Well. We smoked the 16 lb. high end choice brisket, and it turned out great.
It sure helps to start out with a fine cut of meat, well marbled, flexible, flat evenly proportioned. If that wasn't enough, I combined the Butcher's BBQ Injection with the Butcher's Prime Dust and thoroughly injected the brisket.
The great quality brisket and the injection sure made a difference. The best brisket I've done to date. To quote my wife, "Wow. THIS is VERY good." It was very tasty, moist, nice smoke flavor. Really reminded me of some of the brisket I've had many years ago in Texas. Probably better. Nice moisture. Not in the least bit dry. And we didn't use a barbecue sauce. Just ate her like she came out of the smoker.
Cold brisket injected, heavily rubbed/covered with Dr. BBQ' all purpose rub and refrigerated for several hrs. More rub then threw it into a cold smoker at 11 pm Friday night. Smoker set to 180* with 3 oz of hickory and 3 oz of wild cherry, split into 4 pieces (I had smoke for the whole cook). Went to bed, and when I got up at 7:00 am, turned the smoker up to 225*. I never touched the brisket or the smoker again until the brisket hit 188* at 3:00 pm. Pulled the brisket. FTC for 3 hrs. Separated the point from the flat, sliced the flat and ate. Exquisite.
A 16 hr smoke (1 hr/lb), and if I didn't decide to play with the temp, I wouldn't have touched the smoker or the brisket for the whole 16 hrs. Don't think I could ever enjoy a stick burner.
Placed the remaining sliced brisket into the fridge for leftovers today. Vacuumed sealed the remaining uncut flat for dinner in the future. Threw the point back into the smoker for 2.5 hrs. Making Smokin's beinks or boinks later today with half of the rather large point and reserving the other half for future BBQ Smoked Beans. That big boy is contributing to roughly 5-6 meals in all.
We really enjoyed this one. The only problem was with my injection technique. I had injection on the counter, floors, walls, refrigerator, microwave, oven, and me. Should have wrapped the brisket in saran wrap like Smokin had previously suggested to me. But I was careful and it wasn't overly messy, just had some cleaning to do.
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