![]() There are so many ways to screw up a brisket from the time you buy it until the time you take it off the smoker, so don’t let the last step ruin a good thing. Even if the brisket is moist, the appearance of the shaggy meat makes it look dry as a bone. It also doesn’t do much to help aesthetics. When an electric knife is in action, its whine is all you hear while waiting in line for barbecue. It helps make the slicing an easier task when it’s your singular task for hours at a time, but I can’t stand the noise. Snow’s BBQ in Lexington uses electric knives, as do others. Maybe they know it’d be tough to eat otherwise. I rarely see deli slicers used in Texas, but the famous Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City uses them to build their enormous sandwiches of thinly sliced brisket. ![]() If the brisket is cooked to a good level of tenderness, it shouldn’t overwork your forearms to slice it manually. You can get them for about $25 at any restaurant supply store. Any good chef’s knife works well, but I like using a long serrated knife. Having a standard in competition keeps competitors from being able to hide over/under cooked brisket in their slicing method. For competition brisket the target is the thickness of a No. What is the optimal thickness for a slice of brisket? This is one of a few areas where I agree with the standard of the Kansas City Barbecue Society. A bit thinner slice would have improved the texture. It was a bit undercooked, but the toughness was exaggerated by very thick slices. I sat down for lunch this week to a plate of sliced brisket. At other times a thick slice can be a detriment. A thicker slice might be required to hold together an overcooked brisket. Thin slicing is to tough brisket as sauce is to tasteless brisket. If you hear that electric slicer going then chances are the brisket isn’t very tender. The thickness of a brisket slice also varies considerably. This results in cuts that are against the grain of both muscles, but they are at a forty-five degree angle instead of perpendicular. Franklin starts slicing the flat the same as Fourton, but when he gets to the point he turns the whole thing ninety degrees and continues slicing straight through both muscles. In the final video (at the 7:00 mark) he demonstrates his slicing technique. KLRU produced a series of barbecue how-to videos with Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue. They also sit on top of one another, so how do you ensure that both are sliced against the grain? The most perfectly smoked brisket will be tough and stringy if sliced parallel to the grain, but the tricky thing is that the grain of the point and flat run in different directions. Slicing perpendicular to the grain of the muscle is the last defense against tough brisket. One of the challenges is that a whole brisket is made up of two muscles: the point and the flat. Underside of a raw brisket showing the grain direction of the flat But again, there isn’t necessarily one right way to do it. I’ll concede that there are several ways to slice a brisket, but I should note that some of them are just wrong, like slicing with rather than against the grain. ![]() I didn't get up during the night to wrap the thing as i was still jet lagged from a recent trip.When I’m watching a brisket being sliced, a few things make me shudder, like the aggressive purr of an electric knife, the whine of a deli slicer, and, the worst offense, watching the fat cap being discarded (but we’ll save that for another column). the flat however was a little tough and fairly dry but still edible with some sauce. Work kept me busy until around 12:30 when i sliced it. At 7am it probed out at between 186 and 196 over a couple of spots and was fairly tender so i pulled it, double foiled and put in microwave. The temps were stable between 230 and 245 for the time i kept an eye on it. So at 10:00 pm I put the trimmed packer (~9lbs) onto the 18.5 WSM with a full ring of KBB and full water pan, set the guru to 225 and went to bed after watching it for a couple of hours. Yesterday I found a small packer at costco and bought it to augment our mother's day dinner as there was only one rib roast left and didn't think it would feed everyone. My first one was the flat and I think i overcooked it. I have only cooked two briskets, one flat(4lbs) and last night a packer(10lbs).
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