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bosco

Just finished nights shift.... Brisket time

By bosco, in KK Cooking

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bosco Senior Member

bosco

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I'm beat but I want burnt ends so I picked up a 5.5 lb point at my butcher shop yesterday before work.  Just finished my 12 hour shift and used some Oakridge black ops thanks tony!

KK fired up 30 min ago.  Waiting for some of the initial white smoke to disappear then I will add my smoke pot filled with peach and white oak.  

Going to have the lower grate in the 23" with foil today only no stones.  

Today I'm going hot and fast.  275 for 6 hours then wrapping in butchers paper until probe tender.  

Lets do this then off to bed for a few hours lol

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tony b Senior Member

tony b

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I'd say that you've "got the hang of it," Bosco!! Looks killer. 

My "secret house blend" for brisket - 2 parts Plowboys Bovine Bold, 1 part Oakridge Black Ops, and 1 part Sucklebusters SPG. Used it on a half of a flat (CostCo Prime) for out of town guests on Friday night. Smoke pot of 1 chunk post oak, 1 chunk mesquite, 1 chunk peach. Also, done hot & fast (275F), indirect (drip pan only). They'd never seen the pink butcher paper technique before. Served with a CI skillet of rosemary potatoes in duck fat and local corn on the cob, which got bathed in the hot duck fat instead of butter when they came off the grill. They were impressed. Sorry, no pics. I don't make my dinner guests wait for food while I snap photos. 

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cschaaf Senior Member

cschaaf

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Those look great!

I was hoping to have some burnt ends last weekend, but totally ruined a full packer cook. I used the smoke pot for the first time and didn't even get a smoke ring. Nothing went right with that cook at all. Still grumpy about it.

For those that say the KK won't dry things out even if you try - I have proof that isn't true. ;)

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bosco Senior Member

bosco

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So my past three briskets I have done exactly the same thing.  

I do the following:

add the lower grate and place two pieces of foil down.  Then add a drip pan with water.  

Slather brisket with mustard and black ops rub. 

Set grill to 275 degrees.  

Smoking pot added about five min before meat goes on.  

Place brisket over the drip pan

cook until IT of 160 roughly 6 hours. 

Remove brisket and sprtiz with worstishire sauce.  Then wrap in butchers paper and back onto the grill.  

Cook until probe tender usually about 4 to 5 hours.  

Remove from grill and rest in cooler and blanket for 1 hour.  

Mans bam the juiciest brisket I have ever had to date. 

This is my new system and unless things change, I'll never do it another way again.  

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cschaaf Senior Member

cschaaf

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18 hours ago, xraydoc said:

@cschaaf Can you give more detail about what went wrong? Not because I want you to relive it, but if we can learn from whatever happened maybe we can all prevent it from happening to us. :?

Here is what I did - mostly following MeatHead's Brisket:

  • 12.5# full packer, trimmed the hard fat off and trimmed fat cap to about 1/4" as best I could. It was the smallest one that Walmart had on sale.
  • Injected with some beef broth then sprinkled with salt and let sit in the fridge for about 5 - 6 hours
  • Set the KK up - filled the box with KJ and Fogo large pieces, sprinkled on some medium and smaller pieces to fill the gaps
  • Lit the KK with half of a Rutland firestarter and dialed to get about 225
  • After about an hour, I set up my HeaterMeter controller for 225
  • Put the deflector on the lower grate, covered it with some foil and put in a drip pan with water. Let the grill get back up to 225.
  • Pulled the brisket out of the fridge and dusted it with Meathead's Big Bad Beef Rub
  • Added the smoke pot that was filled with hickory and pecan and gave it a few minutes to start smoking.
  • Dropped the brisket on the top grate above the drip pan, fat cap down, and let it go - it was 8:17PM
  • At 4:00PM the next day, the IT was at 191 and climbing very slowly.The HeaterMeter showed it would take another 2 hours to reach an IT of 200-degrees at the current rate.
  • The HeaterMeter held the temp around 225 all night, but was a bit shaky with the fan. It was my first time using the HM on the KK, so I need to dial in the PID setting a bit. The average temp was about 225, but it probably ranged between 215 and 235 all night.
  • Figuring I wouldn't have time to get it to temp and rest it, I asked on the guru how to slice and store it. Several recommended to crank the temperature up to 300 or so, which sped things along.
  • I don't have HM shots from this point on, so I'm guessing on time. It probably took an hour or so before the probe temp hit 200 - meaning the brisket was on the grill for about 21.5+ hours.
  • I probed it all over and it was pretty soft in the thick parts and around 200 - 203, but the end of the flat, maybe the last 3" were very hard to probe and at 208 or so. It was clear that it was super dried out. It was like bad beef jerky. 
  • I wrapped in foil and let it rest in a cooler with some blankets for about 1.5 hours.
  • I cut off the point and set it aside and tried to slice the flat.
  • The bark was super hard all over and very difficult to eat. Even the dogs struggled with a small piece of the bark.
  • I had to cut about 3" back before I found something that resembled actual meat. Even then, it was so dry. By the way, there were ZERO juices in the foil that I wrapped it in. Literally no juice came out of the brisket while resting or while slicing the flat.
  • There was zero smoke ring - as we know, not an indication of a lot, but I think it cooked through what smoke ring should have been there.
  • Defeated, I sliced up the flat as best I could, but it was dry and just fell apart.
  • I turned to the point. That was okay, not great... but a LOT better than the flat was. I planned on saving it for burnt ends, but I had to chop it up and mix it with the flat crumbles to give us something to eat for dinner.
  • The flavor was actually pretty good. I liked the rub and will use it again on other beef.

I really don't know what I did so wrong that it turned out so bad. Sure, I could have done a few things differently, but I can't imagine that they would make THAT big of a difference. I know we are our own worst critics and are often overly hard on ourselves - but trust me when I say this was a total disaster. It's not only the wort thing I've ever made on the KK... or the worst thing on the KJ... it was the wort thing I have ever cooked. By far. It was really that bad.

Some things I can change for next time - it may be a LONG time before I try again:

  • Use a higher temp
  • Get HeaterMeter settings dialed in better
  • Texas crutch
  • Heck, maybe I'll just use the Serious Eats sous vide recipe next time.

 

Edited by cschaaf
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xraydoc Member

xraydoc

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Sorry it turned out so bad. Chalk it up to a learning experience and don't be scared to try again.  Just consider it part of the journey.  Nothing really jumps out at me either, but I am by no means an expert.  There are many on this forum far wiser then I am.

I will say that in reading several recent posts my next brisket will be done with a slightly higher heat and shorter cook time.  I think I will use the method @bosco describes.

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