How To Make The Perfect Texas Brisket On An Offset Smoker

hey everybody i'm chef tom with atbbq.com and this is texas style brisket now there are a lot of ways to cook a brisket and i have and will try just about any of them but arguably one of the best ways to cook a brisket is in the style of the texans now i'm a sucker for big savory beefy flavors so when we start to talk about a brisket flavor profile that consists of little more than salt pepper smoke and beef i'm all in now the beauty of the texas style brisket lies in its simplicity and the opportunity that that affords you to cook these briskets for years to come constantly growing and improving upon your techniques so the first thing we're going to do today is fire up the pit and we got up early this morning so i'm going to throw you back to about 5 a.m before the sun was even up when we lit the fire in the smoker today we're cooking on the yoder smokers loaded wichita offset smoker so we're going to get started with a chimney full of lump charcoal and this is going to really be our heat base this is our coal bed that we can start to roll sticks of oak wood on top of for the smoke so we'll just get some fire starters lit up down here and place our chimney full of lump charcoal using the kamado joe big block today right on top all right charcoal is hot to the top of the chimney so we're going to dump this in the back half of our firebox and we're kind of going to keep this fire isolated to the back half of our firebox so we can burn a really hot intense fire but a small fire so that we don't get our temperature out of control we'll start with a couple of splits of oak wood on our charcoal i'm gonna put one right here in front where it's going to warm up that way as soon as we roll this over here in a little bit instant combustion no acrid smoke all right guys our pits come up to 250 degrees and kind of stabilize there so we're gonna go ahead and get our brisket on at this point we're going to start this one kind of on the left side here we've got a second one going on later but we are going to go point in toward the fire generally speaking just because that's a little bit larger mass of meat than the flat end got a pretty good base going here don't really need any wood yet but once this starts to burn down we're just going to roll over a stick wood look how instantly that ignites because it's been hanging out in there getting hot once we're ready to roll this over it's going to be ready to combust for sure but we're just going to do our best to kind of predict the future so that we can keep our temperature right around 250 degrees we'll roll this over as these burn down so our early brisket's been on for just a little over an hour now we've touched on fire management just a little bit before this video is over i'm going to walk you through the trimming process seasoning smoking wrapping and slicing your texas style brisket so at this point what we want to do is go ahead and trim out our brisket let me preface this by saying that no matter how traditional a style of cooking you're doing there's always going to be folks with different techniques and different methods and it's a great thing so while i'm going to show you how i trim out a brisket for texas-style brisket today my expectation is that you'll take something away from that and go on to educate and experiment and find what works best for you now before we even slice into this thing i want to talk a little bit about meat selection what we're working with here is a creekstone farms prime grade black angus whole brisket and this is my go-to brisket but whatever you end up with i highly recommend reaching for that prime grade now prime grade only makes up about two percent of all beef production so that's why it's a little bit pricier but the way they determine that prime grade is off of the intramuscular fat the marbling all of that good stuff the tenderness it's going to lead you to a juicier slice of brisket in the end and that's what we want now below that you've got choice grade and i've cooked plenty of great briskets that were choice grade but choice makes up about 50 percent of all beef production which is pretty wide window and that means it can be pretty hit or miss below that you've got select and then some other stuff that we're not even going to talk about because it's not worth considering when it gets to that low of a grade that means there's not much fat in there which means it's probably going to dry out on you just stay away from it so the other thing to consider with your brisket is putting a little age on it when i say age i don't mean dry aging i mean wet aging this is the aging that happens inside a sealed cryovac under refrigeration now this brisket's been wet aging for about 30 days i find that 30 to 40 days is pretty ideal and what it gets you is a nice tender brisket you see the way this thing is moving now a month ago it was stiff as a board but the enzymes that are already inside here they've started to break down and tenderize the meat which gives you a head start on a tender piece of brisket so let's get acquainted with our whole brisket here we have the fat side up right now which means the point muscle is sitting on top the flat muscle or the lean is sitting underneath so that's your lean and that's your fatty and there's a layer of fat that separates the two of them this meat side here you're going to see this big old hunk of fat it's part of that decal that runs through the middle of the brisket we definitely are going to take this out of here because that big old thick piece of fat just cannot render down during this whole cook so there's kind of a seam here it naturally wants to come apart a little bit you just got to help it along with your knife to peel that out of there and then go ahead and make