Smoked Barbecue Brisket with Burnt Ends

hey everybody I'm chef tom with ATB BQ comm and this is smoked barbecue brisket so there are a lot of different ways to cook a brisket and none of them are right or wrong there's different techniques there's different styles in different regions what we're gonna do today is just a backyard brisket this is how I would cook brisket at home for my friends and my family we're not gonna over complicate it we're not gonna over season it because we're not cooking for the judges we're cooking for us all right so this is a whole Packer brisket this brisket is a prime brisket came from Creek stone farms down here we have the flat muscle which is where our slices come out of and up here sitting on top kind of wraps around we have our point muscle and this is where our burnt ends come from now we're gonna be cooking this thing whole today and we're gonna do a little bit of trimming to get started I'm just gonna start up here on the point and work my way down to the flat we are gonna cook this whole we're not going to separate it now we are going to separate it eventually the reason that we're not going to do it at the beginning is just because the separating can be a little bit intimidating if you've not done a lot of that before so we're gonna wait until this is cooked down a bit and the fat layer that's in between these two muscles starts to render because it's actually a lot easier to separate these after about five hours of smoking but why separate these things at all I mean can't you just cook it whole we definitely could just cook it whole but these two muscles have very different fat content the point has lots of intramuscular fat that takes a little bit longer to break down however it's shaped a little bit differently it ends up being thinner than the flat so if we take them apart we can actually cook them in about the same time and most importantly once we get these things separated we can finish them at their own pace and we can turn that point into burn ends because I can't cook brisket for you guys and not give you burnt ends so like I said the point has lots of intramuscular fat and that is the fat that's really going to make the cut moist and juicy on the inside so we don't need this fat cap it's not going to do anything for us to keep it on here except that it would keep us from getting rub to really attach to the meat and season me so you'll just never quite get the same crust by putting rub on fat as you will by putting rub on meat now the technique you want to use so that you're not taking too much meat away with the fat if you need to get your hand under here you can to kind of lift that up you cut yourself a tab hold on to that tab and then start taking that fat away with your knife pointed even or even a little bit upward that way you're not digging into the meat too much now you can see how gray this meat is over here I'm gonna go ahead and take that little layer off the outside get rid of that gray meat the other thing this does is it really exposes where these muscles come together so check that out right here we've got our flat and right here we've got our point and there's that fat layer that runs right in between the two where you separate eventually now when we get down here to the point as we're doing our trimming you can see we've got a good Oh half-inch plus of fat on top I'm going to take some of that down but we are gonna leave some of it behind I just really enjoy that texture when you bite into a slice of brisket and it's got that little quarter inch of fat on top so here we have the fat layer on the opposite side and this is where the point is coming to meet the flat and it kind of curves around so it's got this long kind of thin skirt right here we're gonna do the same thing and just take this down to about a quarter of an inch and then we're gonna get into this wedge right here there's a kind of a wedge of fat that sits between the two muscles I'm going to trim that out just a little bit just to help that rendering process go quicker now this wedge of fat actually isn't too huge I've seen much bigger on briskets but we'll get in there just a little bit think we want to be careful of as we make sure we're always cutting into white once we get into red or pink we need to readjust where we're doing our trimming all right so that's pretty smooth and aerodynamic there for the smoke to flow right over so this looks pretty good on the top now we're going to flip it over see what work we have to do on the opposite side here we have a massive hunk of fat that we really don't need there so I'm going to trim away at that this is just really hard fat that would never render down at least not in the time it takes for us to smoke this brisket so now we get a good look at both muscles from the opposite side here we have the flat and this is the fat and then this muscle over here is the point we've got that big old wedge trimmed out look at that thing just sit in there all fat now at this point I'm just going to clean up the bottom get rid of any excess fat I'm not gonna go crazy on it because again we're not trying to impress any judges alright so we got this thing all trimmed up we got the fat taken off of the point here we got our quarter inch of fat left on the flat we're ready to inject and season now injecting is not a necessity if you want to skip this part you can but it's really a good opportunity to add a little bit extra moisture and flavor so we're starting off with a cup and a half of beef stock it's unsalted we're gonna add a tablespoon of Worcestershire for the Tang and then another tablespoon of hot sauce this is a smoky red chili hot sauce the flavor okay no great flavor great heat it's not gonna burn anyone to taste buds out it's just the right amount so just shake that up and I'm gonna pour off about a half cup to add to the wrap later on now being that the point muscle has so much fat running through it I'm not going to inject that muscle I'm just going to be injecting