(yelling) - Hey, hey, hey, what'd you
say, my fellow Weekend Warriors? Today we're smoking up this
three pound brisket flat. You can do this in any kind of smoker, it just so happens that today I'm using my vertical pellet smoker. The only thing we really
need to worry about is the temperature. So no matter what you're cooking on, we're trying to keep this around 250 degrees Fahrenheit today, and if I open this door real quick, I'll show you what's going on. I like to cook right about the
center rack in my vertical. If you've got an offset
you might have a preference to put it on one side or the other. And I am using a water pan. The manufacturer of this
smoker requires water to be in that pan for the most part. So that's how I've got it set up. And I'm also using a blend of pellets. It's a charcoal and Applewood blend. So I'm gonna get this door closed. And hey, if you're new
here, my name's Mike, I'm all about cooking outside. I love firing up the
smoker on the weekends. Very relaxing for me. I love to smell that smoke,
cook up some simple recipes, and if you're into that
hit that subscribe button and let's get started
on this brisket flat. And the nice thing about these flats, especially the way
they've prepared this one, it looks like they've taken a
whole flat and cut it in half. So it's not gonna take as long as usual. The downside to this packaging, you never know what you're gonna get until you're get it out. But a lot of times there's not a whole lot you have to do to the flats. This is a thicker one,
so this probably came towards the end, near the point. Nice fat layer here. I'm going to take a
little bit of that off, but not much. And a little bit of the silver skin. So to do that, just get
a really sharp knife, you can get started anywhere. And I'll just cut a little bit out here, just like that. We'll get this kind of
gross fat right here. And that silver skin. Same thing right here, I'll
just poke my knife through. Cut that off. The key here is to leave
as much meat as possible, but at the same time, get it cleaned up, so you don't have any gross
stuff sitting on there. All right, so that top
side's looking pretty good. Let's take a look over here. I wanna leave a good layer of fat. The heat source in my smoker
is coming from underneath, and so the way I like to smoke, I put the fat facing the heat source. It acts as a guard or an insulator, helps keep the brisket nice and moist. All right so that's looking pretty good. I'm just going with one rub today. This is Captain Rodney's salt, garlic, spices, onion, red pepper. Good stuff. This is all I'm gonna put on it. I like this because it's a coarse grind. So we're gonna have a good
texture on our smoked brisket. Go ahead and make sure
I get the sides as well. Big piece of meat like brisket can handle a lot more rub than say a pork butt or something like that. So don't be afraid to go liberal on it. Pat it in. We don't wanna lose any. And then I'll try and sop
up what's on the board just by rolling it around. Alright, that's looking pretty good. So at this point, I'm ready to put this right into the smoker. If you wanted to you
could let this sit out for about a half hour, but I don't think it
really needs it today. So, we're gonna go ahead and put this guy right into the smoker. And we'll get this door open. Let some smoke out. Woo. There we go. I'm just gonna go right
in the center of the rack, fat side down with this door closed. And hey, maybe your whole life
you've done it fat cap up. If that's the way you like to do it, then by all means do it that way. I just kind of feel like
if it works either way, it works either way. So for me, fat cap down when
the heat source is underneath. If this was a reverse flow smoker, where the heat's coming down from the top, I would have my fat cap facing up. Just always towards the heat source. And then the other thing that I do, I don't normally cook to temperature. I cook to color. So when it has a nice
color and bark that I want, if I wanna wrap it,
that's when I'll wrap it. And then it's not done
until it's probe tender, meaning that probe goes in like butter. It's not a certain temperature
that I'm looking for. And that's kind of how I cook briskets, and you'll see how that works today. So we're gonna let this go for at least probably two hours before I look at it and then we'll come out
and see how it looks. I can't wait to show you. And it's been exactly two hours. Let's get this door open,
see how it's looking. Alright, pull this out
so we can see better. It's taken out some real nice
color, nice mahogany color. The rub is pretty much stuck
to the meat, which is good. Bottom side, we're getting
some nice rendering of the fat. That's all looking real nice. Look at that nice red color. That's going to be our smoke ring color. So I think what we're gonna do is let this go for another hour. I'm not gonna spritz it or anything today. We're just gonna keep it simple. And I know some of you will be curious, what is the temperature after two hours? So I'll just check right here. We're at about 150 right in the center. But as I said, we don't
care about temperature, just the color of the
bark and how tender it is. So close this door, come back
