Texas Style Brisket
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Shack! I figured I’d start this recipe blog off the right way with a simple yet delicious recipe for Texas-style smoked brisket. This is always the most requested meal when we’re going to be hosting anybody at the house. I know a lot of people are intimidated by brisket because it’s a large, expensive cut of beef, so I’m here to tell you that if I can make a tender, juicy, pull-apart, delicious brisket, YOU CAN TOO! So without any further ado, let’s get to cooking!
Texas-Style Smoked Brisket
Ingredients
- 14lbs - Full Packer Brisket
- 1/2 Cup - Kosher Salt
- 1 Cup - 16 Mesh Black Pepper
Instructions
- Mix your salt and pepper together to make your dry rub, making sure that they are well incorporated. You want an even mixture of salt and pepper.
- Season your brisket thoroughly. Full coat both side with your dry rub, making sure that all sides are well coated.
- Let the brisket come up to room temperature and almost kind of "dry brine" in your rub.
- Place your brisket on your BBQ pit.
- Once on the pit, spritz the brisket with a liquid of your choice (I prefer to use a mixture of apple cider vinegar and water) every hour after the first hour until you wrap
- Wrap your brisket once it has reached an internal temperature of 165F and place it back on the pit to finish cooking
- Your brisket is finished cooking when it is probe tender and feels like your probe is going through butter.
- Once you're done cooking, remove your brisket from the pit, place in an oven or cooler for AT LEAST 2 hours to rest.
- Once rested, slice the brisket and serve.
Small background on the cut:
The brisket is considered the “holy grail” of BBQ. It consists of two muscles on the cow, so you’ll commonly hear it broken down into the “point” and the “flat.” Now the flat is your super lean meat that doesn’t have a ton of intramuscular fat. This is the part of the brisket that has the most potential to turn out a little dry after you cook it. The point meat, however, is chock full of intramuscular fat that will render down so beautifully during this long, low and slow cook session leaving you with incredibly tender and juicy slices and those little pieces of meat candy you’ve probably heard of, burnt ends. With that said, If everything is cooked correctly, you’re left with pounds and pounds of delicious and tender beefy goodness. Let’s talk about how to cook this big ol’ monster.
Cooking process:
As mentioned above, the best way (in my opinion) to prepare a brisket is using a long low and slow cook on a smoker, kamado grill, pellet grill or some other type of grill that you can setup for indirect heat and able to produce some smoke from woodchips, chunks, or logs. Personally, I have a Vision Grills Kamado and a Traeger pellet grill. I’ve cooked briskets on both, and honestly they both work great and each serve a purpose. Pellet grills/smokers give you the whole “set and forget” cooking style which is amazing not having to stay up all night watching your temps. Smoking with charcoal, however, gives you a very distinct flavor that only cooking over charcoal can give. Ultimately, you cook with what you have. There’s plenty of cool little gadgets nowadays to even help do some smoking on gas grills, so the options are endless and really up to you!
For typical meat smoking, you’re going to want to have your pit temps in the 225F-275F range, and again this all depends on your pit. On my Kamado, I’ve found that 250F is the sweet spot, but on my Traeger 225F is the way to go. There a bit of trial and error here.
After you’ve got your temps settled and locked (on charcoal of course), add your wood chips or chunks. Since this recipe is for a “Texas-style” brisket, I will be using post oak wood chunks as my wood of choice. This also works great with hickory or pecan and even cherry. Mix a little hickory and cherry together if ya nasty. The beautiful thing about BBQ is that there’s so much room for experimentation. Flavor freedom is the spice of life baby!
IMPORTANT! You want your smoke to be almost translucent. If your smoke is white, that’s what is called “dirty smoke”. The clearer, translucent smoke is that “blue smoke” that you want. This is the “clean” smoke that will produce the absolute best flavors.
Now that we’ve got all of that settled, let’s talk about how to prepare your brisket!
Brisket preparation:
The most important part of cooking a brisket (and the part that takes the most practice) is the trim. Fortunately for you, there are tons and tons of amazing videos on YouTube on how to trim these up. I would recommend watching the master himself, Aaron Franklin, or check out Chud’s BBQ. Both of those guys know what’s up and have very very detailed videos on how to properly trim a brisket for the best possible results.
