Calk Brisket

5-28-14

There are as many BBQ Brisket recipes as there are “Carter’s Little Liver Pills” (of course most of you have never heard of CLLP’s but some Boomers and beyond might get a chuckle).  I thought I would write a blog about the way I do my briskets.  Now this is somewhat related to chuck wagons in that beef or cattle were driven up the trail and briskets come from cattle. I feel like that is close enough to chuck wagon’s that this blog would be ok.

 Thinking about the price of briskets these days would astound the cattle barons of yesteryear.  A flat brisket is a trimmed brisket, sometimes called the point and it sells $5.87 per pound compared to the untrimmed that is priced at $2.89.  My consideration for using “flats” is the amount of fat and unusable portion just about equals the difference in the two prices.  Now think about this proposition:  the price of beef on the hoof was easily equal to today’s price for one brisket.  So when someone says “Some things never change”, you can tell them the price of beef surely has changed in the last year to say nothing of the last 125 years.

My friend Skip Clark was in need of about 40 lbs. of brisket for a party he is hosting on Saturday and I agreed to cook the meat.  The number of guests expected is to be in the neighborhood of 75.  I vowed many years ago to never cut to close on figuring the amount needed so I use the formula of ½ lb. of uncooked meet per person, plus a little bit.  In this case we purchased 41.3 pounds at $5.87 per pound for a total of $243.00.  Additionally I needed a gallon of Cattleman’s BBQ Sauce, Montreal seasoning, and crushed red chile pepper, mesquite wood,  a bbq pit, utensils, a pan, and approximately nine hours to complete the task. 

The cooking began on Wednesday at 9 am when I built a mesquite fire in my bbq pit.  It takes about 45 minutes to burn down to coals and then they are spread across the floor of the pit so the fire will be directly under the meat. 

The brisket usually has a little thin gristle and should be trimmed off along with just a small portion of the thickest fat.   I trim and prepare the meat while the wood is burning down and apply a liberal amount of Montreal seasoning and crushed red chili pepper (like what you put on pizzas).  When the mesquite wood has turned to chucks of coal the meat is placed on the pit fat side up.  Now there are some “Q” ologists  that say the lean mean will not absorb any of the fat drippings because the texture of the meat is too tight and it will just merely run off.  (a Q ologist is one who knows his business about BAR BE “Q”.  Wrong!  If you cook a brisket with a lot of fat still on the meat it will definitely obtain a taste that is drastically different from one that has been trimmed of all the fat. 

I try to keep the pit temperature around 250 degrees and sometimes it will vary between 200-300 degrees.   I add a small piece of mesquite about 2” x 10” to keep the temperature consistent.  Once the meat has been placed on the fire (I put mine on at 10 am) I will turn it over ever thirty minutes for a total of four hours.  I mix the Cattleman’s sauce 50/50 with water and using a plastic squeeze bottle squirt the sauce on to the briskets beginning with the third turning of the meat and then again every thirty minutes.  I sometimes add the same seasoning to the sauce that I put on the outside of the meat.

The next step is sometimes called the Texas Crutch and it is simply a way to cut down on the amount of time it takes to get tender brisket by sealing the meat and allowing it to steam itself.   I have an aluminum pan with a lid which is actually an Army field oven pan and I use it instead of wrapping the briskets in tinfoil.

 The trouble with tinfoil is if it obtains a puncture while turning all of the juice will run out and you will be left with a very dry piece of meat.  The aluminum pan takes care of that worry.  I have also used the heavy duty tinfoil pans to “steam” the briskets and just add a sheet of heavy foil across the top to seal the meat. The down side of using the Texas Crutch is that the tough exterior of the brisket is now very soft.  If you want a hard outer crust you can place it back on the fire to get the crust back…but it will be at the expense of cooking out some of the moisture.  I like them fine with a soft exterior and don’t get many complaints.  Those that do complain, well they are only able to complain once.

I place the briskets in the pan until a BBQ fork will easily puncture the brisket which is about 3-4 additional hours….sometimes less.  There are a lot of elements that can change your cooking time like wind, rain, snow, type of wood, cut of meat, distance meat is from fire, etc.

After seven hours the brisket was almost falling apart tender.  Skip is going to serve the meat on Saturday so I have to hold the meat over and will deliver it to him on Friday.  He is going to serve the meat chopped.  I have decided that I will bag the briskets in heavy zip locks and keep them on ice until I chop it up and deliver it on Friday.  He will reheat the brisket in an electric food warmer. I might add here, if you have time the briskets are a whole lot easier to chop when they are warm.  

I enjoy doing the briskets because I can open up my “cook shack” which is an outdoor wood burning stove enclosure.  This day my wife Linda and I had breakfast burritos I made on the stove along with some percolated coffee.  While all the “goings on “ are going on I am playing a little Ray, Willie, Darrell, Johnny, and Mike (did you figure out what all the last names were?) music on the stereo.  As they say in some circles “It don’t get no better than this.