When it comes to owning a smoker, whether its a pellet smoker, charcoal, electric etc, there is one thing that most people want to master more than any other, the low and slow smoked brisket. The thing is, its a process that takes time, so you want to make sure you’re doing it properly. The method below is a good example to follow.
Tap/Click above to watch the recipe, or scroll below to see the various steps: Video – PitBoss-Grills.com
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Step 1: You’ll notice that when you get a full-packer brisket out of the packaging, its a large price of meat that doesn’t have the shape of the finished low & smoke briskets the you’ve seen.
Step 2: On the other side of the brisket, there is the fat cap. While some fat trimming is involved, most of this fat cap will stay in place, as fat is flavor afterall.
Step 3: This is the general final shape you’re looking for after trimming. The reason being the brisket will have a similar thickness all over, so the end result will have cooked evenly.
Step 4: To start the trimming, with a long and sharp knife, square off the edges of the brisket.
Step 5: It may seem like you’re cutting off a large section of meat. However, as you can see above, that part of the brisket was mostly fat.
Step 6: Proceed to trim off any large chunks of fat off the brisket.
Step 7: And square off the other end of the beef brisket as well.
Step 8: Finally, on the fat cap side, trim the edges of the fat cap to remove any particularly deep sections of fat. Then get a paper towel and tap down the surface to absorb any excessive moisture.
Step 9: The next step is seasoning, the BBQ rub you want to use is up to you. For this recipe the Pit Boss Sweet Rib Rub, which contains Brown Sugar and Garlic. However, for a classic Texas brisket, you’d just use salt and pepper.
Step 10: The thing with a brisket you have to keep in mind is that it’s a very large piece of meat, so its going to need a lot of seasoning on all sides.
Step 11: As well as seasoning both sides of the beef brisket, you’re going to want to lift it up to make sure you also hit the edges of the brisket with lots of BBQ rub as well.
Step 12: This brisket was smoked in a Pit Boss vertical pellet smoker using Oak pellets, which are a good allrounder when it comes to the smoke flavor they produce and will work with any vegetables or protein.
Step 13: Due to the cooking time of a low and slow brisket being many hours, the use of a water pan in the base of the smoker is advisable to avoid drying the brisket out as it smokes. Also, the humid environment helps more smoke adhere to the brisket.
Step 14: To increase the smoke flavor even more, you can also place a pellet smoking tube underneath the brisket as it cooks.
Step 15: To get a pellet smoking tube going, just a few seconds from a flame torch will do the job.
Step 16: The prepared brisket was then placed in the middle rack of the pellet smoker above the water pan. The smoker was already at temp at 275 degrees.
Step 17: This is what the beef brisket was looking like four hours in. You can see the color start to develop from the smoke pentration and the fat begin to render down. At this point, the brisket was spritzed with Beef Consomme, and every hour after this.
Step 18: Once the beef brisket reached an internal temperature of 175 degrees this is how it looked, and then it was time to remove it from the smoker to be wrapped.
Step 19: You’ll then want to place the brisket down on some heavy-duty foil.
Step 20: Place some butcher paper on top of the brisket and fold up the edges of the foil to grip the butcher paper into place.
Step 21: Then the wrapped brisket goes back into the smoker/oven with a food probe inserted to monitor its internal temperature up to around 204 degrees.
Step 22: This is what the brisket looked like at an internal temperature of 204 degrees. However, its still not done, now the vital resting phase begins.
Step 23: You’ll now want to take the brisket from the foil and wrap it in butcher paper.
Step 24: Then the wrapped beef brisket should be wrapped in a towel and placed in a cooler. The purpose is for the brisket to slowly rest so all the juices can be reabsorbed into the meat.
Step 25: This was the end result, many, many hours later. You can see that while juicy the fibres are able to hold onto the juices.
Step 26: This brisket was clearly cooked pretty much to perfection, and you can also see that a good smoke ring has developed from its time in the pellet smoker. Excellent.
Hi, I’m Chris Scott. I started PelHeat.com back in 2007 and I have a background in pellet manufacturing. PelHeat.com is an educational resource on BBQ pellets, pellet grills & smokers. Check out our Pellet Grill & Smoker Database.
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