mguerra

I think it was about a 10-12 pounder. 5-1/2 hour cook, 2 hour rest. I rested it two hours because it was suppertime at that point! A one hour rest is sufficient. Half an hour if you really need to serve it NOW. You can absolutely count on being able to do this the morning of your party for an afternoon service. Every minute a piece of meat is in the cooker, the more moisture it loses. Hot fast is THE way to go.

If I hadn't done that durn brisket yesterday I'd be trying that fatty right now! Nice job.

Over the years, we have had a few people opine that briskets are just too difficult to get done right, so they avoid Q'ing them. It is not difficult to get spectacular results, and if you are not cooking them you are seriously under utilizing both your palette and your KK. A properly cooked point is the BEST meat on a cow! And you can get a far better result in a fast cook than you can in a low and slow. So you don't need a 12, or 14, or 16 hour ordeal. Which means a fantastic brisket can be on your table routinely, not just on special weekends. 4-6 hours will do it. If you get off work early, you could do that on a weekday. I did one yesterday in about 5-1/2 hours and here are the tricks that made this the best brisket I have ever cooked. I used two of Aaron Franklin's tips. When the meat temp hit 165, I wrapped it in butcher paper, (actually parchment), and put it back on the fire. Normally, the "Texas Crutch" is to wrap the brisket in foil at this point. And that works VERY well. But the paper wrap is even better. This was the moistest juiciest flat of any brisket I have done. And the paper wrap is not airtight so the bark was less mushy than with foil. The usual hot fast method is to feel for doneness, not to finish by temperature. But Franklin mentioned finishing the brisket at a temp of 203, so I tried that. Superb. Here is the process from yesterday. I used some Royal Oak lump, some coconut charcoal, and six big fist sized chunks of mesquite. I ran the fire at 325 for the duration. Franklin suggests a rub of nothing but salt and fresh cracked pepper, I will try that another time, I used my own concoction. When the internal temp hit 165 I wrapped it in the paper and retuned it to the fire until it hit 203. I rested it on the counter top under a beach towel for 2 hours. This was so fast, so easy, and by far my moistest and best brisket ever. Do it.

I never clean my grates. Unless there are great hunks of fish skin or big wads of fat cap, I will scrape those off.

OK, I am going to retract what I just said. I just made a batch of homemade flour tortillas and it really was not that time-consuming at all so it's definitely worth doing. I had smoked a pork butt on Saturday so I took some of that pork meat and sautéed it in a cast iron skillet with some butter and some rub and then use that to make tacos with the flour tortillas.

My Mexican grandmother made tortillas every day. It's not difficult, it's really easy, but it's time-consuming that's the problem. But if you make them with pork lard instead of Crisco oh my think you died and went to heaven.

Since the hot fast brisket works so well I have tried a hot fast pork butt but it does not come out exactly the same as if you do it at a lower temperature. The meat gets cooked well enough but it does not have that tender fall apart texture. When I go to pull the muscles apart by hand it is pretty hard to do it as opposed to a longer slower cook. However, it eats just as good because once I separate all the muscles and remove all of the fat I then chop the meat and once it's chopped it it's pretty much the same. Maybe very slightly tougher.

The new pressure cookers, stovetop and electric, are much safer than the old ones. This little gem will take your foodie journey to another level: http://www.amazon.com/Secura-Electric-Pressure-Stainless-Browning/dp/B008A852ZW/ref=sr_1_1?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1444616125&sr=1-1&keywords=secura+6-in-1+electric+pressure+cooker

In a previous thread I extolled the virtues of using an electric pressure cooker, it will change your cooking life. I pressure cook a whole split chicken with 2-1/2 cups of water for 20 minutes, and let the cooker naturally depressurize. Remove all the meat from the chicken, reserve it for future use and throw everything left, skin, fat, bones back in to the pot with the cooking water. Pressure cook 20 minutes. You have now cooked the water twice, sealed and under pressure, with the chicken. Strain the stock through a colander and discard all the chicken remnants. You don't heat up the kitchen, don't steam up the house, don't have to ever stir it or check it, just push a button and walk away. This double pressure stock is richer and more flavorful than stove top. Check out my previous threads on pressure cooking, and pressure cooking ribs for a few minutes before smoking them! I just cooked a pot of basmati in three minutes sitting in my recliner, pushed one button and that's it. If you don't use a pressure cooker, you are seriously missing out on a whole new world of speed, convenience and taste. There's a little learning curve, and plenty of tips and recipes on line and youtube.

