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I’d tried pulled chicken and pulled pork with my Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, but as the weather was warming up I wanted to try something a bit more ambitious. We were having our friends James and Dwayne over so it seemed like a good time to try out the cadillac of smoked dishes: the Brisket.

I essentially followed the recipe from the best of all smoker resources, the Virtual Weber Bullet. I tried to document the process nicely with my new 50mm 1.8 prime lens, so the shots are perhaps unnecessarily arty. I think i learned a lot from this first try, mostly in two categories: meat selection and temperature.

I ended up buying two briskets from Cumbrae’s as they were quite small, about 3 and 3.5 lbs each. The brisket in the above VWB recipe was 12 lbs, so I knew i would be dealing with shorter times. They were pre-trimmed of fat however and i think this worked against me. The smaller one had virtually no fat layer and a tiny ‘point’ (as opposed to the ‘flat’, the two main parts of the brisket), so it ended up being quite dry. As for temperature, i need a wired thermometer so that i can tell whats going on inside the smoker. I think the smaller brisket should have come out earlier, though the larger one was almost perfect, I do think the 205deg that VWB recommends is too high.

And now, the pics:

The sealed Briskets:

Side view of the small brisket, you can see how thin the layer of fat is and how small the point is:

Filling the smoker using the “Minion Method”

Firing the charcoal in the chimney:

Smoking away…

It started raining, so i taped an umbrella to a stick to keep it dry

After five hours:

Done and sliced:

You can see some more pictures at the full flickr set.

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TAGS: BBQ, beef, brisket, Cooking, smoker

• March 8th, 2009
• BBQ
• 1 comment
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