a cut to remove it but as you'll see all fat no need to keep that attached it's just not going to be able to render down in time so save it for sausage making so that's an easy place to start but one of the first things that i like to do is just take off the gray edge of the brisket here this is also going to give me a good look i'm not going to take off a lot we certainly don't want to waste it but this gives me a good look at the profile of the brisket and you can see here now how that lean meat sits on the bottom and this is the beginning of that fatty point that we get the burnt ends out of that sits on top and that's helpful because it can help you determine just how much fat to trim off of here so we get a good profile that way i'm going to do the same thing right over here the other thing you've got to consider is how this kind of sticks up this area of the point that has become known as the mohawk and it sticks up because of this wedge of fat that's right here in between these two muscles that's something we want to dig out as well now this edge of that point meat it's just going to turn into crusty bits so we're going to make this a little more aerodynamic by taking that down just a little bit and then we're going to work our way into this fat kind of add an angle gonna come down and then before you get to that flat meat down here we'll angle back out and pull that off again kind of naturally wants to come off of there that's all fat and again does not render down super well during the cook so if you want to get some nice bark in this area and actually have some thinner rendered fat it's a good idea to go ahead and take it off and then shape this up accordingly so from here we're going to trim down the fat cap a bit with the goal of getting about a quarter inch of fat especially over our lean meat here um you know historically i've been kind of go either way on the fat on top of the point meat the point meat's got so much intramuscular fat that it really doesn't need any fat on top of it that's not going to help moisturize that meat it's going to be plenty juicy on its own but this simple i don't know presence of fat on the outside of a slice is really pleasant to me when you bite into it so i'm going to leave a thin layer of fat over the point meat as well and certainly every brisket is different you'll get more comfortable with this process the more you do this but even after trimming hundreds or thousands of them you're going to find yourself scalping into that meat just a little bit no big deal you can't do anything about it just go ahead and move on it gives you a good idea of where that meat is down there anyway but anywhere you feel a little bit harder fat like back here on this corner i'm going to go ahead and take that off so this is what i was talking about with that side profile you can kind of see just how much fat sitting on top so i know that we can take off just a little bit more shave a little bit down right here try and keep that pretty even and again in the end we're going to shape this up to make it just a little bit more aerodynamic so nothing's sticking out and getting burnt during the process to be honest you can do as much or as little of this type of trimming as you like if you want to keep it simple you certainly can just open this thing up and cut off the hard fat and get to it but another thing that i find to be really helpful is this hunk of wedge of fat that's in between this point and flat when that point comes down there's a big wedge of it right here at the edge we're going to go ahead and take that off as well and then just kind of level this out again smooth lines aerodynamic nothing sticking out to get burnt all right so i feel good about the top of the brisket now but one thing to consider here is we look back at the back side of this brisket where the point sits that's a lot of thick meat we work down to this front edge of the flat that's super thin i mean that's just gonna burn up turn crunchy it's not going to end up being a very good piece or slice of brisket so we're just going to go ahead trim that corner off where it's a little bit too thin and to kind of even everything out keep things aerodynamic we'll just take a little bit off this corner as well and then you know shape these edges again do as much or as little of this as you like as far as a home cook goes you know it's not like you're presenting this to a judge we're just trying to get the best possible results so we've got that big wedge of fat out right off the bat here on the meat side the opposite side the bottom side what i would call the bottom side of our brisket we're just going to make sure again kind of making this a little bit aerodynamic so that none of this stuff's going to burn up during the cook round that out a little bit nice and smooth over here we've got some of that big hard fat left we'll shape that just a little bit as well don't want any little like stringy bits hanging off so once you feel good about the shape we're going to move on to taking this fat off of the surface now this is again for appearance sake you can take off this silver skin which doesn't do a great job of rendering down or again stop messing around with your knife and just move on to seasoning i'm not good at that part i like to tinker so when you're happy with the trim you can move on to the seasoning texas style brisket typically means little to nothing more than salt and pepper today we're using the brisket rub that i designed for cattleman's grill called lone star brisket rub and i can tell you since i developed this myself that it's primarily salt and pepper equal parts by weight which comes out closer to about two parts pepper to one part salt if you're doing it by volume and then i went a little bit above and beyond added some roasted garlic and