By the way, the price on this was just about a grand, a lot less than a custom job from Lasertron.

I like to fish:

I don't recall the specifics of how and why Dennis was selling coffee wood a few years ago. It has a very unique and mild, pleasant taste.

That thing that looks like a chimney is a big tamale pot and I store coconut charcoal in it.

I use a Gene roaster and it is my favorite of all I have tried. Using the KK would be fun, especially after you are finished with your meat cook. The KK is fired up anyway, so roast a batch. It would be a minor PIA to use as a primary roaster though.

We have discussed this before and Wilburpan is right. Muscle tissue is not like a sponge or bread. It is very tight and dense. Notice how when you inject most of it comes squirting out all over you as you withdraw the needle? You can get some flavor in there but not much and it's not easy.

I also use that same Bayou Classic injector from the Amazon link. Remember, the injector needle with the side holes is the one for liquids only and the injector with the tip opening is the one for little bits.

Dennis, do you still supply coffee wood? My stash is dwindling.

You can see Cooper the Treeing Walker Coonhound tapping on the right glass and Abby, the Beagle looking through the left glass. And look how they and the four other hounds tore the shit up out of the door frames! https://youtu.be/FCb3H-c7qIU

The fireworks season is every excuse I can think of to light up the sky. Birthdays, parties, reunions, weddings, if it happens to rain...whatever. It is raining today for the first time in 3 months, so tonight I'm popping some shells!

I shot my hometown Fourth of July fireworks show this year here in Kerrville. I was so busy setting it up and working on it that I was not able to videotape it myself. However someone in town got a video of the finale, not the entire show and put it up on Facebook. Here it is:https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1114026595281363&id=100000220996605&refsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Famy.ely.58%2Fvideos%2F1114026595281363%2F&_rdr

This may not help everyone but I find it has been extremely effective for me as I suffer from severe cramping my entire adult life. Now I take 400 mg of magnesium every day, including a 100 mg tablet right before bedtime. This has almost completely relieved me from all cramping and as well I have not had any more kidney stones (which I had a lot of before) now that I'm taking magnesium. Some forms are considered more absorbable than others, you might want to research that a little bit before you decide which supplement you wish to take. I take a form called Doctors Best which I get from Amazon.

Well, we have always said that to do a low and slow you only need to start a small amount of charcoal and you can certainly start a small amount of charcoal exceedingly fast in a charcoal chimney! I have been so absorbed in my new pyrotechnician hobby that I have not been hanging around the KK form near enough so I will try to post more often now.

Starting a KK fire and starting a survival fire are two different animals aren't they? For the KK I have used torches, starter cubes, the Loofie, and a charcoal chimney. I have settled on a chimney and a wad of brown paper bag. Fast, simple, cheap and effective. Once it's just going I hit it with an old hair dryer, Dennis' trick. Gets a raging fire in about 6 or 7 minutes.

Here is how all the top barbecue places do it. They take the wood that they want to cook with and burn it down to coals in a fire pit, THEN they take the coals and put them in the smoker. All the heavy thick smoke is long gone by that time. You can do this in a chimney, on the ground, in a Weber kettle, a trash can...use your imagination. I never do it myself. I like the thick white billowing smoke and just use it on my meats.. It thins out soon enough. But not for vegetables, those I wait for the thin smoke. Veggies can get WAY oversmoked in minutes.

Unfamiliar with Penzey's and Zamouri, will check them out. Thanks.