You don't have to go low and slow with Brisket. Afaik, one of the people that's won the most money in BBQ competitions for brisket prefers a hotter/faster approach that takes like less than 8 hours.

You really should have done more research before attempting this, but glgl.

Cool kitchen.

I have same design setup and use it to do boston butts and I have done chicken and turkey. I'd say my strong suit is boston butts. Whoever said 2 hours on these things is crazy. It takes me forever to get them up to temp but that's a good thing b/c that means they take in the smoke forever.

I start my main fire in the firebox obv. I get that rolling good then I move a few coals in the chamber right near where the smoke comes out from the firebox and never directly under the food. I had to go with only 2/3 grates in mine to do this but it works well. I try to keep the food in the middle and never under the smokestack. If I need two racks I will break the coals under the food rule or I build coals near smokestack. I keep all coals smothered in hickory chips AT ALL TIMES no matter what. I keep the chips soaking in water too but I don't start this until I start the charcoal chimney.

Use a charcoal chimney and regular blue bag kingsford. I use hickory wood primarily and sometimes mesquite. I did use cherry before but sourcing it isn't as easy as the other two. NO LIGHTER FLUID ever, this is why you use a chimney to start it. I start a day with 3-5 butts on there and no more. There are better smoker designs out there you can slam full and still get deep smoke flavor. I'm saving up for a http://www.stumpssmokers.com/.

I think that person was talking about pork tenderloin, for which 2 hours sounds like a very believable number to me. I'd agree that 2 hours seems way low for cooking a butt with any sort of slow method.

you should have some backup burgers/hotdogs/thin bbq steaks to throw on the grill as a backup for your guests if a lot of this stuff turns out no good

grunching but you can always wrap the meat in heavy duty tin foil for an hour or so if your meat isn't as tender as you had hoped. Many professional BBQ'ers do this. I usually do it for my brisket or pulled pork because I don't want to get up in the middle of the night. If you smoke it for more than 6 hours you will get plenty of smoke flavor in the meat.

I wrap my butts in tinfoil close to the end of the cook but leave them exposed until then for maximum smoke flavor. Wrapping them helps the center finish off without drying up the rest of the meat.

Okay if I elect to wrap it, are you saying wrap it in aluminum and keep it on the smoker?

The stuff came out bad but not awful. Probably awful by elite standards but it was a tasty and edible piece of meat.

To be honest, the ribs were worse than the brisket.

Brisket was just fairly tough and a little cool, the ribs were a little charred over. I opened up the smoker and saw the ribs were covered in BBQ sauce.... soooooooooooooo yeah that might've had something to do with it.


Strangely, the sausages came out far and away the best. 90 minutes for them(with nothing else in the smoker) and they were wonderful.

I even got a vegan to eat not one, but two of them.

I used to pull membranes off of back/side ribs but I tried scratching instead and it works great. Get a sharp knife, drag it quickly across the membrane and just make a crosshatch type of pattern. Doesn't have to be neat/even.

Saves me time, flavour still works. Also works well with boiled/braised ribs and doesn't seem to get the mealiness (is that a word?) in the sauce that leaving them usually results in.

Salmon seems like a really bad idea for a smoker. Not an expert, tho.

Off-topic: Love your kitchen. Cherry cabinets and a cool tile backsplash. Are your countertops soapstone?

Shopping for a new house obv.

Somebody broke into your smoker and ****ed with your meat? That is not right

What temp did you get the brisket up to, and how long did it take? Was it hard keeping the charcoal lit overnight? Was it tough to keep the temp in the smoker consistent?

Kudos for your vegan conversion

But you didn't, ducy?

I have to applaud your audacity though. Getting all that meat to the point of being edible under the conditions you made for yourself is impressive. When you have more time to prepare, I highly recommend making your own sausages and smoking them. It's a treat with few equals.

No, tell us why. No True Scotsman, I'm assuming.

Basically. Thinking about the reasons for veganism, like dietary, ethical, etc. I can't think of any that make an exception just for when your buddy makes some really delicious looking smoked sausage. Saying you are vegan does not make it true.

You give hope to all who despise the vegetarian curse.

(Disclaimer: I understand the difference between smoking meat and braising meat. This post is a discussion about dry rubs for ribs)

I'm making ribs today using the Alton Brown braising in the oven method from one of the first seasons of Good Eats. He suggests a dry rub with ratio of 8:3:1:1 with brown sugar, kosher salt, chili powder, and then the last unit a combo of black pepper, cayenne, jalapeno seasoning, old bay, thyme, and onion powder. I saw that and decided to change it up by using the brown sugar, salt, more chili powder, cayenne, old bay, thyme, and then some cumin and paprika. Thoughts?

The smoker got lit at 9 am and all meat(except sausage) was thrown on at 10 am. It sat on there until about 7pm

Like I said, the meat was tough, but it definitely didn't look pink in the middle. Is it possible something was done to make it overcooked?

Brisket will be well done at maybe 150 degrees. You have to cook past that, through the plateau around 165, to 180+ for it to actually get tender. It has to get that high to melt all the extra collagen that brisket has over your average steak. Otherwise you're going to be chewing through some very tough meat. You really have to use a thermometer.

yes, chances are you overcooked it.
what temperature was the cooking area at?
did you monitor the temperature of the meat?

the ribs would be way overcooked if you cooked them for 9 hours.

+1

KP - if you don't mind, moar pics of your kitchen please. Also think it's pretty awesome how you just jumped in to this endeavor - good to hear no one got food poisoning!

KP - I recently bought what appears to be the same set up, haven't had a chance to get it built because of work obligations. How hard is it to control the temperature on it from your limited experience? It seems like this isn't going to be as easy as I thought...I was under the impression that I just threw a tri-tip or whatever in super early in the morning and then pulled it out for dinner.

It can be a pain in the ass, but you'll get better over time.
There should be vents on the fire box as well as the chimney, adjusting those will allow you to fine tune the temp.

There are remote thermometers that allow you to watch the temperature of the grill and/or meat from the comfort of your lazy boy.

If you are even lazier there are temperature controlled fans that will push air into the firebox to control temperature.

I'm confused. So brisket is basically really, really well done, but also tender?