celery seed but for the most part what you're going to get is that pretty dalmatian color across your brisket from the salt and pepper so i'm going to add just a little bit of binder in the form of beef tallow today we're going to be using tallow later in the wrap as well so might as well get a little head start here that thin layer is gonna help our rub stick just a little bit so big old piece of meat here i'm going to make sure that it's generously seasoned so nice coarse uh bits of kosher salt and black pepper in here and then you can see a little bit of that garlic this is really going to help with the development of the bark go ahead and hit the bottom side now flip it back over and touch up the top before we get this onto the smoker all right so let's just press that in to help it start to adhere to the meat all right pretty up this presentation side we'll let it soak into the meat for the next 10 minutes or so make sure it's really attached and not looking too dry on the surface before we transfer this to the smoker all right so on to the smoker i'm going to put this point in toward the firebox where the heat's a little more intense it's a little bit denser and fattier so it can kind of handle that especially with the intramuscular fat you don't get that so much in the flat here you can see our brisket that went on two and a half hours ago sitting at about oh internal temperature is at 118 right now just starting to develop a little bit of crust and bark and color still in the early stages of that for sure and a little cream cheese hanging out here in front for some texas twinkies that you guys will be seeing pretty soon all right guys we are about seven and a half hours into this cook and i know that seems like a long time with no updates but the truth is there's been nothing to update because this has just been sitting and smoking the whole time we haven't been doing any spritzing our corners are nice and smooth not too dried out or anything so there's no no need to really try and spritz here internal temperatures in the 170s right now the barks looking pretty dang nice you're starting to get a nice little bit of jiggle out of this we are going to wrap this in butcher paper and i feel like we're really close i just want a touch more color before we do that so just wanted to give you this update we'll go ahead and roll another log over on the fire all right so breaking this down a little bit so we can roll over the next hot log trying to keep that a little bit elevated so there's air movement around you get complete instant combustion on there we'll throw another log in to warm up all right guys we're about eight and a half hours into this cook now we were tipping in the 180s at this point but more importantly oh my gosh look at that look at that beautiful fat just rendering down great bark formed love the color at this point we're going to get this wrapped up in some butcher paper all right so we're going down on double sheets of butcher paper for the wrap we're going to slap down a little bit of beef tallow here inside the wrap adding beef tallow is a fantastic way to keep that super juicy that fat is going to carry all that flavor let's set this right on top of here slather a little more on top oh yeah just work that into that crusty rub come around the top once try and keep this nice and tight holding the sides [Applause] keep rolling we got a little bit more paper than we need here so i'm just gonna take some of that off protect that excess underneath [Applause] all right so so we're upright again now we've got the point on top the flat on bottom back onto the smoker to finish cooking all right so point in buy the fire once again stick a probe in here just to keep track of where that temperature is trucking along and now with this butcher paper that'll kind of expedite this cooking process trap some of those juices in there all right so to finish this thing out we can go just a little bit hotter maybe like a 275 300 range and keep on rolling those splits over well our early brisket has been on for 10 and a half hours now our probe is showing us that it's reading around 206 208 internal temperature it's feeling really nice so i want to open this up and let you guys have a look at it all right so we're going to take this over to the table to check it out before we do that you can also take a peek here at our later brisket is now about ready to wrap after eight and a half nine hours of smoking god that looks nice all right let's open it up paper soaked in tallow that's a good sign oh my gosh this smells incredible wow look at that jiggle we lost a little bit of our bark on that wrap it's gonna happen man looks really nice smells awesome that's just butter let's come down here that's that point up there down here is our flat which is a little bit of a thick flat on this brisket and we are temping and like i said like 206 208 got a 207 dead right there so with a little time to rest this is going to continue to kind of come up all these juices are going to redistribute and then we'll be ready to slice into this all right i'm just going to give it a fresh wrap for the rest and put a little bit just a little bit more tallow down and make sure that nothing's going to dry out if it's covered in fat it's not going to be dry [Applause] so we kind of let some of that initial heat out by opening up this package which is not a bad thing it's going to give us a bit of a temperature drop to start this resting process so i'm actually just going to let this sit out it's about 95 degrees outside right now i'm gonna let it sit out for the next 30 to 60 minutes and then we'll transfer it to a cooler to rest for even longer it's been a little more than two hours since we started resting this brisket and i really wish we could go longer but for the sake of