Memphis Styled BBQ Brisket

This holiday season to add to my gifts of the Larouex Sauces, I do a big batch of smoked brisket (dry rubbed, Memphis style), vacuum pack it and provide the instructions for re-heating. Ahh, it is absolute perfection.

My approach to making this is designed to be replicated easily by any home cook with a cheap Brickman charcoal smoker. The technique is simple, time consuming, but simple.

Step 1: Selecting the Brisket Meat

The first step (as it is true in all cooking) is to procure excellent quality brisket meat. I get mine exclusively from the team at B&E meats in Des Moines (a suburb of Seattle, WA) and they have a nice solid meat thickness and an excellent fat cap.

The are a number of key things to look for in selecting brisket and I inspect the fat cap and the fat line in the meat. If it is spongy or dicolored, I would not use it. A nice hard fat cap with dense fat is important.

Comments

[aleryan]

Wow! This looks amazing! I did buy one of those fancy charcoal grills with the side firebox and you just inspired me to get better with it this summer. Thank you! I'm going to go get a tissue now to wipe the drool off my face. LOL.

[Gergohogbeido]

um.......nice

[TNPcorpsman84]

If you're like me and always forget to soak your wood, you can soak a bunch ahead of time, drain and freeze in ziplock bags!

[desertdog]

Yum! It is 6 pm on a Monday and I am hungry. Wish I had seen that on Friday! Nice job.

[robcash25]

Sounds good BUT, I'm from Memphis and have lived here my whole life. True Memphis BBQ is not BEEF. We use pork ...

[shootfilm]

Another Memphian here; I was going to say the same thing!

[ARJOON]

but anyway both of them is not so good for health. or extremely bad for health and any way they are my favorites.

[gijoebob]

It's that Step 6 that makes a difference! I smoke meats on a regular basis but that is something I have never done but it makes total sense. I will do that with the next brisket I smoke, probably for the Fourth of July. Thanks for the tip!

[teqsun.com]

I am confused about the 48 hour bucket step, after brining. do you empty the water before putting the briskets back into the bucket?

[LarouexBBKing]

The bucket and brine flavor the meat. You drain the meat after brining and dry it. Then brush with sauce and rub. The step with wrapping in foil is likely overkill, you could season them and through them back in the empty bucket and it would be just as great.

[www.microbike.ie]

same question her :-) but i guess he does on the picture the bucket with foiled meat seems empty of water

[lemminggenocide]

not sure it's a good idea to put them into the fridge warm, could encourage bacterial growth. doesn't matter anyway, if anyone made these they would never make it to the fridge XD

[LarouexBBKing]

I have been doing this kind of meat prep for a long time. I was a chef for many years and so I understand the food poisoning stuff. To be clear, the vacuum sealing while the meat is warm makes it nice and tight and makes the meal seal up better, but I do cool it and place it on racks with air flow around it. This cools it properly. That said, the salt and the smoke make it even more impervious to common spoilage issues. I have had the meat under refrigeration for weeks and it is still great.

[Phyldar]

The main reason not to put very warm food into the fridge is that it will drastically raise the temp of the inside of your fridge and this can lead to the spoilage of everything you have in there. Also, don't cover/wrap warm food if you do put it in the fridge as this will hold in the warmth for a much longer time.

[NewB007]

I've always heard that putting warm food in the fridge could encourage bacterial growth, too. The reason given was than the outside will get cold relatively quickly, while the center remains warm. Since bacterial growth rates are geometrically proportional to temperature, it makes sense that higher temp = much more bacteria. Thermodynamics, however, don't seem to agree with the original assumption that the inside will be warmer than it would have been had the food been left out to reach room temperature. The higher temperature gradient will necessarily lead to faster heat transfer given an identical food item placed in the fridge versus being left out at room temperature, barring some sort of thermocline effect (a thermocline wouldn't seem to be reasonable here, anyways, as the brisket is not liquid and has no distinct layers). So, basically, I can't see how you could be growing more bacteria by cooling the food faster, even if the center is warmer than the outside for a while (the center would stay warmer on the counter, too, but would be less noticeable due to the smaller temperature gradient). Has anyone ever seen a study on this? I would love to know for sure.

[bottom-dragger]

step 4 - you're going to get an offset (that doesn't have a water bath) step 5- you have to use a waterbath? uh, no. it doesn't do jack step 6 - you've wrapped it in foil and require a waterbath? if you have a vertical, take that water pan and fill it with clean sand and cover it with foil to keep the sand clean. it'll moderate any temp swings in your smoker. the water don't do jack. it will not pump moisture into your meat. no commercial pit or offset runs a waterbath why soak your chips? the moisture has to evaporate before they begin to produce smoke. your meat will no longer absorb smoke flaver after reaching 150° so you need to get that working in the begining. if you're using chips, rather than chunks, wrap them in a foil packette punched with holes to keep it smoking and not bursting into flames. the first response was sometime in 2005, in the last 5 years i hope you've had some learning experience. you need to mod this post.

[jsummerlin]

No water? Ever heard of humidity? Which is hotter a low humidity day or high? Is this a commercial pit? I use a small dutch oven with a lid and wood chunks, with no water a dead flame it is called. I have had good success with a small box smoker from Wal Mart. Gas flame, low setting, smoke till the smoke is gone, wrap in foil to finish, cook 10-12 hours.

[janettetsmith]

@bottom-dragger: Perhaps the next time you feel the need to advise someone of his or her mistakes you could be less rude about it. Nobody is here intentionally trying to belittle someone else, but then again, maybe you are not either. Maybe you are just like that. At any rate, try the more pleasant version; you might end up seeing some results for your efforts. Oh, by the way, my father soaks his chips, not for steam, to keep the chips longer. They smoke just fine. Please contain your urge to correct me, we are from Texas, the land of brisket, well actually all barbecue.

[bottom-dragger]

my last line was unneeded. as was yours. residence does not ensure quality. re-read my writing on soaking chips as it appears you have misinterpreted what i wrote. the rest of the information and the way it was presented points out contridictions, corrections, and explainations.

[sturmey]

If you vacuum packed it before placing it in the oven and then did a "boil in bag" process for the hour+ that you did in the oven, you would kill whatever bacteria that was sealed in the bag, this could theoretically give you a few extra days at room temperature if you wanted to take it to the lake/camping. Of course you would be best served by using a pressure canner to boil it, and you would have to have bags that were food safe at high temperature. I'm not sure I could wait that long though, the brisket looks amazing!

[bigmama1079]

detailed and good pics AND looks delicious. my next brisket's going to be pastrami, but after that this looks likes a darn good application. and to those who would complain about authenticity, why not make your own instructable and quit whining?

[rvsnmms]

I believe one thing to consider is the bacteria that is, or could possibly be alive. If you have taken the temperature above the required temperature, then there is no bacteria present. Assuming there is no contamination during packaging, then the vacuum sealed container should save it for a long time. As an example canned Tuna fish survives at room temperature for a long period of time. It is heated and sealed and done, so I think the refrigeration concern most likely rests in the temperature rise and compromise of other contents. If it is still warm when you want to put it in the refrigerator, then you can compensate by providing the necessary heat energy along with the brisket. Now we can all have fun with Thermo, bear in mind that a true balance of energy is going to take quite a bit more ice than the equivalent mass of brisket, based on the higher temperature of the brisket. It's probably not necessary to provide all the heat (or cold) energy but you should provide most of it... Awesome instructible, I love me some brisket.

[twocvbloke]

*want* That brisket looks sooooo good!!! I love wood smoked meats, and this has got to be the best there is... :D

[FreshPineSent]

The first time I brined meat, I was so amazed. Great Instructable!

[LarouexBBKing]

HowToI have Larouex Sauces and a PDF for this instructable available on my site now.

BBQ and Pepper Sauces

[Faelynn]

We made our first brisket this weekend and used your recipe mostly (we smoked in mesquite, oak and maple) and oh yummy! Thank you! :D

[pmetro]

excellent receipe, I have yet to smoke a brisket, but i modified the process and smoked a chicken on a verticle roaster on my brinkman and it was best BBQ chicken I've had in quite a while. I also use your rub receipe as a general purpose seasoning. thanks for your posting , pete

[1954 Coldspot]

I'm so glad I found you guys. I have been smoking for about 10 years. I converted an old refrigerator into a smoker a couple of years ago and I have my own dry rub recipe for briskets. The problem I had was moisture retention. Then it dawned on me why not brine them first. Then I found you guys. Hip-hip hurray. I'll let you know how it came out. Rhys

[spinach_dip]

[quoting] I then wrap them in foil, put them back in the bucket and let them marry flavors for another 48 hours. Store in a cool place! [/quoting] I assume that when you put them "back in the bucket", you have already dumped that brine out, right? Mmmm, looks yummy!

[kevinsummers]

Very nice instructable. After living in Texas for 15 years (where beef brisket reigns supreme), I have perfected my brisket very much along the lines you have described. I agree that after a couple of hours of smoking, wrapping that rascal and "finishing off" in an oven is the ideal way to go. Couple of questions: Is Larouex sauce your own creation? (I see you have some on eBay for sale) or is it commercially available? Also, what vacuum sealer do you use? I am pretty close to picking up a Tilia, but I am still looking. Cheers...and good smokes to you. -Kevin

[LarouexBBKing]

BTW, the vacuum packer I choose was the "FoodSaver V2840 Advanced Design Flip-Up Vacuum-Packaging System". I am happy with it.

Amazon has it @ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000AANXDG/qid=1135936450/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl60/104-1285834-8418320?n=507846&s=home-garden&v=glance

[LarouexBBKing]

Kevin,

Ya the Larouex Sauces are my own deal. I have a link to my blog that aggregates the whole process @ http://spaces.msn.com/members/larryj/Blog/cns!1pdaInqvUPMqewNTRUUGeiPw!713.entry and I plan to put this up on instructables soon. I sold and gave away my entire batch this holiday season, so I plan a new round to have them ready in March. I plan to do a lot hotter sauces this time.