How To Make Texas Smoked Brisket Properly

[00:00] So you want to learn how to make one of the most coveted foods in America. Great. Just understand that we're stepping on sacred ground right now. Sacred. We're talking Texas brisket. Yeah. See, where do I start with this? Well, first off, a good majority of my family, including my mother are native Texans and I lived in one of the centers of barbecue in the entire world.

[00:39] Austin, Texas surrounded by all the great barbecue people. But you know, I just haven't been able to make brisket as much as I'd like to. Part of that is due to the fact that you know, I live in an apartment and it's kind of illegal to use my smoker even though I have one not saying that I use it or anything because I don't.

[00:52] Let me stop myself real quick because this is a special kind of video because we're going to go down to Houston, Texas with my mom, my dad, my uncle Larry, and we're going to use his hand-built smoker to make this beauty. And to be honest with you, I got to get the heck out of here because it's like four o'clock and I got to go steer the road for two and a half hours.

[01:08] So that's, well, I'm really excited about that part. Let's get out of here and make this, shall we? Okay, let's talk about the most important part here, picking a brisket. If you don't start with a good brisket, you're not going to have a good time. Two things really matter here. A, it needs to be well marbled, so make sure that it's USDA prime at the very least.

[01:24] You don't want a brisket that's super lean with its intramuscular fat. Otherwise, that's going to lead to a tougher, less juicy brisket. One thing is you don't want a thin brisket and you also want that brisket to be as even as possible. You don't want it to have a giant front and then a really skinny back. Otherwise, it's going to cook unevenly.

[01:38] And if you don't believe me, ask award-winning pitmaster Philip. Pick out a good brisket, a big tail, where you can follow the brisket in half, where it almost touches, and then you're good to go.

[01:54] So do your best to find that. Now, I would normally never recommend this, but for a smoked brisket, you really need to trim off about a quarter an inch, or six millimeters off of the fat cap on both sides of the brisket. The fat's really not going to render a ton off. You want enough for it to protect the brisket and sort of base the brisket a little bit, but not too much.

[02:10] And for the record, don't throw away the fat. Freeze it and use it for something else. Okay, now we're ready to rub the brisket, which I feel like oftentimes the seasonings here are really overdone. I like to keep it simple and just the flavor of the smoke and the meat be the star of the show.

[02:22] For single hole packer brisket, which is going to be about 12 and a half pounds or so, wait after it's trimmed, and then do about a half teaspoon for every pound or three grams for every half kilo of kosher salt. To that, you're going to add one tablespoon or nine grams of garlic powder, two tablespoons or 17 grams of sweet paprika.

[02:38] I use like a Hungarian sweet paprika, you know, some little fancy. Half a tablespoon or six grams of mustard powder, and half a tablespoon or four grams of freshly ground black pepper. Then just spoon that for a second and you've got your beef rub.

[02:51] I'm going to sprinkle and rub all of that mixture all over your entire brisket. And then ideally, this should be done about 12 to 24 hours in advance. You can't know big deal, but it's going to be much better if you do. Also, yes, I know these flies are gross and annoying. Trust me, I know.

[03:03] It's fucking flies. Oh my god. Fuck. Smoking brisket requires a lot of tender love, kisses and time, mainly time. So you're probably going to want to start early. Now there are a lot of ways that we can go about this that work, but the key point is that we want the meat to end up at an internal temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

[03:20] 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 93 degrees Celsius. The speed in which you get there is our determining factor. You can go as low as 225 degrees Fahrenheit or 107 degrees Celsius for 12 to 16 hours. Or you can go 265 degrees Fahrenheit or 130 degrees Celsius for 8 to 12 hours.

[03:38] Faster is going to sacrifice a little bit of juicy tenderness for speed. So pick a temperature and get a smoker fired up and coasting around that temp. You can also use a grill as a smoker and there's plenty of guides out there for that. I used to mix up mostly local white oak wood and a touch of hickory wood.

[03:50] Now once your smoker is at temp, pull out your rub brisket, place a leave in digital thermometer in the thickest part of the brisket, and smoke it for the listed temp, making sure to continuously feed the smoker wood to maintain heat and smoke levels.

[04:02] Optionally while it's cooking you can spray it a few times with chicken or beef broth, but try not to do that too much. Now once your brisket reaches around 155 degrees Fahrenheit or 68 degrees Celsius, double wrap it in strong aluminum foil with about a third cup or 78 milliliters of beef or chicken broth.

[04:17] Now make sure you create enough of a base and wrap it super tight so no liquid can leak out. Now this here is what they call the ticsus crispy. Basically the whole purpose of it is to slightly braise the meat. So it's going to speed up your cook time quite a bit without sacrificing too much.

[04:29] Now you can smoke it all the way there of course, but I actually like to use this method. Then place it back in your smoker on a heat proof tray and continue to cook it until it reaches an internal temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit or 93 degrees Celsius. Pull it out, leave it in the foil and let it rest for 45 minutes to an hour.

[04:45] Then once you've laid your brisket to rest, you can now enjoy the fruity flavor but quickly, two things about slicing brisket always wait till the last second to slice it because the pieces dry out very quickly and always slice against the grain. The easiest way to do that is to find the layer of fat separating the point in the flat which you can see in this diagram

[05:00] and then separate the two pieces, then find the grain on those individual pieces and cut it against the grain. Now I know you want a barbecue sauce recipe with my camera so we're just going to shut off all of us filming that. And it's a really easy recipe so it's all just going to be the description if you want to end up making that sauce.

[05:14] Or you can go sauceless, nothing wrong with that. Now when it comes to serving stuff with this, you're going to serve this with pickles which by the way I have a recipe for link in the description. Things like coleslaw, potato salad, maybe some bread, Hokkaido milk bread maybe or those Hokkaido milk buns.

[05:26] Now before we go, just a huge thank you to my uncle Larry for this. He's an incredible craftsman, a father, a forger, an overall nature guy. This video was only made possible because he let me use his giant smoker and you know, just huge thank you to him.

[05:39] Also he hand-built this gigantic arrow thing called an atlattle so that's pretty cool. Okay so now you can officially call yourself a smoky boy. You want to know what else is a smoky boy today? Be roll.

[06:03] Alright guys and that is it. So smoked brisket.

[06:15] It's really a very simple concept. It just requires proper execution of technique. Larry came in clutch and we thank him. With that said, another update on lurch design so we're still working for him. I have a designer who's about to give me all the different mockups that she has.

[06:29] So as of right now, the top ones are pretty much going to be be roll and flaky salt related. There's a cabinet related one but you know, any more suggestions the time to tell me would be now. Now we're going to do more stuff and it seems to me like a lot of you guys want aprons so you know,

[06:43] aprons are probably going to be a thing too. Who knows? Who knows? Because I don't. I literally don't yet. There were a couple people on Instagram who DMed me these incredible illustrations and stuff to give me ideas for shirts.

[06:55] Thank you to you guys. If you guys are watching, thank you, thank you so much. And with that said, if you don't already follow me on Instagram to see all the behind scenes upcoming stuff, then all the links will be down in the description, including my Twitter and all that jazz. So go ahead and check me out.

[07:07] But with that said, if you enjoyed this video or you learned something, leave a like, subscribe, and I will see you next time. On the way to Houston, I'm listening to a really morbid podcast on stuff you should know,

[07:27] one of my favorite podcasts of all time. Oh shit. This is the worst, the worst bottle opener. Let me get a cool shot, bro. Just people looking at me.

[07:39] Come on. Come on. Hey, look at that.