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I've had this in my freezer after picking it up on sale a while back. It is a Snake River Farms gold grade brisket and weighed in at 15.4 lbs before trimming. I LOVE the marbling on this one. It is my second brisket on the kk. Here it is bottom side up after trimming. I really didn't do much to the bottom. I seasoned with kosher salt and coarse ground pepper. I put it on a heat soaked kk at 225 with some hickory and pecan chunks in my smoke pot at 8pm last night. I had the cyber Q going and a temperature probe in the brisket. Just before midnight, I spritzed it a bit to make the rub stick and added more rub and went to bed. The internal temp at this time was 132. (It was just under 32 when I started). I woke up around 7 without any alarms going off and the kk was humming along at 225 with just a whiff of smoke. Oh yeah. Internal temp is 172. It has plenty of bark so I wrapped it in pink butcher paper and put it back on the kk. When I was trimming, I cut a little off the flat perpendicular to the grain to give me a starting point when i slice it. This little piece was just a couple of inches long sitting on the grill for 9+ hours and should have been a brick. Nope.

Just the Pineapple Head. Unless you want total decadence - then put the grilled slices into a pan with a lot of butter and big shot of rum, then flambe and serve over vanilla ice cream.

Roadside marinade, spatchcock and rotisserie for the "Tri-Fecta Chicken" The pineapple part way through i brushed on evoo and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Reversed the claws inward on this cook. Oh only took 1 pair of OctoForks and there's space to rotisserie lots more...kinda nice!

@Keith OctoForks - Did the Purple Crack chicken. The overnight rub of baking soda, kosher salt and Taz pepper berries did turn the skin purple. But, the Purple Crack mixed into the Butcher's BBQ injection didn't really turn the meat purple, as I'd hoped. Here's a snap of the purple skin. My dinner guest commented that it looked like it was bruised (beaten up) - LOL! Obviously didn't stay that way after cooking.

Decide to keep things simple today, Made chicken noodle and mushroom soup with already grilled chicken thighs. Before making the soup I thought I'd try my hand at buttermilk scones, first time for this. Besides the rolled oats, buttermilk there were golden raisins and toasted almond pieces in the recipe. Only made half the recipe which was supposed to be 6 4oz scones. That sounded pretty huge to me so I split the dough up into 7 each just a little over 3 ozs. They are plenty big enough. The noodles were made from fresh ground durum wheat and semolina and cooked in the chicken broth. That scone on the side is only half a scone.

The rest of the story, still raining and 45F outside and 250F inside the KK. Ribs are done. Cut- and plated. Micro greens salad with taz pepper dressing. Dressing- The taz peppers have turned the vinegar to a pink red colour. Dessert, dipped icebox ginger cookies in espresso.

So I went down to my local butcher to get some plate ribs for Monday and while I was there I decided to get some of their house made sausages (jalepeno chipotle and basque) for a quick dinner tonight. Man, they were good. I cooked them at about 250 and served them the way we had them in Texas- with white bread pickles and onion. I also baked some red lobster cheddar biscuits on my Akorn. I've been better at trying to use two cookers and keeping the cooking outdoors lately. Anyway simple pictures of a simple yet delicious dinner. I'll definitely be keeping this in the back of my mind the next time I need a quick summer dinner. Also, yet another time that I set the kk while I ran to the store, and came back ready to cook!

It's been a while since I've posted a cook. Here's grilled shrimps and scallops with pasta and pesto and grilled asparagus. No action shots, but here's the final product. So that covers the surf part. Here's the turf and turf. I was volunteered by my wife to make brisket for a friend's BBQ yesterday. Then I heard that they were going to cook ribs. I volunteered to smoke the ribs, because (1) it's really no extra trouble for Smaug to cook two things instead of one for a low and slow cook, and (B) I'm being selfish: I know I can make better ribs than my friends. The brisket was pretty straightforward. My wife picked up a 13 lb. brisket from our local butcher. I've found that one thing that makes brisket cooks more predictable is to keep the size of the brisket as constant as possible. I've been making sure that any brisket I make is around 12 lbs., and I try to stay within 10-15 lbs. overall. The rub was a 50/50 mix of salt and pepper. I set up Smaug, who decided that he wanted to be at 200ºF. The brisket went on at 9:30 PM Friday night. The goal was to have the brisket ready for lunch on Saturday, so I guessed about 15 hours of cook time. Early Saturday morning I prepped the ribs, using the Aaron Franklin rub method, except that I add brown sugar in for ribs. I planned to give the ribs about 6 hours of cook time before lunch. This is what the brisket looked like at that point (9 hours cook time so far). I decided to put the ribs on the lower rack. That's not the usual position for smoking ribs on a KK (or any other kamado grill), but I knew from experience that KK grills are so well insulated that the internal temperature is very even across all the racks. I wanted to keep the brisket flavor straight up beef, salt, and pepper, and I figured that the ribs might benefit from beef fat dripping on them. And then I put the main rack with the brisket back in position. I checked the internal temperature, and at the 14 hour mark the brisket seemed to be in the stall, at 165ºF. But it seemed like it was done, because it was probe tender everywhere I stuck the thermometer probe. Here's the money shot. I decided that probe tender beat internal temperature, and I was afraid of overcooking the flat, since it was considerably thinner than the point compared to other briskets I've cooked. So I took the brisket out, and checked on the ribs. By the bend test, they were not quite done, so I set them on the main grate to finish off. They were ready to go after another 40 minutes. Here's the rib money shot. And here's how they turned out. Brisket. Ribs. So here's my question. I've usually gone for a final IT of 195ºF or so for brisket, and it has been really good. But I think this brisket is the best one I've done so far, by a considerable amount. My theory is that Smaug really did sit in the 200-210ºF range for this cook, and there's something about cooking in this lower range that allows the brisket to get probe tender without getting to a 195ºF IT. My other theory is that when I trim a whole packer brisket prior to cooking, I get pretty aggressive about excavating that big pocket of fat on both sides of the point end. I take out so much of it that it's like the point is being held together by a narrow band of tissue in the center. (I don't have a picture of me doing this, so I hope that explanation made sense.) I haven't seen anyone else do this in the trimming stage of a brisket cook, not even Aaron Franklin. Maybe some of you all do this, and just don't mention it. I think that getting rid of all this extra fat could change the cooking dynamic compared to a typical brisket cook. The next time I'm making a brisket, I'll be checking probe tenderness more aggressively. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

