Smoked Brisket Burnt Ends

After trying my hand at smoking a pork butt a few weeks ago, I decided to try a smoked brisket on my new Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. This was a little daunting to me because of the duration of the cook, but it actually wasn’t anymore involved than the pork butt was. And the payoff was incredible.

For this cook, I followed Malcolm Reed‘s recommendation for cooking brisket burnt ends. If you haven’t seen Malcom’s site, HowToBBQRight.com, you’re missing out on a great resource. His videos were very influential in making me want to buy a smoker and start making some of the stuff from his site.

Food: Brisket and Burnt Ends
Temperature: 250°
Cooking time: 9-12 hours
Wood used: Pecan, Cherry
Note: Cooked low and slow until internal temperature reaches 205°

Meat Selection

I headed to butcher to buy brisket a couple days in advance. I was surprised to learn that brisket had gone up from $3.99 to $5.99 per pound. This doesn’t sound like a lot until you consider that (a) the brisket is between 16 and 18 pounds, which means my normal $60 brisket is now $90, and (b) you will typically trim off about a third of the brisket prior to cooking it. That’s a lot of expensive waste. A friend who rode with me said that Costco is still $3.99 for brisket, so I may check there. It saddens me though, because I really love my local butcher. It’s a 30-minute drive and fairly scenic route; I like going there. And I love smoked brisket!

Trimming

I got up at 4AM to get the meat trimmed and start the smoker. This was the least fun part of my day.

I ended up trimming seven pounds of fat from the brisket. I just bought a new boning knife a couple of weeks ago and have figured out that I would have preferred the 6″ blade over this one’s 8″ blade, but it works wonderful and I was able to nicely trim away all of the deckle and much of the extraneous fat from both the flat and the point. It took longer than I expected — probably about 40 minutes total — and looking back at it, I probably would have left just a little more fat on the bottom of the point. I think where I ended up was fine, but I’d probably shoot for 1/8″ of fat on the bottom next time.

It’s depressing to weight a bowl of trimmings and realized that you’ve cut off a third of a brisket, which accounts for roughly $30 of the cost. Some (not much) of the trimmings would have been good for grinding to make blended burgers — I may look at getting a hand grinder in the near term. Here’s the flat and point trimmed, before and after applying rub. I used three rubs here: first, a base rub of salt and pepper with a little garlic powder, then a Carolina barbecue rub, and finally, a coarse rub of Montreal steak seasoning to give it some texture. You can tell this smoked brisket is going to be awesome!

Setting up Smoker

My plan was to start lighting the smoker by 4:30 AM, but that didn’t work. It was closer to 5:00 by the time I got outside to light the chimney starter, mostly because trimming took longer than expected. Like last time, I used the minion method to ensure the charcoal would last as long as possible and keep the temperature controlled. I was looking to stay between 225 and 250 for the next 10-12 hours. I used the last of my pecan wood and some cherry wood for the smoked brisket.

Once I got a half-chimney starter of charcoals burning, I added them to the smoker and let it come up to temperature. Then I loaded the flat on the lower rack and the point on the upper rack, and tried (unsuccessfully) to sleep on the chair in the living room for a couple hours until the rest of the family began to wake.

Removing Point to Pan

After about four hours, the point had a nice bark going. I moved it to an aluminum pan and added beef broth. The idea here is to keep it juicy and get it to render down so that it’s as soft as possible when I make burnt ends out of it. I covered the pan with tin foil and put it back on the smoker. At the same time, I also wrapped the flat in two layers of butcher paper to help keep it juicy. When I say that smoked brisket is pretty easy, this was the bulk of the work.

Making the Burnt Ends

Once the point had reached 205, they were ready to come off to glaze them. I removed the broth and separated it from the rendered fat. After slicing the point into cubes and added some barbecue sauce to the strained broth in the pan, I glazed the top of the burnt ends with a little sauce and used a silicon brush to spread it slightly, then put them back into the heat for 15 minutes to set the glaze.

The burnt ends came out great — they just melted in your mouth.

Finishing the Flat

I let the flat go until it too reached 205, which took another hour and a half or so. Looking back at it, I let the temperature in the smoker drop a bit (needed more fuel) and that delayed the flat from reaching 205 whereas if I’d been more diligent at getting the fuel added quickly and brought the temperature up faster. I also think this impacted the juiciness of the brisket, though it was not overly dry either.

I put the flat in a cooler, still wrapped in butcher paper, into a cooler and let it rest for two hours. At the one-hour mark, I opened the cooler lid enough to vent off the heat inside. At dinner time, the brisket was still hot and sliced perfectly. It had the flexibility you would expect in properly cooked smoked brisket and an excellent bark.

Final Thoughts on Smoked Brisket

The brisket was good and everyone liked it. We had four dinners and a lunch from it. The burnt ends didn’t last nearly as long unfortunately. We ate about half of those on the first day. I vacuum-sealed the rest and reheated them in a pot of water on the second night, and that was the end of them. I could have eaten those daily for the next week. Seriously.

The process was simple, but very long. Getting up a 4:00 AM made for a really rough night — I’m too old for this stuff — and I probably could have gotten up at 6:00 or 6:30 instead and been just fine. Getting faster at trimming will certainly help as well.

Cooking Log

Additional Sources

• HowToBBQRight: How to Make Burnt Ends
• Carolina Brewery Carolina-Style BBQ Rub