks it's actually a little thicker than i thought it would be this thing is terrible all right find the cheapest ones i have it is called the next grilled barrel smoker with offset it's 139 bucks and i have a 15 off coupon so this thing is gonna leave with me for just over a hundred bucks not bad [Music] after dealing with a bunch of quarter-inch thick smokers that thing is light as a feather i just realized i forgot to get charcoal all right back to home depot here we go now that i'm back from an el cunning trip i want to revisit the project of the cheapest smoker at home depot so what i have here is a high quality brisket and i have seasoned it i have trimmed it not in that order but i've done both of those things this thing should be good to go i am extremely confident if i put this on my brazos or on my 500 gallon this thing would turn out great as long as i'm diligent about watching the fire on this one i have no idea this smoker was i think 139.99 and i think we got it 20 off of that we got this thing ready to go we're gonna put it on we're gonna check back on it in probably an hour and then we're going to in the meantime review some of the features of this little smoker as you may have guessed this is not an ad for the next grille it is extremely flimsy very lightweight um i can pick it up and hold it over my head like everything moves everything bends this is not the same thing as a quarter inch thick offset but the goal of the video is for me to see if i can make great brisket even on a flimsy cheap smoker because a lot of people don't have a budget to spend you know multiple thousands of dollars on a custom smoker and they're dealing with something like this that maybe they got on clearance at home depot and they still want to try to make great barbecue so i'm going to do my best to be able to do that now couple things this thing obviously leaks smoke the firebox is tiny so you have to use either wood chunks with a bed of charcoal or i'm using tiny little wood splits and then i chop those in half and put those in there um it's just not easy to try to burn a real wood fire in there so we're gonna have to go charcoal with wood layered on top another issue is uh this thermometer came with uh some condensation already in the gauge that's wonderful also if you look at this guy even though i don't have a bunch of wood there's still fire licking into the cook chamber and that's not great but we're going to try to mitigate that use smaller chunks of wood and keep most of the heat coming from the charcoal so on a little tiny smoker like this the way you have to run it to be successful at least in my opinion is better charcoal and then you add wood for flavor so the wood isn't doing the primary heating but it's doing the flavoring that you want rather than you know a big offset or even just a really heavy offset that's a backyard size where you're burning wood as the heat and the flavor here what is just the flavor it's not really there for the heat so you could use chips you could use chunks you could use tiny splits i'm using tiny splits i just like the flavor that you get when you burn splits i think it's a little bit better than chunks and wood chips i just think it's a superior way to go and on this cook i'm trying to do it the best way that i think i can to make this brisket a success now as we put this thing on i'm kind of wafting the faint aroma of paint burning from the firebox i really hope that doesn't really flavor the meat inside because that would be a big bummer but we're going to stick with this i'm going to do my best to make it great and we're going to see what we can do all right so we have this flimsy smoker the brisket in there is worth two-thirds of the cost of the smoker probably uh but now it's time to check in to see how it's doing so we're gonna look for color we're gonna look for fat render and we're gonna look to see if anything is burning now i have been watching this thing like an absolute hawk making sure that there are no temperature spikes i've been adding lump charcoal as it's needed i've been adding chunks of wood as needed which means i go take you know a big log of wood i cut it into small splits and then i chop those splits in half and use those to flavor the meat so i don't know what i'm gonna see but i'm hoping for good things so let's find out all right so first impressions uh i am very impressed i'm actually extremely happy with how this thing looks i can't taste the smoke flavor i know it's not going to be as clean as if i've been you know cooking this thing in my brazos or in my 500 gallon offset or the thousand gallon offset that i'm building but it looks great we have deep red color the fat's starting to render you can start to see pooling fat on the top all those are amazingly good signs i think this is so far a complete success now i could blow it i could totally ruin this thing but it's been a long time since i cooked on a cheap flimsy smoker like this so i hope that the principles that i've learned from doing lots and lots and lots of barbecue like thousands and thousands of hours are going to hold true for me here and so far it's looking really good at this point i'm going to start spraying so on this front end things are starting to get a little dry so i'm going to spray that try to soften that up a little bit but overall i am thrilled with how this thing looks one other thing that i've noticed is that there is no grease