the leaner flat muscle the way I'm going to work at this is come in across the grain and make a little pocket add a pump or two of injection until it starts to come back out and then we're going to work in a grid formation here just to make sure that we get all of it covered I love how you can just see the meat inflates with that liquid inside it feels like confirmation that you're really adding something to it all right so we've got this thing pumped full of our injection about 3/4 cup is what we got in there and you can see not much more than maybe a tablespoon or so came back out if that all right weapons of choice today we're running with Cattlemen's grill California tri-tip nice savory flavors garlic bell pepper onion salt and then we've got the Plowboys bovine Bowl this is one of my favorite barbecue style rubs for beef it's got a little bit of sweetness that the Cattlemen's doesn't have which is great for a barbecue rub it's also got a little bit of red color which I like on the outside of the brisket so we're gonna go with our finer rub first this is our base layer big piece of meat you're probably not going to over season it and we're getting all surfaces here now let's just give this a minute to kind of tack up to make sure that our coarser rub was also going to stick all right so once that looks wet we'll go ahead with our next rub the Cattleman's California tri-tip and you'll notice how much more coarse this is I love this texture especially for a big piece of meat like this it's gonna make a difference when it comes to forming the bark it really gives it another dimension all right same thing here with the more coarse rub we're gonna let that soak up this has been a couple of minutes now it's attached pretty well so we can flip this over now don't worry about flipping it over that injections not going to come back out those holes it's really worked its way into the fibers of the meat now that opposite side had the moisture of the injection on it this side doesn't have that yet so we're gonna add a little bit of that injection here this is our binder nothing crazy you could use oil you could use mustard but we already have this injection here it's just going to wet the surface enough so that the rub will stick to the meat now again we're starting with our barbecue rub bovine Bowl it's our base layer it's gonna give us a nice bit of red touch a sweet not too much though I'll let that set up before we get our tri-tip rub on there and again we're bringing in the savory world to mix with the barbecue world this is a great combination for beef alright I'll give it a few minutes and we'll head over to the smoker today we're cooking on the odor smokers ys6 40 pellet grill it's set to 250 degrees and we're burnin cherry and pecan pellets we're gonna go right here on the second shelf I'm putting a point over here by the stack the smoke should move right over this and as it moves a little faster it's gonna cook just a touch hotter at this end which is fine because we got two muscles sitting on top of each other all right now a fat side up fat side down a lot of people have a lot of strong opinions on it I'm not one of them I don't think it matters a great deal which way you go I can tell you that if you put the fat side up it doesn't do anything to add extra moisture inside the meat it just drips around it if you put it down however it might give you a little bit of a thermal barrier say if you were on the bottom shelf where you've got some radiant heat coming off of that plate so in my experience there's not a drastic difference I say you do you you cook it the way you want to cook it after all it's just cooking at this point we're just gonna let it ride 250 degrees we're looking to get a nice bark on the outside my estimation is we're looking at about five hours before we do anything we're about five and a half hours into this cook now and I've been checking on the color for the last 30 45 minutes I want to show you where we're at so you can see what we're looking for we've got a really nice crust form this is a beautiful bark it's getting to a dark red mahogany color so this is what we're looking for when we want to pull this thing off got some really great moisture pockets here as well as that fat begins to break down what I want to do next is separate the two muscles so that we can finish them individually one like we talked about earlier this will allow us to cook these to their proper doneness without overcooking one or undercooking another another thing it does is it really allows us to turn these burnings to something special next I'm going to be separating these two muscles the point in the flat so that we can finish them in separate foil wraps that way we can make sure that we don't overcook one and undercook another now I think the easiest way to get in here and do this is we know where this point meat came around and sat on top of the flat so I'm gonna start right here and you can see all this stringy stuff that's the stuff that's holding it together that's the fat in between the two muscles so now that this is rendered a little bit it's really easy to kind of pull these two apart I'm gonna let gravity do most of the work here I mean these two almost want to pull apart just the way it is which makes it really easy to figure out where to make your cuts there we go so just to clean this up a little bit I'm gonna take off some of that hard fat that doesn't render as well same thing right over here all right so we'll start by putting this point here on the foil and look at all this goodness that's left on the table we don't want to leave that behind that's really flavorful stuff so we'll leave some of that for the flat as well and remember that half cup of the injection that we saved back we're gonna put a quarter cup in each wrap little beef stock worchestershire hot sauce tons of flavor to go into that brisket now do yourself a favor and use two sheets of foil that way if one gets punctured you don't lose all your juices