The Food Thread

[Jez]

How did you cook that brisket mate? As in the temps and timings etc? Love brisket myself.

[Gibby]

Wrapped up turkey in some bacon and made some garlic mashed potato for tonight's tea. I'll be repelling vampires for a while!

Snowy, your culinary adventures are great to follow!

[Snowy]

How did you cook that brisket mate? As in the temps and timings etc? Love brisket myself.

I always do brisket the same way, I just vary the rub:
Get the smoker to around 225F which is at the lower end of the 'smoke window' (lower than that and you don't get any smoke, much higher than 275F and your wood burns too quickly and you move out of the low and slow cooking window. To do this I tend to use the minion method for my coals, putting a bed of unlit coals into the bottom of the grate, then pouring a chimney of lit coals over the top. The lower layer of coals catch from the lit layer, giving you an extended cook-time without having to worry about adding more charcoal (although you may have to, depending upon the size of the brisket.

With the brisket rubbed (and injected if you want to - I recommend it) and brought up to room temperature at this point, whop it in the smoker. If you have a packer cut brisket (the archetypal American cut but a bastard to find in the UK without a willing butcher), you have a 'fat cap' on the top side - I say the top side as that is the way up you want it cooking. That way the fat cap, as it renders down, does so through the brisket. Rendered fat = flavour.

Then leave it. Walk the dog, have a beer or five, kick back and relax. It ain't gonna be done any time soon. Every hour or so, open the smoker up and give the brisket a spritz of liquid from a squirty bottle (one of those trigger-types), people use all sorts of things but for brisket I use beer. Guinness is good.

What you are waiting for now is the stall, which will happen at about 160F internal temperature - basically the meat will stop increasing in heat - happens with both brisket and pork shoulder or belly. This is caused by evaporative cooling, similar to what happens to us when we sweat. The meat is effectively sweating, which is evaporating from the surface of the meat, stopping it increasing in heat. This can last a long time, and makes many BBQ cooks very nervous.

There are three main ways to deal with the stall. One is to ignore it, one is to crank up the temp to overcome it (up to the 275-300F mark), but my preference is to use the Texas crutch. Wrap that fucker up in heavy duty tinfoil, add a splash of beer, and put it back in. This prevents moisture from evaporating, and so the heat once again begins to climb. There is a downside though, many BBQ cooks (myself included) love a dark, hard, heavily caramelised outer layer of bark on their cooks. The Texas crutch method is basically changing your cook from convection to braising, and that retained moisture means that the outer layer will remain soft. Because of this, my preference is to wrap the meat just to beat the stall - 160F to 190F is my rule of thumb, then I unwrap it again. I to exactly the same when cooking pork shoulder. It takes a good while to get the meat from 190F to the magic 203F - the temp when it is done perfectly.

Once the cook is complete, I wrap the brisket in butcher paper (foil works just as well) and move it to a cool-box lined with old tea towels to rest, and I give it a minimum of 30 minutes resting. The 'flat' of the meat is good to go then - slice it up nice and thin and serve however you like, the 'point' I usually tend to use for burnt ends.

The cook can take 12 hours or more, so keep an eye on temps and make sure you add more coals if necessary throughout. If you get a smaller piece of brisket - Morrisons do quite a nice pastrami cut that you can pick up for about £5-6 depending on the size, then it will take a good deal less. I tend to go for a packer cut between 10-15lb in weight, depending how many I am feeding. Once cooked it can be refrigerated quite happily without too much drama (although it will dry a little).

[Snowy]

And now that Jez's question is answered, here is last night's mighty steak. Knowing I was going to be sharing it with you lot (visually anyhow) I was nervous that I would fuck it up - happily I didn't!

Here it is, naked, up to room temp, and looking pretty damn good right?



