Barbecue

The word "barbecue" here in the United

States means a tough, fatty cut of meat slow smoked until soft, and this is texas barbecue — central texas, specifically.

Beef brisket smoked over indirect heat.

I'm gonna show you how to do it with a charcoal grill or a gas grill. People work their whole lives to master this craft. I have not. Neither of these briskets came out perfect but they still taste amazing because smoked brisket is really pretty forgiving, and not nearly as hard as people make it sound. Some other suitable cuts would be tri-tip or a big hunk of shoulder (chuck), but brisket is traditional. It's the pectoral muscle of the cow, and I highly recommend starting with only a half brisket. This is the flat half, as opposed to the thicker point half.

And it came pre-trimmed. You generally want to shave the fat cap down so it's not too thick and blubbery. This looks basically perfect to me. Central Texas style is generally just salt and pepper, a very thick coating of both. Sometimes people put on so much pepper that the surface tastes kinda pasty once cooked. I'm not into that. But I am into adding garlic powder to the mix — quite common to see this on Texas brisket as well. You can either season right before smoking, or in this case I'm doing it the night before.

The seasoning will penetrate overnight, though I think it toughens the texture of the meat a little. You gotta start smoking first thing in the morning — this is an all-day affair. I'm lighting up just a handful of charcoal to start with. That's all we need. Get my brisket out — these disposable aluminum pans are extremely useful for barbecue. I'll stick it onto the bottom grate, over to one side and it'll help contain my charcoal. If I didn't have the pan I would use some bricks or some rocks to contain the charcoal over on this side. These are unlit, obviously.

The lit ones I'll dump over here. The idea is to have a thin line of charcoal and the fire will slowly burn across that line. Charcoal does not make very much smoke, so we need some hardwood to smoke. Oak is a classic choice, this is hickory. You can buy chips or chunks. Either work, but the chips you have to soak in water first otherwise they burn too fast. Grate on top. Some people put some water in that drip pan to keep the humidity high in here.

I think enough water falls out of the meat itself to take care of that. People debate fat side up or fat side down — I'ma split the difference and flip it halfway through. The wood is burning way too hot and way too fast.

Smoldering wood makes more smoke.

We fix this by depriving the fire of oxygen. Lid on, and I have the top vent there positioned right above the meat, so that means the smoke has to pass over the meat before it can escape. And I will choke off the bottom and the top vents until the ambient temperature inside stabilizes between 225 and 250F, that's 107 to 121 Celsius. People debate which temperature is perfect, but anything in that range is viable.

My vents are almost entirely closed. The fire just needs a little bit of air, but every grill is different and you'll have to experiment with yours. After an hour or so I need to replenish my fuel. They make grates with little trapdoors in them but you can also just do that with tongs. I'll take the brisket's temperature, just out of curiosity. 136F, 58C. That's good for this stage, but as long as you maintain the right ambient temperature in here and keep generating smoke, everything should really take care of itself. You can see how much stuff is collecting in that drip pan.

Gotta choke off that fire — I don't want grilled meat. I want smoked meat. This is hot smoking, but relatively cool hot smoking. Slow smoking. We're gonna be here all day. Might as well kick back and listen to something on Audible, the sponsor of this video. I've been listening to Aaron Franklin's book. Franklin's BBQ is, like, the place in for this style brisket in Austin.

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Ok, so after the brisket has been

Smoking for three or four hours, it's absorbed all the smoke flavor that it's ever gonna take, and you'll notice the meat temperature plateau around 160f, 70c.

This is known as "the stall.".

The meat hits a point where it squeezes out enough water to cool itself down via surface evaporation, just like sweating cools you down. We want to push past the stall and retain moisture, so this is when you traditionally wrap the brisket up in peach pink butcher's paper. This specific kind — it does't have any plastic lining on it that's gonna melt, like other butcher paper does. And it doesn't have any ink that's bad to eat, like newspaper does. You're supposed to get a lot paper and fold it over on itself really tightly to retain moisture. Yes you can use aluminum foil instead and I'm gonna show you that on the next brisket. At this point, we're done smoking, so you could bring this inside and finish it in the oven. The only reason I'm doing it here is because I'm already here and this fire is burning at the perfect temperature.

