Not so Texas-style Smoked Brisket

Find Minnesota on a US map and start moving your eyes south down the middle of the country. They say that once you get to around Mountain Grove, Missouri, the brisket starts getting better. By the time you reach Houston, it gets real good, or so the saying goes.


At my neighborhood grocery store in Houston, I was eyeing the brisket in the meat case for a Texas-style culinary adventure when a guy wearing a turquoise ring, three-day stubble and wife beater shirt struck up a conversation. He started pointing to the fat on the bottom of the meat referring to it as the “marble” and how much that adds to the finished product. All this thing needed was a half a day on a low heat fire with dudes drinking a rack of Lone Star beer, and it would be good to go, Mr. Turquoise said.



What I ended up doing was just about as simple (and still involved the rack of Lone Star), but involved a cross of grill time and oven time. Oven time? Mr. Turquoise and his smoking buddies would gasp at this un-Texas blasphemy. When it comes down to it though, the taste is all the matters. This recipe, compliments of Cook’s Illustrated combined with an inflection of Nark-style love, yields a hunk of tender meat that avoids the typical pitfalls of stringy dry brisket.

This recipe is to be done on a charcoal grill. It takes about an hour to two hours to marinate followed by 5 to 5 1/2 hours of cooking time.


The Meat
1 brisket

The Dry Rub
1/4 cup paprika
2 tablespoons of each of the following spices
chili powder
cumin
brown sugar
salt
1 tablespoon of the following
dried oregano
white sugar
ground black pepper
cayenne pepper

1) Rub the dry rub liberally all over the brisket. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours. I have marinated for as little as 30 min. and it still turns out great.



2) During this time, soak wood chunks for meat smoking in water for an hour. This is important. A quicker solution is you can get wood chips, wrap in foil and poke about six holes in it.

3) Light a chimney half full with charcoal briquettes (I strongly advocate Kingsford briquettes, which last longer and burn evenly). Once the charcoal is covered in a layer gray ash, empty them into the grill, stacking on one side of the grill. Keep the bottom vent open. Put the grate on and the lid for 5 minutes to sanitize. After this is done, put the wood chips on top of the charcoal pile.



4) Put the brisket fat side up on the side of the grill opposite the fire. Put the lid on the fire with the lid vent open. The vent should face opposite the coals to draw smoke across the meat. Barbecue without removing the lid for two hours (I am serious when I say don’t remove the lid). The temperature should drop by about 100 degrees to 250 degrees during this time.

5) After nearly two hours, preheat oven to 300 degrees. Attach two pieces of foil together by folding the long edges together a few times crimping tightly to seal. Put the brisket lengthwise in the center of the foil and wrap together. Place the brisket on a rimmed baking sheet. Bake for another 3 or 3.5 hours until the meat is tender.

6) Remove brisket from the oven, loosen the foil and one end to release steam, and let rest for 30 mins.

7) Put brisket on a cutting board and slice ACROSS THE GRAIN. Seriously, after all the work you want to make sure you cut across the grain in thin slices. Take some of the juice from the brisket and mix with some barbecue sauce to serve with the brisket.



--nark