Cole Cooks: Big Green Egg Texas Brisket
When we got our Big Green Egg back in action for holiday 2018 we invited a huge group of family and friends over for a BBQ dinner. The highlight of the menu was our smoked brisket. Making a brisket can be a party is a daunting task. This is our guide to making Big Green Egg Texas Brisket.
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Overview
The Big Green Egg is a kamado grill that is perfect for cooking brisket. Make sure and see our overview of the Big Green Egg here. Note that you can also do a brisket on a regular smoker, or even a grill with a smoker box.
For many reasons, a brisket is considered one of the most challenging meats to smoke. There are all kinds of online guides to cooking a brisket. The most comprehensive guide I have come across is from the Amazing Ribs website, run by Meathead Goldwyn. I like the site so much I bought Meathead’s book.
Amazing Ribs walks through the process of preparing a brisket in almost overwhelming detail. There are quite a few considerations that make the process seem daunting. In my experience, by far the most challenging issue is cooking time. Meathead says a full brisket can take from 12 to 18 hours. That is a huge time range to deal with.
Brisket is a tough piece of meat that needs to be cooked low and slow. You need to keep the cooking temperature around 225 to 250 degrees. The meat needs to cook until it reaches an internal temperature of 200. Luckily, I have found that my briskets are usually done in about 10 hours. From there it needs to rest for at least an hour, preferably two.
Pick The Meat
The first step in making a Big Green Egg Texas Brisket is picking the meat. There are several considerations:
- What grade of meat do you select, Select, Choice or Prime?
- Do you want a full brisket of just the flat?
According to Amazing Ribs, with brisket, you definitely want Choice or Prime. Our Costco Business Center has both Choice and Prime. With beef I usually get Choice. If you saw our article comparing choice versus prime you will know that in our testing some people actually preferred choice over prime.
Prime is more expensive, but at Costco the price difference was only about 20 cents a pound so I went with Prime. I got a 16-pound whole brisket for just over $3 a pound, about $50 in total. Meathead said to estimate one-pound of raw meat per person. However, our 16-pound brisket probably would have served 25 people (we had almost 20 and had plenty of leftovers).
When I first started cooking brisket, I bought only the flat. The flat is more evenly shaped and the point has more fat. Costco sales flats but they cost about a $1 per pound more. Now I enjoy the challenge of smoking a whole brisket.
Preparing the Meat
You definitely want to get the brisket ready the night before. This involves several steps:
- Trimming the fat from the brisket
- Injecting the brisket with a marinade
- Applying a rub
A brisket has a huge layer of fat that should be trimmed away. For my 16-pound brisket, I trimmed away 6-pounds of fat. The meat still had plenty of fat left. Meathead says you can store the fat for other uses. I just threw it away because our freezer and refrigerator were packed during the holidays.
There is a big issue about injecting a brisket with marinade. Many experts skip this step entirely. Amazing Ribs does it with beef broth, so that is what I used. One 10-ounce can of Campbells beef broth did the trick. I bought a special meat injector for this purpose. I will note that I successfully smoked briskets several years before injecting them, so this step is optional.
You should also apply a rub the night before. This is mainly kosher salt with a combination of other spices. There are all kinds of rub recipes and I have developed my own. The main ingredient you want is kosher salt and some black pepper. For my 16-pound (10-pounds trimmed) brisket I used a quarter cup of salt mixed with about a quarter cup of other spices. You can see my recipe here.
Cooking the Meat
I planned to serve dinner at 7 PM so I started cooking at 7 am. This is my main source of concern. 12 hours sounds like plenty of time, but brisket is unpredictable. If you are really concerned you can start the brisket the night before. The Big Green Egg is great at holding a steady temperature overnight.
You want to cook your brisket between 225 to 250 degrees. Ideally, you want to keep it at 225 degrees. From experience I know this can be hard to do so I don’t sweat it much when I find myself at 250. Once again see our Big Green Egg overview for heating tips.