Pat dry with a paper towel and rub liberally with salt and pepper



As I was short on time yesterday, I didn't use the smoker and the grill as I do sometimes, I just went straight for the grill. I measured out enough coals to fill both chambers and set it up for indirect cooking - the temp in the grill was just over the 200C mark:



You can see here that I have my temperature probe in place, and that the coals are set up either side of the steak for that indirect cook. For the next steps I had heavy duty heatproof gloves on so couldn't take pics, so it went like this:

I closed the lid and left the steak to cook on its own until it hit the 115F mark. After about 15 mins I worried that it might feel lonely, so added in a freshly de-husked corn on the cob, which I rubbed with butter, salt and pepper (I often use use more spices with corn but tend to try and marry the spice mix with whatever I am cooking. Salt and pepper on the steak, so salt and pepper on the corn too). While all this was happening, I caramelised some shallots and then added some sliced red pepper which I also let soften, and made up a quick peppercorn sauce (my wife loves peppercorn sauce on her steaks). Oh, and I whacked some chips in the oven.

Once the meat hit 115F, I pulled it out and brushed it with melted butter. I moved the two coal baskets to directly under the griddle grate, and left it to get good and hot. Back on with the steak, at which point my garden was filled with the best smelling smoke, to the point that my neighbour complained at how hungry it was making him He has quite often partaken of my cooks, but last night was told to go inside, there was nothing for him that night!

Once on the griddle, I let it cook for about 3 minutes per side, keeping a close eye on the internal temp. At 135F internal temp it was taken off and brought in to rest.



After which came the moment of truth. Had I got what I wanted? I had written a fucking essay on here about the benefits of reverse searing a steak, getting a consistent internal temp throughout the meat as well as a lovely flavourful sear on the outside - and spent best part of £30 on the fucker to boot - was I humiliated?



I tend to be my own harshest critic, and honestly I would have liked it to blush just a little more than it did, but overall I was pretty happy with this. You can see that all of that marbling has fully rendered inside, what we were left with was a butter-soft steak with flavour to die for. In truth it was probably a bit much for just the two of us, but it is not something I cook too often so Mrs Snowy and I both buckled down and cleared our plates

[Jez]

Lovely looking piece there mate. I wouldn't have given that to the dog for sure. Pricey cut though eh.

Thanks for the treatise on the brisket though might be a project to build my own smoker in the garden maybe.

[Snowy]

There are loads of how-to guides for the handy amongst us mate (which doesn't include me) plus some very helpful internet groups. I belong to one on FB which is basically a load of like-minded folks some of whom have bought smokers, others who have made their own. An oil drum is a good starting point for many. Then do a little research on how you want it, whether from bottom to top coals and wood, water pan, cooking grates, or whether you want to go for an offset with the smoke and heat coming in from one side.

The main thing with it is, while it can take time to cook this way, the results are outstanding and it is overall pretty easy to do and do well.

And yeah, that was a pricey cut but then again nearly a kilo of ribeye (less a bit for the weight of the bone), you would pay way more in a restaurant for a significantly inferior cut and it is not like I buy those every week!

[Gibby]

Damn, that looks amazing!

[Mantis]

Agreed, looks absolutely delicious.

[Maturin]

We have our very own Ron Swanson.

[Sly Boots]

We have our very own Ron Swanson.

I would pay real money for Nick Offerman to narrate Snowy's posts

[Gibby]

So would I!

[Snowy]

I didn't know who either of them were

Looked up Swanson and saw "He loves meat, woodworking, hunting, whisky, and breakfast foods" - 3 out of 5 for me there, used to be a hunt saboteur (hit in the face by Price Charles with his riding crop, then arrested for subsequently calling him a Edwin - my microscopic claim to fame) so number 3 is out, and woodworking? Give me a stick, and I would struggle to make you a stick out of it.

[Sly Boots]

I didn't know who either of them were

Looked up Swanson and saw "He loves meat, woodworking, hunting, whisky, and breakfast foods" - 3 out of 5 for me there, used to be a hunt saboteur (hit in the face by Price Charles with his riding crop, then arrested for subsequently calling him a Edwin - my microscopic claim to fame) so number 3 is out, and woodworking? Give me a stick, and I would struggle to make you a stick out of it.

You should watch Parks & Rec, mate... it's good!

(Nick Offerman is the actor who plays him btw)

[Snowy]

Bloody hell, that's me!

Although I don't rock a 'tache.

Other than that though...

[Sly Boots]