That brisket looks amazing. I have never seen one that well marbled. I am also a fan of Aaron franklins regular sauce. It's the only one worthy of brisket in my opinion.

You have my attention

This brisket turned out incredible. I took it off when it hit 200 about 18 hours into the cook. It was seriously tender when probed and I put it in a cooler wrapped in a towel for about 3 hours. Here is how it looked when i took it out to slice. I didn't get any pics of it sliced because it was so juicy and my hands were too much of a mess to touch the camera plus people were waiting. My main decision was whether to have a slice or make a nice sandwich. I tried a couple of new (to me) recipes from Aaron Franklin's book. His "regular" sauce is fantastic and I recommend it. I also made his coleslaw and it is also great and goes great with the brisket. The sandwich won out. I used a pepperidge farm onion roll with sliced pickles, brisket, sauce, and coleslaw. Best sandwich ever. I added some chopped brisket to the baked beans as well. This was one of those cooks that was fun all the way through. The kk performed flawlessly as usual and the brisket was the best I've had.

Very similar. It's basically cinnamon sugar, but with a kick to it (has some chile pepper in it) and some extra boost from the nutmeg and allspice.

Been very warm in the UK for the past few days, and with my wife away in Africa for a week, the little man and I can cook all the fun things that she's not mad about. In this case, duck. Spatchcocked and smoke-roasted at 300-325 for 100 minutes, couple of chunks of wood (one cherry, one oak). Pulled it at 60C in the breast - a nice sort of medium, still very juicy but most of the pink gone. Served it with a watermelon salad with mint & feta. Great early-summer meal... and of course, it started to rain as soon as we sat down!

Now your talking looks fantastic yum yum

Killer brisket! And that tasty bit looks to die for! Gotta go off and make lunch now, as this has gotten me seriously hungry!

Nicely done, Keith! Waiting with bated breath for my forks to arrive tomorrow! Can't decide what's going to be the first cook - those bacon wrapped pork ribs or maybe some tandoori chicken thighs? Decisions, decisions!! If you want to take that pineapple to the next level, get you some Dizzy Pig Pineapple Head rub.

@ckreef - 'cause you folks down there don't have to make up "snow days" when school is either cancelled or late start. Sorry, MacKenzie, it was a gorgeous weekend here - upper 70s/low 80s. Cooling off a bit today - low 70s. Planted my veggie garden yesterday (tomatoes, peppers and herbs).

Good read. Kinda backed up my own experience over the last few years. Still some caution - I recently bought a couple of NY Strips from the local COOP when they were on sale ($16/lb). Locally raised, 100% grass-fed, no growth hormones/antibiotics. Nice looking piece of meat in the package. Cooked them sous vide @ 125F for 2 hours, then finished on the lower grate on the KK. Finished steaks looked perfect. Had a really nice beef flavor. Now for the big BUT, they were very chewy, not very tender at all, especially given that they were cooked sous vide, so they weren't overcooked. Won't be buying them again, even at that sale price. Will stick to CostCo Prime for the same price. It might be lowest tier Prime, but it's better than these steaks were by a long shot. Even the local supermarket's "Angus Reserve" is better. Or my local butcher, who's beef is generally high Choice. Problem with his stuff is that it's pre-wrapped in white butcher paper and frozen, so you don't really get to see it until you get it home. Plus, unless I order specially, he has his steaks cut to 1" thickness. I prefer 1 1/2". So, as the old Latin saying goes, "Let the buyer beware!"

That marbeling is insane! When the little outside pieces are juicy then WOW!

Don't think it could have gotten much better and the roadside is a nice change for a whole bird. The spatchcock cooked very evenly too.

Great looking brisket Yum Yum.

SRF briskets are remarkable. I think you're going to be in a beef coma once it's done. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Steve, what an awesome cook, that brisket looks so tasty and moist.

Just look at that moist chicken, delissssh.

Great looking chicken and pineapple.

Tonight, somehow the sausages came out better than normal. A year in and my KK still surprises me!

This is an excellent recipe and method. My family has been using an almost identical recipe as this as long as I can remember. I add a little wine in with mine but just tweak to your liking. The key is to marinate if you can, and baste often while grilling. If I have time I'll even inject a bit of marinade/sauce into the thighs before grilling. It's always a hit, give it a shot.

Awesome cook Lynne, I tell people you are the Julia Childs of Kamado Cooking and a stellar photographer to boot! That is an incredible plate of food!

Burger night Sent from my SM-P600 using Tapatalk