and you want to wrap this up just as tight as possible the tighter we wrap the less room there is for steam the more bark we retain in the end same thing now with the flat gather up your goodness and that last quarter cup of the injection liquid again super tight wrap now if you're wondering why are we wrapping these at all well what this does is it keeps all of the moisture inside the meet or at least inside the packet so that the meat can soak that moisture back up in the end now the other really important thing that wrapping does is it expedites the cooking process which means you're not waiting quite so long to eat brisket all right so our briskets going back on the smoker at 300 degrees now because again I don't want to be waiting forever to eat this brisket we're gonna cook just a little bit hotter we're seven and a half hours into this cook which is a pretty nice time line to be where we're at because I think we're getting really close to finishing out our burnt ends and for our slices to get nice and tender all right here we have our point meat let's open this guy up Wow smells fantastic we're gonna do a little probe test that's feeling pretty buttery especially down here in the thinner parts if we're looking at a temperature and we don't have to but we can to 11 to 10 so right in that range this guy's ready to come off and get cubed up tossed in sauce but while we're at it I'm going to check on the flat as well see how the tenderness is we've still got a little resistance down here it's gonna need a little bit more time you really don't want much resistance at all when you're probing if we're gonna check a temperature let's see 210 so chances are we're not far off at all because that's pretty much a done temperature I'm just going to look for a little bit more breakdown in the collagen let's check on it for maybe 10 or 15 minutes all right so I'm going to take this foil move it over here to this sheet pan we'll finish out the Vernon's on the pan here I'm gonna leave all that juice in there though cuz there's tons of flavor and that stuff now we'll come back to our point and we're going to look at this and try and figure out the muscle fibers seem to be running this way I'm going to go against those we're gonna cut some cubes out of this so first into strips then into cubes and that's just cutting like butter right now there's one of those cubes look at all that juice we've got going on in there beautiful all right let's get some sauce on these I'm gonna toss these back through their juices and you're gonna choose your favorite brisket sauce as you know I'm a big fan of the Firebug grilling sauce which is what we're gonna use today all right so not too much just enough to add that barbecue sauce flavor a little bit of sweetness I'm gonna add a little extra sweetness with the honey here which does some nice things for carmelization and then we'll just give it all a toss here and this is gonna go back on to the smoker nicely coated spread it out so the grills still riding at about 300 degrees these just need a little bit of time for the sauce to tack up so we're putting them back onto the grill the flats gonna be coming off and resting and it won't be long before eating brisket so let's just go ahead and open this up just to make sure we're at the spot we're ready to take this off oh yeah a lot less resistance we're getting there I think this guy's about ready to come off we're looking at internal temperatures climbing up to that 210 mark [Music] burnings are gonna work away that sauce is going to attack up we'll be back to check on those in about 15 minutes guys these burnings are looking beautiful it's time to pull them off check that out just perfect color that sauce is tacked up and I bet you these are super tender look at that just perfectly glazed let's check on the tenderness here yeah just a little bit of tug to it but comes right apart mmm spot-on sweet and savory or balanced really well just incredibly tender and smoky it's exactly how I want my burnt ends all right briskets been resting for a while now about half an hour I'm gonna pull this out slice into it we're gonna be slicing across the grain so if you look at this start to pull it apart you can see that the muscle fibers are running this way which means our knife is going this way nice there's some good juice going on in there a little pink smoke ring going on on the outside I'm gonna get in here with some these are pencil thick slices in just slicing like butter let's check the hang on these I think that's just about right very little resistance as we pull on that comes right apart perfect just melts in your mouth such fantastic flavor great smokiness and I love that little bit of fat cap right there on the top it's just such a nice difference between the meat and the fat the textures are great now that is a brisket platter and you'll notice no sauce on the slices you don't need it if you want to go ahead I mean do what's in your heart check out the angle of the dangle it's just right got it thanks so much for watching guys be sure to check out a tbq comm for all the products featured in today's video if you enjoyed the video please hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments so there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comments section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to the sauce 80 BB q comm all things BBQ where barbecue legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 1,826,224

Rating: 4.843369 out of 5

Keywords: smoked barbecue brisket with burnt ends, smoked brisket, brisket recipe, brisket, barbecue brisket, burnt ends, how to cook brisket, how to make burnt ends, how to make brisket, perfect brisket, brisket smoking, brisket recipes, brisket burnt ends, beef brisket, cooking, food, recipe, grilling, smoking, barbecue, atbbq.com, atbbq, chef tom, the sauce, yoder smokers, ys640, pellet grill

Id: a8yfN-YQ6qw

Length: 22min 21sec (1341 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 31 2018