drain in this hunk of junk so right now all the grease that's coming off of this brisket is now pooling in the bottom of the cook chamber so it's making its way over toward the firebox if it gets really two inches closer or so i'm gonna have to find some way to deal with that i don't want a grease fire to ruin this brisket because the whole point of this thing is that i want to be able to show people how to cook a brisket and what they probably have in their backyards alright one more thing that i've noticed is that in the nascent beginnings of the very first cook ever on the smoker all the paint on the firebox is bubbling and starting to peel off which doesn't bode well for its future because this metal is so thin that if you remove the paint kind of coating to shield it from the elements it's going to rust through like that all right so checking in on this brisket we've had this thing on here for about seven and a half hours so if you take a look at it right now we have really good color nothing's burning everything is looking spot on i couldn't really be any happy with how this is turning out even though it has been a chore to try to get this fire to burn clean as you can see right now there's not tons of smoke billowing out that's because i'm trying to make the fire as efficient as possible small pieces of wood that i'm adding occasionally i'll add some long charcoal just to make sure that the heat keeps going but overall this is looking great and pretty soon it's going to be time to wrap it we're probably going to be looking at a final temperature of about 203 degrees but that can vary some you know plus or minus 5 degrees just depending on how long it's cooked the type of brisket you're cooking but we're going to check by taking the probe putting it in and if the probe is telling me that it's in the right temperature range and it feels like softened butter then i know i'm done so there's going to be a straightforward cook like that but the keys that i've been focusing on are clean fire management i have videos on that i'll put those in the description and just making sure that the temperature doesn't fluctuate too much doesn't go too high it doesn't go too low trying to be as consistent as possible but what that requires is me being very diligent about checking what's in the firebox you know laying individual pieces of wood in there just so so they'll catch well and they'll burn cleanly it's a lot of effort but so far the results couldn't be much better all right it's been about eight hours now and so i'm gonna check in on this brisket see if it's ready to wrap and to me that dark color tells me it's time to wrap it's got plenty of smoke flavor on it and so it's ready to go now i've wrapped i don't know how many briskets on camera so you don't need to see that two layers of 18 inch butcher paper roll it up seal it tight put it back on the cooker let it finish so nothing is burning here no this is just bark that's not burnt that's bark all that's good also if you want to you can check the temperature i have my thermapen here and these things are amazing because they're waterproof anyway so let's see where are we 172. that also tells me we're in about the right place and then also new feature hey buddy hey buddy you want some of this brisket i know you do nope nope not for you not for dogs only for people this is just people food i'll give you some scraps i'll make you that deal all right but with this new thermapen i have the infrared probe so i can get the surface temperature of the brisket and that is about 204 so what that tells me is we're rendering fat well and the brisket is at the internal temperature where i want to wrap because if i wait too long it'll dry out i'll you know lose too much of that fat in the cooking process if i wrap too early the wrap will get soupy and it'll wash away the bark that i've worked so hard to create now the quality of this bark isn't going to be as good as if i were burning in all wood fire but this can still be really good it looks really good smells really good i think it's still going to be top notch but we're not going to know until the end of the process so i'm going to wrap this guy up finish it off i'll pull it off when it reaches about 203 and then i'm going to take it inside and we're going to unwrap it and look at it together and see how the results turned out all right just to demonstrate if you have the probe out you'll get the probe reading if you close the probe then hit this button like such it'll tell you the temperature thing apparently my hand is 92 degrees there are a few hobbies that i have a few things that i really love and any kind of gadget that relates that i love so to me this is amazing if you're interested in this i'll put a link in the description yes it is an affiliate link but i spent my own money on this thing because i wanted it and i don't ever you know promote anything i don't actually believe in so this is something i really like and if you can spend five dollars more than just a regular thermapen to get this infrared thermometer along with it i would all right we wrapped it up we finished it off got it to the internal temperature and the internal doneness feeling that we wanted and we pulled it out and now we're sitting on the cutting board just kind of resting here i'm really impressed with the color that it has it looks really good it looks really juicy and i mean i didn't expect it to turn out