Mother's Day brisket

One of my resolutions for 2017 was to post more on food. In addition to our garden, and involvement with the local Farmers Market, Em and I do a lot of cooking and it seems a shame not to share.

This past weekend was not only Mother's Day, it was my daughter Cokie's Masters graduation from Southeastern (outstanding grad student in Health Sciences, Magna Cum Laude - Oh, Lawdy!) and my sister and BIL's anniversary. We decided to have a big celebration at my house.

The top two suggestions for entree were Shrimp & Grits and Brisket. Em said, "We can do both!".  With one problem...  Em's S&G are awesome, but in the 3 years I've owned my Akorn grill I've never done a slow meat cook of any kind.

So I went to the web and researched. There are several great forums, articles, and videos on cooking brisket. Enough to make it somewhat confusing. But what I learned was that I needed to make a few "modifications" to my grill.

1) A thick pizza stone. This sits on a lower grate. A 14" round stone leaves about 2 inches of spacing between edge of stone and interior of pit. The stone not only deflects direct heat to the meat, but it also acts like a heat sink, stabilizing and holding heat in.

2) It was suggested to wrap the stone in heavy duty aluminum foil. More often than not, the stone breaks when close to flame. The foil keeps in one piece.

3) A dual-probe meat thermometer, for measuring meat temperature and one for grill temp. Turns out the cost of a remote unit was only slightly more than a regular unit, so I went with the remote set. A wise choice on my part!

4) A couple of cheap aluminum pans from the dollar store.

5. Wood chunks - NOT chips! Also, after reading much heated debate, I went with briquets over charcoal chunks. Again, a very wise decision!

When it comes to rubbings and coatings, I believe there are more options here than there are stars in the Milky Way. So I went "All out Stubbs" for no particular reason other than I love Stubbs products.

I bought a 12-pound packer and rubbed it down with half-half Stubbs Mopping Sauce and Stubbs Original. I then sprinkled Stubbs Beef Rub on the mixed sauce and rubbed it in a bit. I then wrapped up the brisket in Saran and stuck it in the fridge overnight.

The next evening about 7pm, I started my fire. Built a mound in the bottom of my Akorn using 7 pounds of briquets (which turned out to be 5 pounds more than I needed) and about 15 wood chunks (which was about twice what I needed).  I then lit a small starter cube in the middle and let it burn a few coals hot. Then I placed the lower grate, the foiled pizza stone, a foil tray to catch drippings, and then the Akorn cast iron grate on which the brisket would sit. I also coated the iron grate with Pam Grill spray to prevent sticking.

When the temp got to 200, I put the brisket on and stuck the other probe into the thick end of the meat. On the Akorn, you have to be careful because the temp can overshoot your target. It requires "braking" the temp and making minor adjustments.

By about 8:30pm, everything was going great. The grill temp was a steady 230 degrees. It stayed that way until the very end! I went inside and fell asleep on the sofa watching a movie.

Earlier that night, a fox came into our yard and drove Belle crazy. Well about 4:00am, she goes crazy again and woke me up. I quickly checked my remote hoping I didn't miss anything. Turns out the interior was at 173, just 2 degrees short of my alarm.

So while I was up, I opened the grill (first time!) and saw this beautiful black piece of meat. I put it into another foil pan which had heavy duty aluminum foil in it, and wrapped the foil around the meat. Stuck the probe back into the thick part, put the pan on the grill, and set the new alarm temp to 200.

At 6:00am, Belle woke me up again, this time a deer. Doggone wildlife know something about brisket because when I looked at the remote, it was showing 196. So I pulled the pan off the grill, stuck it into an ice chest and let it sit inside for an hour. Then I put the pan into the top oven in my house, with no heat on, just letting it cool down albeit slowly.

The true test came when my brother-in-law showed up, the Barbecue King of Cecilia. I knew there was NO chance I could do as well as he could, just tried to make it palatable. He and his two sons (my nephews) each took a slice and tasted. "Whatever you did, document it. This is the best brisket I've had". Tears rolled from my eyes, lol.  

Of course later my younger son TigerJake would show up, he who now lives in Texas. He samples the meat then tells me that there's a couple of Texas joints that do better. 

All I know is that when my 85-year old mother can cut a slice of brisket using her fork, it's got to be tender!

A few post-cook observations:

1. There was this film on the inside of my Akorn. It looked like a shiny coating that was peeling off. Except the grill never had an inside coating, it's porcelain. I did some searching on the web and from what I gather, this could've been a by-product of too much wood/smoke at a low temp. I will say I've never seen so much smoke as came out that grill during this cook. Looked like I was burning diesel fuel.

2. The pizza stone cracked. But the foil kept it together. From what I've read, it doesn't matter how much it cracks. As long as it stays together in the foil, it can be reused infinite times. There is a type of pizza stone made from Corderite that doesn't crack. But it requires seasoning a couple times, and later, special cleaning. Otherwise, it can create a bad stink when heated!  Will stick with the broken stone, lol.

3. I probably used too much wood. While it gave the meat a nice smoke taste, everything else stunk up smoke. Like I said, I'd never seen that much smoke - from anything!

4. The remote thermometer is a must-have! Not having to open the pit but once during the cook was a blessing!

Can't wait to do this again. Next time I'll take more photos.