Originally posted by rendavis25:
I've done around 15-20 now. Some have been bad. Most have been good. I've experimented with most methods I've read here. Have a brined brisket on the pit now with a couple of pork shoulders for work tomorrow. Just wanted to say thanks again to everybody that contributes in these threads. I never get tired of reading them and feel like I learn something new in every one.
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I think that there's an inherent fear for newbies of ruining a cut of meat. Guess what? It's gonna happen. Anyone that's smoked on a pit has had their day of smoked lava rock briskets, tough as leather, dry, ribs that were too crusty, etc.
It's a learning process, and your pit may perform differently than mine. Meat is always a variable, as is external temperature, condition of the wood you're using, amount of attention you're paying to the smoke process, steady heat, no looking, etc.
You're gonna screw something up. In those cases, trim off the bad parts, and chop up what you can salvage and BBQ sammys. Then hop back out to your pit and try again.
Here's an interesting article I came across that I thought some of you'd like to read:
The History of Smoked Brisket It's definitely not what you'd expect.
by
Daniel Vaughn · January 24, 2014
What you know about the history of smoked brisket in Texas is
probably wrong. People have been eating brisket since the first pits
were dug in the earth, but only by a sort of default: it was standard
practice to cook whole animals for the big community celebrations, which
means people ate that cut of meat as part of a smoked-meat meal where
all the various cuts were served. These days, smoked brisket on its own
is widely considered the king of the Texas barbecue menu, but it hasn't
always been that way, and contrary to some bold claims by certain
barbecue joints, it didn't start with Central Texas meat markets.
Black's BBQ in Lockhart credits themselves with being the first to
use briskets exclusively on their barbecue menu. That was in the late
fifties. By the sixties the beef purveyor IBP was shipping individual
beef cuts in boxes, and the tradition of working with half carcasses saw
a swift decline. It wasn't until then that most of the barbecue joints
around the state started adopting this inexpensive cut of meat. Joe
Capello of City Market in Luling remembers when they would separate the
forequarter away from the carcasses. The rib section and the sirloin
would make it into the raw meat cases while the entirety of the front of
the animal-the cross-cut chuck-would be separated and smoked. Back in
those days you didn't ask for brisket or clod at these Central Texas
meat markets. As Capello explains, "Customers would just come in and ask
for beef. If they wanted it fatty we'd give them the brisket. If they
wanted lean then we'd do the shoulder clod." The menu at Smitty's Market
in Lockhart is reminder of those options. "Lean" means shoulder clod
and "Fat" means brisket.
Smitty's Market menu
Allen Prine up in Wichita Falls remembers it the same way. His
grandfather Harold Prine Sr. opened Prine's Market in 1925. They sold
hams and beef, but not specifically brisket. They would just get the
whole forequarter and butcher it themselves. "We'd cut these big these
big 110-pound pieces into about eleven different shaped pieces. We
cooked them all exactly like we do the briskets now." He doesn't
remember serving brisket on its own until about thirty years ago when
they started ordering cryovaced ones. "It's always been that way since."
Two things came together to create the brisket we know today.
The
Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications (IMPS) for beef were first
published in 1958, and boxed beef came onto the market in 1965.
IMPS was a guide used in contracts for large meat purchases to ensure
the buyer (read: at first, primarily the military) could get a predictable product
when they ordered a thousand chuck rolls.
These same specs are followed by meat packing plants for retail
cuts, and customers as small as mom-and-pop barbecue joints order their
meat based on IMPS. Whether they know it or not, that whole boneless
brisket is really IMPS item #120. I wanted to know how much differently
cattle were butchered before IMPS. Did briskets in the twenties look
like they do today? I needed an expert.
Steve Olson separating the brisket from the forequarter in a NAMP video
Steve Olson is a cattle rancher in upstate New York, but he worked
for USDA for decades. When he started his government job they needed
someone to overhaul IMPS in 1983, and as he puts it "I was a lousy
writer" and the specs didn't require any flowery language. He took to
the task. Today you can find him and his Jersey accent starring in the
meat cutting videos provided by
NAMP.
I asked him to surmise how Texas meat markets might have cut a brisket
from the forequarter. He said the location of the cross cut used today
that creates the top edge of the brisket is probably where they cut it
back then too. The end of the sternum where the brisket cut begins is
what he called a "landmark" for meat cutters back before IMPS. But it
would probably have been smoked with the bones still attached. It wasn't
until the mid-seventies when boneless briskets became standard. Steve
traveled with some cryovac reps then as "they were trying to get the
industry to make everything boneless so the cryovac wouldn't leak." Now
you can't find a bone-in brisket.
I'm not sure what the briskets looked like back in the early
twentieth century, but the earliest mention I can find of smoked brisket
isn't from the fifties, and it wasn't at a barbecue joint. Rather it is
from newspaper advertisements from two grocery stores in 1910. Naud
Burnett in Greenville and Watson's Grocery in El Paso were both serving
smoked brisket from their deli counter along with other traditionally
Jewish food items like smoked white fish and Kosher sausage. I'm not
certain of the religion of these grocers, but their menu is geared
toward a Jewish clientele.
A few years later in 1916 the Weil Brothers in Corpus Christi
advertised their smoked brisket. The store was owned by Alex and Moise
Weil. Their father Charles Weil was a Jew who emigrated to Texas from
Alsace, France, in 1867. Pastrami (cured and smoked brisket) is a common
item on Jewish menus, but in their store they sold pastrami (pastromie
in the ad) along with smoked brisket. It probably wasn't served hot on
butcher paper like the Central Texas meat markets, but those meat
markets wouldn't be listing brisket on their menu for another forty
years. [/I]
[/I]
If you know the requirements of Kosher food, it makes sense that
Jewish immigrants would be the first ones to smoke specifically brisket
in the States. The hind quarter of beef isn't Kosher unless the sciatic
nerve is removed, and that is rarely done by butchers. That leaves the
forequarter including the brisket, which is revered as
the cut
of meat to enjoy for Passover. Evidently, it was also popular enough for
the smoked version to make it into Jewish grocery stores in Texas long
before it became the darling of our barbecue joints.
This post was edited on 7/2 2:03 PM by joeywa