in an hour and wrap it up. Time is just flying by. Hour number three and I'm
ready to get this wrapped up, and I'll show you why. Take a look at that guy. The color is perfect for me. I don't want it to get
any darker than that. That looks pretty good. The bottom fat is rendered real nice. It's almost all gone. And so what I'm gonna do
now is get this outta here and wrap it up in some
butcher paper real quick. And a couple notes on wrapping. If you don't have butcher
paper, you can use tinfoil. The big difference is tinfoil
is gonna trap way more steam and it'll soften up that bark. It's not gonna ruin your brisket at all, it's just gonna soften up the bark. You might lose a little bit of it. And I'm wrapping it for two reasons. Reason number one, I
don't want it to take on any more smoke or get darker than it is. And reason number two,
we're gonna speed up the cooking process just a little bit. We're gonna push it through the stall. What happens in the stall is
the meat really starts to sweat and it cools itself down naturally, it's called evaporative cooling. And by wrapping this up real tight, we're gonna reduce the amount
of evaporative cooling, which will push it through
that stall period quicker. But once this gets wrapped, all we care about is putting
that probe in and it's got to feel tender fork tender, like
going into butter everywhere. That's how you know it's done. So enough talk, let's wrap this up. You just wanna be mindful
of where the top is. So I keep the top on the
top at the end of the roll. So I'll just fold over, just like this. Here's our bottom. And then I'm going to make
a little package here. Just fold that over, fold that over, and just roll it up real tight. So here's my top, back on top. If I roll it over one more time, the paper's gonna be flapping in the wind. So what I'll do, you can either cut it off or just fold it under. So we've got a nice tight
wrapped smoked brisket, ready to go back in the smoker. I'm gonna put it back in
at 250 degrees Fahrenheit, but if you wanted to turn the heat up, just to speed it up a little bit, there's nothing wrong with that. You could turn it up to 275 or 300. I'm just keeping it at 250. We're gonna put it in, like I
said, until it's probe tender. That's when we'll come back and
show you what it looks like, and then it's gonna
rest for about an hour. We'll cut into it. It's going to be awesome. All right, Weekend Warriors. It's been another three and a half hours. So we're talking six
and a half hours total. That's about par for the course. I usually think two hours
per pound is a good estimate. So we started off with a three pounder and it's taken six and a half hours. I've already poke some holes. It's pretty tender. Show you the temperature
just as a reference. 205. There's a little bit
of pull left on there. But by the time this rests,
it's going to soften up. That just goes through
like there's nothing there. So there's some parts that
are still a little tough, but this is up to 207. And we're just gonna
shut off the smoker now. And I'm gonna let this rest
in the foil for one hour, right in the smoker. I'm not gonnao put it in
the dry cooler or anything. Just let it sit in there
with the door closed and then we'll cut it
up and see how it looks. And the brisket has rested as
long as I'm gonna let it rest, about 45 minutes. If you can go longer, go longer. I gotta dig into this,
it smells so darn good. Let's open it up and see how it looks. All right, let's unwrap it. Man, that thing is juicy. Look at all that juice. All right, so there's
our bottom, fat cap side. Here's the top. Get this out of the way. Wow. I'd say that looks really, really good. Beautiful mahogany color. Nice bark on here. Nice soft bark. That paper really does a good job. So I'm gonna cut across the grain. Let's cut a few slices
and see how it looks. Yes, sir. That's what I'm talking about. Man, the smell is fantastic. Beautiful smoke ring, which
I'm sure you can already see, and this is what they call
the lean, the flat side. It's not the fatty point side. So it will be a little
bit dryer than the point, but it should still be nice and tender. Just by the way I'm cutting
it, I can tell that it is. So let me get the rest of this cut up. And there's our smoked
brisket all nice and cut up. Grab a piece out of the center here. It's got some fat in it. Take a look at the color, the juice, the smoke ring, the bark. Beautiful piece of brisket
that I can't wait to try. Pulls apart. It's got a little tug to it, but then it gives way,
not a whole lot of effort. So here we go. I'm gonna eat this little
fatty piece right here. Let's give it a shot. Here we go. Oh, yeah, that is so good. Real nice pleasant smoke. Not overpowering. I think if I were to change anything, I would add a little bit more pepper, just some black pepper,
but it tastes really good, it's juicy, you guys saw the results. Hey, if you like what
we're doing over here, hit that subscribe button right there. And definitely check out one
of my other brisket videos right here. Like if you wanna see
just the brisket point, that's right here, or an entire
brisket, that's right there. And I'll see you over there. Ooh yeah. Look at that bark on that one. That's mine.
