Brisket Experiment

Since being diagnosed with high blood pressure,  I have had to be more concious of my sodium intake. This means that my dry rub recipes had to change dramatically.   I have a couple of very good no-salt blends that work really well and the flavor of my bbq does not suffer. Tonight, I needed a quick rub for my brisket cook and I had some Southwestern Chipotle Mrs. Dash in supply.  Well, I thought I would give it a shot and see how it turns out.  This post has a picture of the rubbed brisket. I will post later with the results.

Burnt Ends: A Beefy Treat!

I love all the traditional BBQ meats; beef and pork ribs, chicken, pork shoulder and picnic and beef brisket.  But I have to admit, I like brisket the best because of the deep, rich flavor of the bark (crust) and the flavor of smoked beef.

In most BBQ restaurants in the midwest east of Missouri and especially here in Indiana, beef brisket is served either sliced or chopped.  There is another way to enjoy brisket that is mostly known to our more southern brother and sisters – Burnt Ends!  Burnt Ends are quite possibly the tastiest morsels of BBQ you will ever eat and enjoy.  So, what are Burnt Ends?  I am so glad you asked.

First, here is a small lesson about the brisket and its parts.  You can buy a brisket whole; known as a “Packer”, or you can buy it in separate parts of which there are two; the “Point” and the “Flat”.  Below is a picture of a whole packer.  The left half of the brisket is the “point” which is distinguished by its rounded end.  The right half of the brisket is the “flat” which is distinguished by its flat end.  Again, you can buy these parts individually from you butcher in most cases.

For this post, we are interested in the “Point” – this is where the burnt ends are made from.  To make burnt ends from a whole packer you prepare your brisket as normal – low and slow!

Rub the brisket with your favorite dry rub, put it on a smoker to cook between 225 and 250 degrees over charcoal and smoke wood.  When the flat of the brisket reaches 185* internal temperature, the brisket is ready to separate the point from the flat.  Remove the brisket and run a knife along the line of fat between the two pieces.  This is very easy to find because the fat literally holds the two pieces together.  This may take some practice and maybe I will write about it sometime but right now I just want to get you through the basics.  Once you have separated the two pieces, wrap the flat in heavy duty foil and let it rest at least an hour before slicing and serving it.  The point on the other hand is to be cut into small cubes, coated with your dry rub and put back on the smoker for 2 to 2 1/2 more hours.  When they are done, they will be smokey, tasty bits of brisket known so lovingly as Burnt Ends!   Friends, there is no better eating!

I Like to drizzle my favorite sauce on them and serve them with potato salad or cole slaw – yum!  Here are a couple of pictures of some I did this past weekend.  They were so good!

Big A's BBQ Cubed Steak w/Cheddar & Swiss

I had two nice cubed steaks in the freezer that I decided to throw on the grill this Memorial Day weekend.  These were very nice cuts and I have never, ever cooked a cubed steak before.  I checked with a few friends on my favorite BBQ forums and got a few ideas.

Originally, I thought I would smoke them low and slow hoping to tenderize them like a brisket.  However, my good friends who have been doing real BBQ a lot longer than me said that was not the best idea.  So, I took used a hybrid approach of braising and grilling to come up with a dish that was not only tender but very, very good!

In keeping with my prior performance as a good BBQ friend to many on the internet, I am going to share with you what I did so that you can share in my experience and perhaps have something you can try for yourself.  You will need a few items but not much as this is a very easy recipe – this is what you need…

• Fresh Cubed Steak
• Fresh Onions
• Fresh Green Peppers
• Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt or Salt Substitute
• Black Pepper
• Onion Powder
• Garlic Powder
• Italian Seasoning
• Your Favorite BBQ Sauce
• Apple Juice

First, I put my two cubed steaks into a cooking pan and coated it with olive oil on both sides.  Then I seasoned them in the pan on both sides with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and italian seasoning.  After they sat in the fridge a couple of hours, I put equal parts of BBQ sauce and apple juice in the pan with the meat so that they were covered.  Then, I chopped up some onions and green peppers and threw those in.  Next I covered with foil and put them on the grill over medium heat so that the meat could braise done.  This only took about 30 minutes.

After the meat was braised to my liking, I took them out of the pan and finished them on the grill.  All I needed was a couple of minutes per side so that I could crust it up a little bit.  Ok, so I thought this was going to be some very tough and wasted meat but I was very wrong.  I came out pretty good – ok, not perfect, but It was very tasty.  I cut them against the grain into strips, put some swiss and cheddar cheese on top and let the cheese melt.  I created a pretty nice little treat.

Big A's Smoked Twice-Grilled Chicken

First, I want to say thank you to all the men and women who serve this great country of ours through military service.  I appreciate all you do for us!

Now, inspired by some great great down-south recipes of the past, I decided to do some BBQ chicken for Memorial Day.  So, I wanted to do something a little different because BBQ chicken is one of those dishes that came become fairly common really quick.

My youngest daughter is not a big fan of smoked chicken because she likes it char-grilled; however, I like the taste of smoke on my chicken.  So, I had to come up with a happy compromise – Big A’s Smoked Twice-Grilled Chicken.  Ok, so this is not a rocket-science recipe but it went over so well I thought I would share what I did with my BBQ friends.

You are going to need a few items, so the ingredients are listed below.  Note that I use salt substitute because I have to keep my High Blood Pressure under control and sodium content must be kept to a minimum.  This particular recipe will have a sodium content of less than 100 mg.  Okay, here we go.