You need to add wood chips to get the smoke flavor. I use hickory or apple chips, and I am not sure I can tell the difference. Meathead says start with 4 ounces of wood chips and refresh every half hour. I just sprinkle a liberal amount of chips around the coals right before adding the brisket.
On the Big Green Egg, you need the convEGGtor accessory. This is a plate you set below the grill to allow for indirect cooking. It is pretty much required for any low heat smoking. This is not a cheap accessory, but as I mentioned in my overview, I was able to get it included in the initial purchase.
You can set a pan of water on top of the convEGGtor, the actual grill and meat will sit above. Place the meat on the grill and walk away. It will be a long wait. You should refresh the wood chips for the first two hours, but after that the meat will probably not absorb anymore smoke.
The Texas Crutch is a crucial step in cooking brisket. When the internal temperature gets to about 150 degrees, you hit a “stall” where the meat basically stops cooking for several hours. The Texas Crutch helps speed the cooking process along.
The Texas Crutch is simply wrapping the meat tightly in aluminum foil at 150 degrees. The meat goes back on and cooks until it reaches 200 degrees.
Meathead has an entire article on the Texas Crutch. A key takeaway for me was to wrap the brisket very tight. I create a small piece of tightly wrapped foil right around the thickest part of the point. I can remove this piece of foil to probe for the temperature with my instant read Thermapen.
When I was cooking my latest brisket, I hit the crutch point at about 7 hours. From that point it took another 3 hours to hit 200. This gave me two hours to let it rest.
Resting the brisket also appears to be crucial (I have always done it so I am just assuming). Basically, this involves putting the brisket, still wrapped in foil, in a beer cooler, covered with towels. It should rest for 1 to 4 hours.
Serving the Brisket
Amazing Ribs has an entire discussion about slicing brisket. I have found it is not that complicated with one caveat.
The point and flat of the brisket are two very different sections. These should be separated before cutting. Luckily there is a major layer of fat between the two pieces, so it is easy to separate them.
The flat is a leaner piece and I cut the entire flat before even tackling the point. The flat is easy to cut against the grain into thin slices. You need to do this immediately before serving so it does not dry out. In our recent case, most of the point remained uncut and went into the fridge for leftovers.
Brisket should not need any BBQ sauce. There should be plenty of juice collected in the foil and the cutting board and that can be served as an au jus.
As mentioned, brisket is mainly challenging for the time it takes. When you have guests coming over and your brisket is nowhere close to done the temptation is to crank up the heat to get it done. This results in a tough piece of meat.
With a reliable smoker like the Big Green Egg it is okay to start the night before. In this case you will probably not need to do the Texas Crutch and can just let it cook through.
Overall the satisfaction of cooking a whole brisket for a large party is a great reward. Not many people attempt to do this, and you will definitely have people asking you questions.
Big Green Egg Texas Brisket
Ingredients
- 16- pound whole brisket choice or prime
- 1 10.5 ounce can beef broth optional
- ½ cup of rub see recipe rub should have at least ¼ cup kosher salt
- wood chips
Instructions
- The night before cooking, trim brisket of thick fat layer. Inject meat with beef broth. Apply rub liberally over the brisket and refrigerate overnight.
- The next day heat a grill or smoker to 225-250 degrees and set up for indirect cooking. Immediately before adding meat add soaked wood chips. Place a water pan below the grill and add meat. Add new wood chips every 30 minutes for the first 2 hours. Cook covered for several hours until brisket internal temperature hits 150 degrees.
- Remove brisket from grill and wrap tightly in aluminum foil. Return brisket to grill and continue cooking until internal temperature of brisket reaches 200 degrees. Remove brisket from grill and place in a cooler and cover with towels. Let brisket rest for at least one hour.
- When ready to serve, separate flat from the point. Slice meat against the grain and serve.
Notes
Go here for general Big Green Egg tips
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