Smoking meats has never been a quick and easy task. It takes time and patience with a lot of flavor to pull off a good tasting brisket. Once you get the hang of things, it ends up being this relaxing fun experience you enjoy doing once every so often. If you are new to smoking, or are looking to grab some more pointers, here 5 great tips to smoke a great brisket.
Tip #1: Good Smoke
When you first start smoking brisket or ribs or a nice pork shoulder, you think to yourself the more smoke I see the better it will taste. While this seems very understandable, I am here to let you know it is incorrect. There are distinct differences between good and bad smoke. In other words, impurities vs. no impurities in your smoke. We want to look for a nice clear blue smoke; almost non-existent.
If you see billows of smoke coming out of you smoke stack, there are still impurities being burned off from your wood. These impurities can be as simple as moisture, or moss. A very simple and effective way I have learned to lessen those impurities is smoke your wood in a higher temp fire. If you smoke your wood in about 275 degrees Fahrenheit for about 3 hours, you will remove all the moisture and any type of moss. I like to scrape mine down with a wire brush after to make sure no dirt or dried up moss is on my wood.
You will notice it becomes lighter to hold because all the moisture is gone from the wood itself. At this point, store your stacks in a nice, dry place to reduce the chance of more moisture coming into the wood.
Tip #2: Right Size of Wood
Obviously, not everyone will have a massive 500 gallon smoker or even a 100 gallon smoker. Most of us are your everyday backyard warriors who love to grill and smoke their shoulders or briskets once every so often. This means, we have a smaller 900 -1100 sq. in. smoking area. This also means our fire boxes are a lot smaller and probably not as insulated as the larger ones.
This creates a lot of issues with keeping the fire nice and hot enough to smoke the meat, and takes even more attention than a larger smoker would. If you have a fire box that is 2ft. x 3ft. its a lot easier to have larger pieces of logs in there without having issues of drowning the fire. if its 18in. x 24in. putting in too large of logs will cause issues with keeping a consistent ember running for a nice base and your fire will drown out quickly.
My method of having a good consistent fire is always cut anything 12in. and over in half. This way you have smaller chunks so they can burn more consistently and saves you a headache. Another problem with smaller fireboxes is usually because we smoke with smaller size wood, the fire base will not be enough to hold a good bed of embers. so every couple of hours I add a few handfuls of lump charcoal. Keeping all my doors to the firebox open, I let it ignite on its own and close her on up once it does. This helps maintain good heat in your box and constant flow of smoke.
Tip #3: Seals, Seals, Seals!
Now that we have the wood and smoke situation out of the way, let's talk about our seals. If you have a backyard smoker like a lot of us out there, more than likely an instruction manual came with it on how to assemble it. Since our smokers came in a box, they probably aren't fully sealed. While this is not the end of the world, it can cause some issues with the quality of end product you are looking for. It's like filling up a floating tube that has a few pin size holes on the bottom. While it doesn't deflate right away, you end up having to refill it in the middle of the river you are floating in.
With smoke just dissipating from other areas rather than your smoke stack, that is flavor leaving your smoker, not to mention heat. We want the most consistent cook considering it will be an all day project. There are two main ways to seal your smoker. I personally use a Lavalock sealing gasket and RTV650 Silicone Sealant. These work wonders and can take very high temperatures.
With the gasket you want to place on door edges, but you still want to make sure they close fully (don't worry it is a very strong self adhesive). With the silicone sealant you want to get any cracks or open gaps from where your fittings from the smoke box and smoke chamber are. I like using my phone's flashlight to check for any open gaps and start to seal. These methods are very inexpensive and very effective. Also note that these are not permanent fixes and will need to be replaced every few months. The last thing we need is to have smoke coming out of all crevices from our smoker.
Tip #4: The Perfect Seasonings
Many people will tell you there is only 1 way to season your meats. When in reality, there is no right way. Some people like it nice and simple with S&P (salt and pepper), others like a nice flavorful injection. The truth is, your way is the right way. Play with flavors and see what works best for your palette. I am a true Texan, so we go nice and simple; S&P all the way.
And if I am being honest, I have tasted other briskets that were just as good with different seasonings. It all is in the process of smoking your meats. That is probably 85-90% of the taste. Bad smoke and a choked fire, we are looking at meat that is very bitter and possibly will turn out too dry. Nice clear smoke with a constant fire and temperature going: delicious melt in your mouth brisket that will have you coming back for seconds and even thirds.
Tip #5: Constant Watch
So you have your good wood all dried and seasoned, you sealed up all your gaps in the smoker, and fired her on up! Nice clear smoke coming from your stack and sitting at 250 degrees. Seasoned up the brisket and it is time to slap'er on down to the smoker. What do we do now? Once everything is in how do we know when its done?
One thing we must all understand about smoking is it is a waiting game, not a time game. If she ain't ready, she will let you know. This is where a constant eye on not only the fire, but the meat itself is a must. Using an instant probe thermometer helps a ton. You always want to make sure you are rising temperatures in your meat at a constant pace. You don't want to spike up so quickly, but you don't want to stay low forever.
Spiking in internal temperatures may mean you have it a bit too high inside the cooking chamber, which in turn can mean you have your fire too high. This can lead to a very hard bark that comes out dry, and we don't want that. On the other hand if we are moving too slowly on the internal temperature, maybe we need to up the temp just a bit or we could move our brisket a bit closer to the fire, but not too close that we start to burn the bark.
We want to keep an eye on our bark as well so that it doesn't dry out. Spraying the outside with a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar and water will help the meat from drying out. Once you can touch the bark without any seasonings coming off, stop spraying. Another tip would be to make sure there are no pools of juices on top of your meat as this creates a soggy bark. It helps if you put a small piece of wood under your brisket where it may have a divot.
Conclusion
While it is a lot of work and time consuming, knowing your smoker and how to work it properly will always give you some great tasting meat. No seasoning will ever be the right seasoning, but keeping a consistent fire, and clear blue smoke will always give you some amazing tasting meat that is nice and moist.
These five simple tips are what I love to go by every time I fire up my smoker and make it a checklist of sorts to make sure it goes according to plan. While not all cooks will be the same due to possible conditions or unforeseen circumstances, one thing is for sure, it will all have the same end result: delicious, mouthwatering BBQ.
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