Same as before, anywhere between here and 250F, 121C is good. Every now and then I'll need to throw in a little more charcoal — it shouldn't burn too hot as long as I keep my vents mostly closed, but again, every grill is different. Now you braise it in its own juices it until it's just barely fork tender. I wish I could easily unwrap it to check for myself, but you can't with all this paper. I'm not loving the paper. I'll just go by how the thermometer feels as I plunge it into the meat. Circa 200F, 93C is what people usually want in the final temperature, maybe a little less, though it's really more about how the meat feels, and I can feel it's quite soft. This smoked about 4 hours and then it braised all wrapped up for a further four hours.

Eat it tonight or throw it in the fridge and reheat it in the oven the next day, all wrapped up to retain moisture. The advantage of the paper is it actually wicks away some surface moisture, and that gets you a better crust, or bark as the say in barbecue parlance. Let it rest like any other roast and then slice against the grain. The grain is very obvious on brisket. This smells unbelievable — most of the smoke flavor is trapped in that thin fat layer on top. Fat absorbs aromas. That's one reason you don't want to shave off all the fat before smoking. But this is a little overcooked.

It's a little too soft for my taste, and a little dry. But, you know, it really doesn't matter, because it's very fatty, and you generally eat it with wet things. Pickles are the traditional accompaniment, but if you wanted to use some barbecue sauce. I won't tell on you. That's just one of the greatest food pairings ever devised. Let's do it again on the gas grill and shake up a few other variables. This time I'm using the point half of the brisket instead of the flat. This is probably my preference.

It's thicker, juicier, and fattier.

I do need to shave off a

Bunch of this fat cap.

I'll leave one end unshaven so that you can see what it looks like when the fat is too thick. Salt, pepper and garlic powder on both sides, nice and heavy — even heavier, since this cut is thicker. And today I'm just seasoning immediately before smoking. The flavor isn't quite as nice this way, but I think the texture is better this way. They make all kinds of cheap accessories for smoking in a gas grill. You can buy one, but you don't need to if your grill has what they call flavor bars.

I think that's a funny name. They're just thin plates that cover up the actual gas burners. You can rest hardwood chunks right on those bars. That one will burn right away, this one I'll suspend farther up so it burns a little slower, these I'll position even higher, and then these I've soaked in water for like 20 minutes. They'll have to dry out before they can actually burn and that'll slow them down a lot. So now I've got a time-release line of smoke that'll burn progressively from there to there. I'm gonna ignite just that front burner under the wood and take it down to its lowest setting. I did a test without the meat and that one burner all the way down holds the perfect temperature in here.

Meat goes on the opposite side. Remember, we want indirect cooking. Lid on and a couple minutes later my first wood chunk is smoldering. Wood along the front, meat along the back, because gas grills usually vent out the back. I want the smoke to pass over the meat on its way out. Gas grills are generally very well ventilated, so you need a lot of wood to make enough smoke. And if the wood ever gets too hot, like that, you can just dump some water on it, from a distance. There's gonna be a steam explosion.

Now the coals are just smoldering, which is want we want. Smoldering makes more smoke and does't heat up the air in here too hot. 250F, 120C, perfect. After a couple hours I'm out of smoke, so I'll just grab some tongs. If you put the wood on top of the grill grate it wouldn't burn at these temperatures. It's gotta be down near the burners. You maintain that target ambient temperature and smoke until the meat has a nice dark brown bark on it. I don't think you even really need to take the temperature of the meat.

When it looks like that and juice is really pooling on top you've probably hit the stall and it's taken all the smoke flavor that it can. Three of four hours and the brisket is ready to wrap. This time I'm wrapping it tightly in foil. We want the meat to braise in its own water until soft, which will probably take another three or four hours. I prefer the foil because it's really easy for me to unwrap it just a little and test the doneness with a fork, which is the real test. Even still, I somehow managed to get distracted and overcook this a bit. That's too fork tender. It should be the very beginning of fork tender, because you're gonna slice it thin against the grain, which will soften it further.

If I'd cooked this a little less it'd be juicier, but again, it's still insanely good because brisket is basically bullet-proof. The outer bark is not quite as nice as the one we did on the kettle grill. That's probably because we used foil instead of paper and also because the gas grill didn't retain smoke as well — too much venting. Here's what it looks like when you don't trim the fat cap, by the way. Too much — blubbery — but the rest is absolutely delicious and I'm doing a sandwich today, which some purists consider to be heretical. Really anything you could possibly do with your brisket, some purists would consider heretical, and if any pitmasters out there have purely dogmatic objections to what I've done today, please keep those to yourself. But if you have some, you know, helpful comments, go for it. My best advice is relax and don't read a million things on the internet that get inside your end. Smoked brisket is easy as long you don't expect absolute perfection. And it's great...