time we're gonna wrap this thing up and because of that we never did get to resting in a cooler but if you've got time go ahead and do it give it four hours give it six hours it's gonna stay warm in there so we left this out just kind of room temperature ambient temperature let the temperature drop it's in the 150s now which you can see here on the fireboard and that means it's cool enough to slice but still warm enough to oh enjoy it's gotten nice and tacky on top so we've kind of talked about the two mussels that exist here on this whole brisket you can see this is the edge of that point meat where your burn-ins come from down here is that flat meat where your slices come from the muscle fibers they run in different directions so if we look at this bottom the bottom side you can see the muscle fibers running this direction which means that we want to cut across those but when we get to about here we're going to want to switch that because the muscle fibers for the point meter running like this and we want to go this direction so we'll just go ahead and separate these out now starting right at the edge of where i can see that point meat is going to meet the flat and it's just about halfway down the brisket and there you have your point meat on top and just the very back edge of your flat or your lean look at that beautiful smoke ring super juicy beautiful red color yeah this is gonna be really great and the same way we're looking at our lean meat this is mostly the flat with just a little bit of that fatty meat on top oh my gosh guys look at that just dripping super moist so muscle fibers are in a bit of an angle if we want to we could angle our cut just a little bit more but just for the sake of taking a slice off here let's go ahead and check this out there we go it's cutting like butter wow that is a beautiful slice of brisket right there give it just a little bit of a tug oh yeah comes right apart do one more slice out of here let's see how that hang is looking pretty good a little bit tight with a wide slice but not tight at all when it pops right apart you see how that's running at kind of an angle that's what i'm talking about how we're not perfectly perpendicular so if you want an or i mean if if you need this to have a little slightly different texture so you say you got it a little bit tough go ahead and change that angle and cut that down even more slice just a little bit thinner and you'll have no idea that it wasn't perfectly cooked but these are all adjustments that you can make on the fly because you just never quite know what you're going to get when you slice into a brisket you hope for the best and you can make some adjustments to make it as delicious as possible in the end all right i'm going to take this kind of mohawk mound right off the end here that's looking pretty you can actually take this bit of that lean off and right there you get some nice cubes if you want to do like a texas burn end a little barky here i'm going to switch to my scalloped so there's your texas burn-ins and then we can just keep right on slicing into that point meat got a nice bit of crust to it i really like that all right so there you get a feel for that fattier as more of the intramuscular fat so you can see just how tender that is and again just like with the flat meat a little tug comes right apart this right here is my favorite oh my god it just doesn't get much better than that in barbecue that bite was so beefy fatty delicious simply seasoned it just feels like pure barbecue joy i love it all right let's build a little plate all right let's get some of our point meat down here get your burnt ends do us some lean right here in front some of those slices a lot of fattiness going on here so i'm gonna put a couple things out just to enjoy alongside our beef all right so we got some pickled onion here throw some spicy garlic dill pickles down more onion just a little bit of barbecue sauce in case you want to dip i recommend not going with something super sweet casey crossroads is a savory tomato based sauce it's great for brisket and of course you might just want a little bit of white bread to mop things up with there let's get a little taste here do some of this lean pickle that looks like a good bite oh yeah love the way the acidity cuts through the richness of the beef just a touch of sweetness from that sauce and i'm not a sauce guy i'd rather have it plain any day but it's not a bad compliment to the rest of these flavors going on but yeah for me i can sit here and eat this point meat until i'm sick probably i'm hoping these guys won't let me do that today we're going to feed the crew too so i'm going to let you guys go i want to hear how you guys did this give it a try tell me what you think about texas style beef versus a kansas city style brisket for me i think it's a really fantastic technique a really great cook well thank you guys so much for watching be sure to check out atbbq.com for all the products featured in today's cook if you enjoyed the recipe hit that subscribe button and if you have any questions or comments or there's anything you'd like to see me cook let me know in the comment section down below and let's be good to one another for more recipes tips and techniques head over to atbbq.com thesauce all things barbecue where barbecue legends are made

Channel: allthingsbbq

Views: 318,579

Keywords: all things barbecue, all things bbq, allthingsbbq, atbbq, barbecue, bbq, beef, beef tallow, black angus, brisket, butcher paper, chef tom, creekstone farms, how to, loaded wichita, offset, offset smoker, prime brisket, recipe, smoked, smoker, smoking, stick burner, texas, texas style, the sauce, wichita, wrapped, yoder, yoder smokers

Id: NjbXC34cR2o

Length: 27min 54sec (1674 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022