Ingredients:

• Fresh Chicken Wings and/or Thighs
• Extra-Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt or Salt Substitute
• Black Pepper
• Onion Powder
• Garlic Powder
• Italian Seasoning
• Your Favorite BBQ Dry Rub
• Your Favorite BBQ Sauce
• Your Favorite Smoke Wood

Prepare your grill for indirect cooking.  This means you pile your coals on one side of the grill while the other half has no coals under the grate.  Make sure you get your coals good and hot.

Place the fresh chicken in a large bowl or pot, then coat it liberally with Extra-Virgin Olive Oil.  Lightly salt the oiled chicken – you don’t want too much because your dry rub will be applied later.  Now, add black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder and italian seasoning.  Make sure the fresh, oiled chicken is coated with all these ingredients.

Next, you are going to sear-grill the chicken directly over medium to high heat coals.  Don’t overcook, you just want to crisp the skin and get some grill marks on the chicken.  Then, remove the chicken from the hot side of the grill and put it on the other side because now we want it to smoke for a while.

Sprinkle the seared chicken with your favorite dry rub, throw on some smoke wood and close your grill.  Try not to let the grill get hotter than 300°, we want the chicken to get some good smoking time in before it gets done.  Baste the chicken from time to time throughout the cook to your liking but at least two times.It should cook for 1 to 1 .5 hours or until the internal temperature of the chicken is 170°.  Baste the chicken from time to time throughout the cook to your liking but at least two times.  When the chicken gets done, the skin may have soften up a little, so now you want to put one last blast of direct grill heat on it to firm it up a bit before you take it off.

That’s it!  Plate it up, serve it and take all your bows!

Big-A's Twice Rubbed Brisket

Getting Back in the Game

It has been a while since I cooked a brisket so I thought I would make my comeback with an experimental bang. Recently, I have been cooking a lot of beef BBQ because it is easy on the High-Blood Pressure versus pork. However, beef is a little less forgiving than pork and cooking it to perfection requires good recipes, good techniques and a good amount of patience.

Getting it Ready

So, I went to my favorite neighborhood butcher whom I will not name until they decide to pay me for shameless plugs that will boost their business. The brisket weighed in at 10.94 lbs. and is a very nice cut. I began by trimming the fat in the traditional manner. You can check one of my favorite BBQ forum sites for instructions that I refer to frequently: Prepping A Brisket.

After the trimming was done I pulled my Twice-Rubbed trick. First, I hand-massaged a mixture of salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder onto the brisket very liberally – easy on the salt though because you don’t want the crust to be too salty. Then I coated the brisket with my favorite yellow mustard. This is what we call a mustard slather and it is typically applied before any seasoning is applied. After the brisket was slathered with the yellow mustard, I them applied my favorite BBQ dry rub very liberally until the brisket was completely covered.  Then, into the fridge for a chillin’ until time to go onto the smoker.

Firing Up the Smoker

I always cook my briskets on one of my WSMs (Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker).  So I loaded her up with Royal Oak lump charcoal. I find that lump give meat a natural and clean flavor versus briquettes, but please… let us not get into that holy war right now!  Next, I put on a mix of hickory and oak chunks for smoke wood. I put the meat on the smoker as soon as I fired it up; I did not wait for the smoker to get up to 220* first. I like for the meat to smoke as long as possible before it gets to warm. This is very helpful to the smoke ring – especially using lump charcoal – in my experience.

The Cook
The meat went on the smoker at midnight exactly.  I inserted the temperature probe and the meat was not as cold as I would liked it to have been. It read 51* and I usually like to see it start off between 38-41*.  For me, that means a minimal smoke ring if any at all when cooking with lump.  Oh well, on with the cook.

The temperature of the WSM stabilized around 1:00a and I watched a movie, posted on twitter and went to bed. Yeah, that’s right – the WSM is pretty much set it and forget! I love my WSMs.  I woke up about 8:00a and the brisket was at 165* and I am cooking this one to 195*.  The smoker temp was rock steady all night long between 225-230*.

At 10:30a the meat temperature was 175* – stubborn brisket!  Anyway, that meant that this baby would cook for 12+ hours.  No worries though; with the WSM, I don’t have to add more fuel until maybe around the 18 hour mark.  I don’t use water in the WSM water pan so this cook can just roll on until its done – unattended.

1:00p – Finally! 195* and ready to come off the smoker. Sometimes I take the brisket off at 170*, wrap in foil and then let is finish cooking to 195*; but not this time. I wanted this one cook all the way done without foiling until after it was finished.  So, that’s what I did; I wrapped in foil and put it in my meat warmer until serving time.

The Results

Sorry, I just took a quick break to get another taste of the brisket! lol!  Ok, back to work!  This brisket had a very nice bark and the flavor was incredible.  It was a good idea to go easy on the salt in the first layer of rub because I could definitely taste the spices I applied in that first round of seasoning.  This was the tastiest bark I have ever had on a piece of BBQ.

The meat was very tender and retained some juiciness but no where near what I really like.  Still it was a very flavorful brisket that I would not be ashamed to turn in at a competition if I had to.  Overall, I am very happy with the results and will do the same thing again except I will foil at 170* and see if I can get it a bit juicier.  Anyway, here are the finishing shots – enjoy!

Oh – by the way, Big-A is me. That was my street name back in the day and some of you may even remember it!