I did my first corn beef this past weekend and was surprised by the cooktime. The high for the day was 14 or 15 and there was a lite snow falling all day. My reading on the brisket lead me to believe the cook time would be roughly 1.5 hours per pound.
As we all know, finding a large corn beef brisket is really hard. The one I had was around 4 lbs. I placed it in the smoker at noon. At midnight it was still struggling with an internal temp in the low 170s. The outside of the smoker was cold. The temp was set at 225.
At 2:30 I pulled it at about 180 internal temp. This was 14.5 hours. I was expecting a brick since it was such a small piece of meat. It turned out really nice, moist with no dry spots.
I did a search on insulating and it appears that the smoker should be good down to sub zero with no problems. I was wondering if anyone had created some sort of insulating blanket for the 4 sides, leaving the top/bottom open the the elements. Based on what I could find it appears this is not necessary.
Based on the cook time of the brisket, does this seem in line with what others have done? Or, was the outside a factor in the cook time. I've only smoked butts and salmon so this is my first shot at brisket. I will be doing another brisket this weekend. Just a flat brisket not a corn beef brisket. It is around 9 lbs if I recall correctly.
Dale
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