this well so i expected it to be a mediocre brisket but this one really looks pretty darn good now it's not as dark as a brisket that i would cook on my offset smokers that i use normally where i burn in all wood fire but that's to be expected but it looks really nice really dark red some places nearly black and really juicy so i'm excited to cut this thing open check out the moisture on the inside and give it a taste test because ultimately taste is going to be the determination for how well you cook this brisket [Music] so when i look at this part of the point right here i see a couple things that look really good number one it looks very moist it's kind of glistening with that number two is i see a big thick smoke ring and to be quite honest with you this is a bigger smoke ring than i usually get on my big offset so it's kind of interesting to me i don't know the exact explanation as to why but it's interesting it should have some good smoke flavor on there now i'm going to do a taste test of the point and of the flat so i'm going to get an end cut here from the flat tell me that's not juicy looks pretty darn good all right i have to admit i am shocked completely shocked this is hands down better than any barbecue restaurant i've eaten at that's not in central texas um it's not even close it's not like a 1a and 1b type of thing it's this thing is head and shoulders above anything i've had at a barbecue restaurant that doesn't use enough that smoker there's no comparison at all i am blown away it's moist it's tender it's smoky it's clean smoke quite frankly if i had this brisket at a legit og barbecue place i'd be like oh yeah it tastes pretty darn good i mean this is 90 no like 97 percent as good as the briskets i can make on that big offset now it doesn't have the richness of flavor that you get but i mean my goodness it's close all right last thing i want to taste is one of these burnt ends so this being my brisket i'll just carve out a chunk right here and uh we'll see how it goes looks good it's plenty juicy looks like it's got good bark on the exterior everything you want in a piece of brisket so i'm gonna take a bite of this guy and see how it goes that is unbelievable i have to be honest i'm kind of at a loss for words i can't believe how good this turned out so my expectation was this would be absolute trash and i could say that's why you don't buy garbage smokers i did everything i could to make this the best possible brisket you know i can make on that thing and i am blown away at how good this is now there's still difference between you know what i make on that thing what i make on the brazos versus what i make on my 500 gallon offset but that difference is small that's unbelievable to me so i guess we've reached an answer to the question you can make great brisket on a cheap offset smoker now to be honest at the start of this i didn't think you could but i've just proved it to myself and i was kind of wondering if if you really know the principles of barbecue if you can apply those to kind of cheap equipment and it starts to make sense to me because when i was in school i played trombone and i was at one point trying to upgrade from a beginner instrument to you know a professional level instrument so something that's made a lot better than the you know piece of junk that i was using and so i remember my band director told me like jeremy you know if you're a great trombonist you can make a tin can sound good and it didn't really sink in at the time but what he was trying to say is that if you know all the principles you're doing everything right it's not the equipment that makes the barbecue great it's the pit master in this case so it's the pit master who makes the barbecue great it's not the equipment now equipment can definitely help so there are no people in professional orchestras who are using beginner instruments so equipment does matter but what's more important than the equipment is the skills of the pit master who's doing the cooking because i could take a you know stradivarius violin and try to play it it would be absolute trash so it's not the equipment that makes the barbecue it's the skills that you use and you can be aided in that process by the equipment so if you can afford it get great equipment if you can't don't lose heart you can still make amazing barbecue even with cheap stuff so in summation i learned something i hope you guys learned something if you did and you liked this video hit the like button down below hit subscribe and hit the notification bell so you get notified every time you put out new videos you can also follow me on instagram and twitter at mad scientist barbecue i'll see you guys next time

Channel: Mad Scientist BBQ

Views: 927,916

Rating: 4.8787537 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: jKV7n5RcL4k

Length: 17min 26sec (1046 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/kirkt]

Gotta say, I am impressed that he admitted he was wrong with his preconceived theory. I expected this to be "you can't make good products with poor tools" and it turned out to be the opposite. I'll check out more of his stuff.

One note: I've been doing a lot of business travel to "central Texas" and good barbeque is the exception, not the norm. Dry, overdone meat that requires sauce to taste good is what I've found. The Carolinas are my go-to for BBQ done right.

[u/antsugi]

Jesus, an in video ad right at the beginning