Once you get your trim done, it’s time to move on to seasoning your bundle of brisket joy. Again, since we are trying to stay true to Texas with this recipe, I recommend using a simple 2:1 mixture of black pepper (16 mesh preferred, but you can also use the table grind pepper you can find at Walmart) and kosher salt. As mentioned previously, the brisket is a HUGE cut of beef, so it can take a lot of seasoning. Just make sure not to over salt it, and go heavy on the pepper as that will give you that crispy bark that is so so so goooooooood.
Once you’re trimmed and seasoned, it’s time to throw it on your pit!
The cook:
There’s a lot of debate regarding fat cap up or down while cooking a brisket. Honestly, it depends on your pit and where your fire is. For a Kamado type grill, the fire is under the brisket so I tend to go fat down. On the pellet grill, the firebox is typically on either side of the cooking chamber. I typically situate my brisket on the opposite side of my firebox and go fat cap up. Again, this is something you’re going to have to adjust based upon what kind of cooker you’re using.
Another debate is the use of a water pan. I’ve done cooks with and without water pans and there’s negligible differences, honestly. However, I’d rather cook with a water pan and not need it rather than needing it and not using it. Kinda like a safety blanket. Up to you!
Once your brisket is on your pit, go grab a beer and pull up a chair. It’s time to relax a bit. You’re gonna be here a while. I’ve cooked briskets in 12 hours and i’ve cooked briskets up to 16 hours. It’s going to take some time, but it’s going to be oh so worth it.
Spritzing:
As with any low and slow cook, you don’t want the surface of your meat to dry out while cooking. That’s where the spritz comes in. Get a little spray bottle from Dollar General or something, do a little half and half mixture of apple cider vinegar and water. When you notice the surface of your brisket start to dry out a bit, hit it with some spritz. I typically start spritzing around the 2 hour mark and every hour afterwards until it’s time to wrap.
Wrapping your brisket:
So when is the time to wrap your briskey? Personally, I go by the color of the brisket and when the bark has fully set. I know a lot of people go by the “if it’s 165 internal, it’s time to wrap” rule, but that doesn’t always work. I’ve had briskets be 165 internal and not have the bark set or the color that I’d like it to have. So wrap that thing when YOU feel it’s ready, not necessarily at X temperature.
The actual wrapping process can also differ and there are a few different methods for this. The big 3 are: wrapping in foil (otherwise known as the Texas Crutch), wrapping in pink butcher paper (my preferred method), and the foil boat method. The idea behind the boat method is that you leave the top of the brisket exposed but wrap the foil around your sides to prevent burning. The exposed top will get more heat and crisp up that bark even more. Regardless, there are tons of videos on the proper way to wrap a brisket (i’m telling ya, check out Chud’s BBQ. Bradley Robinson is amazing), so I’ll leave you to that. Once you’re wrapped, it goes back on the pit to cook until it’s finished.
When is your brisket done?:
Asking the import questions here. Typically, I find the magic number for brisket to be 203F, BUT you should be able to probe your brisket and there be no real resistance. It should feel like your probe is going through butter. Once you reach that point, you’re ready to rest this thing!
Resting your brisket:
Again, a lot of debate here. The most common rule of thumb is that you should rest your brisket AT LEAST 2 hours. Most of the famous BBQ joints around the world rest their briskets overnight in restaurant quality warmers and such. I obviously don’t have one of those, so I have found two methods to work best.
First method: User an insulated cooler. Take your brisket (still wrapped in the butcher paper), wrap it in some towels, and store it in that cooler. This should cause the brisket to SLOWLY come down in temperature. This lets the juices redistribute throughout the meat and makes for it to be so so tender.
Second method: your oven! set your oven to as low as you can get it. Mine goes to about 170F. This will allow your brisket to stay warm but slowly come down to serving temperature allowing those juices to redistribute.
Once you’re rested, it’s time to slice and serve!
Slicing that brisket:
I won’t go into too much detail on the slicing as it’s pretty self explanatory, but it’s important to remember to cut AGAINST THE GRAIN. If you cut with the grain, your brisket is not be tender and you’ll make me so very sad. Also it’s very important to note that the grain changes directions on a brisket. Remember those two part of the brisket I mentioned earlier? Well, I hope so. You’re going to want to cut your brisket at the part where the flat and the point come together. Spin the point section 90 degrees and then slice. If you’re confused by this, there are tons of pictures and videos describing how to slice a brisket (I’ll even have one soon).
Once you’re done slicing….YOU’RE DONE! Grab another beer and enjoy the spoils of victory, my friends!
