DH Smokes Brisket for Michigan Meat Eater’s Day

In case you haven’t heard, last Saturday Governor Granholm declared a Meat Out Day for Michigan. Well, the hunters and farmers in this state weren’t very happy about that, so they declared a Meat Eater’s Day instead. While I do agree that we probably eat too much meat for our waistlines and wallets (do we really need 16 ounce steaks?), the Governor should have known that in our economy simply declaring Meat Out Day with no explanation would go over like a lead balloon. Why not declare “boycott drive thru days” and see how far she got?

There are more than 3600 fans of Meat Eater’s Day on FaceBook, and I did make a couple of posts to try to emphasize that we should try to eat local, grassfed, sustainablemeat and that seemed to get some traction. I wish that Governor Granholm had taken this opportunity to help educate about factory farms and CAFOs, but maybe that would have been even more unpopular? Or maybe she would have been sued by those corporations? I dunno.

Anyway, in honor of Meat Eater’s Day, DH smoked his very first brisket. I’ll let him tell you how it went in his own words:

« Friday evening »

I have been wanting to do a brisket but a few things have been keeping me from it.
1. I don’t know what I’m doing.
2. Can’t get my DC (Double Chef Smoker) to hold temp for long times.
3. I don’t know what I’m doing.
4. Have not had the time just in case I end up having to baby sit it.

So to help with this I got the DC to work better by getting the door to seal up better. The last smoke held temp for over 3 hours without any help from me.
Now I just needed a way to hold more fuel. I took a LP fryer stand that I have never used (only bought it for the burner) and it turns out that the “ring” fits right around the charcoal basket. She just needed a few mods to work.
Here is the ring as it was.

Then after blasting off the paint and torching out the center rails.

Now that all that is done it’s time to smoke…..

I ordered a full packer from a local farm. USDA Choice and a little over 12 pounds.

I then split the point and flat

Rubbed it down with yellow mustard, sea salt, cracked pepper corn, onion power, and garlic powder.

Put the new ring in the DC.

Loaded her up with 7 pounds of Kings ford competition charcoal and some hickory chunks.

Lit 10 bricks.

The battery went dead on the camera when I went to put the lit bricks into the DC so no pic of that.
Basically I used tongs and put the lit bricks right into the center of the charcoal.
Closed it up and let her sit.
She was sitting nicely at 250* when I went to put the meat in. As I was trying to get the meat in and the thermometer set up the charcoal fired up from all the fresh air getting in there. I closed it up as fast as I could so again, no picture of the meat going in. Sorry. The temp spiked at this time to 350*. The meat has been in there for about 30 minutes now and it’s down to 300*. I have both lower vents closed and the top vent about 75% closed trying to bring it down. I think I may grab a spray bottle of water and spritz the coals a little to knock her down a little more.

« Friday, 7 PM »

Well a little spritzing (maybe a little more then just a little) got the temp down to 250*. Will check it again in 30 minutes and see how it is. Then again at midnight. If all is good I’m going to bed and will check on it in the morning. May get up a few times during the night to take a peek.

« Saturday, 4 AM »

It’s now 4am (I went to bed at midnight). Got up to see how the DC was doing and not good. The temp had climbed to 300*. I had my alarm set for 3am but it did not go off (3rd day in a row now, need a new one I guess). I have no idea how long it’s been that high though.
My therm was reading 195* so I opened it up and started probing with an instant read. Most of the flat was reading 195 but for the center that’s at 170*. The point was done, it was 195-200* and the therm slid in like butter.
So I pulled the point, wrapped it in foil and a big bath towel to rest.

I sprayed more water on it to knock down the fire and now I’m waiting to see if it was enough before going back to sleep for another hour or two.

The DC had burned thru about half the fuel so at 300* I think I could get a 8-10 burn. Need to work on it more with keeping the temps down.

«  Saturday, 8AM »

It’s been an interesting night.
The point finished FAST and the flat just looked like a large brick of burnt meat.
The last time I got up was 6 am and took a look. The point came off at 4 am when the DC had spiked in temp. At 6am it was sitting at about 240*. I was worried about how dry that meat was looking so I foiled it and went back to bed.
It’s 9am now and I went out to see how it was. The fire was out. So I pulled it and put it in the oven. The meat was still hot so I figure the fire has not been out for long. I may have got 10 hours of burn out of 7 pounds of charcoal. If I could get the temps down more I could get even better. Will work on that.

Anyways, when I started this it was 50* and sunny, now it’s 33* and looked like this.

I’m going to go and cut up the point and see what that’s like.

« Saturday, 9 AM »

There is hope yet. After 5 hours resting in foil and a towel I cut up the point. Shocking it’s actually really good. I cut into it not remembering the grain direction but when I did some juice flowed out. It was pull apart tender and not dry at all.
There is hope yet that the flat may be ok too.

The point

First cut.

found the grain direction

The smoke ring

The lot.

And breakfast.

Later that day: