Hot-N-Fast Brisket + Smoke Ring Experiment

thirdeye said:

Look for it in the canning section of supermarkets or big box stores. It's usually next to the cases of jars. Sometimes it's with the other salts too. It's around $5 a bag. You can buy it online, but usually the shipping costs are equal or more than the price of the product.

If you strike out locally, PM me with your zip code and we can see what mailing costs are from Wyoming. I have access to it everywhere.

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ok, so do i just follow the directions? cause it says not for meats? im going to the store today and i will find out.

thirdeye said:

It says "Not a meat tenderizer",

It's a general home use curing salt for use on meats of all kinds. It has a variety of uses from sausage to bacon, brines (chicken and turkey for sure) and for corning beef. You won't find smoke ring directions there, in fact Morton's is kind of odd when giving directions. They say things like "follow your proven recipe for XXXX using Tenderquick with the following guidelines...." They have several books and I have an internet copy that the Mother Earth News published some years ago. Many curing books and sausage books reference it too.

For TQing a brisket, sprinkle a layer on the inside face of the brisket, (the side opposite the fat cap side), sprinkle on a few drops of water to make a paste and smear it on evenly with your hands...I went an hour of cure time on this one, but 15 minutes will produce a thinner ring. At the end of the cure time, rinse all of it off under running water. Blot the brisket dry and return to the fridge for at least an hour. Then treat it just like any other brisket.

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thx when i do it i will post pron.

Fantastic! I'll be trying that soon. Thanks Wayne.

Could a brisket get the same results if it sat in a TQ & water brine?

i am the same way i like big smoke rings

Just my opinoin. There is no such thing as cheating with cooking. It either turns out good or you go back to the drawing board and try something different next time. LOOK GREAT

So do your briskets have any smoky flavor?

nice

Thanks I will use that

thirdeye said:

I'm still working on that one. :biggrin: Seriously, I guess I don't understand the question.

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Well, the faster you cook them the less smoke they pick up. Our 4 hour briskets we used to do on the weber didn't have very much smoke flavor. All I could ever taste was FAB.

Your post came at the same time I was going to bring up a question on smoke rings. I've seen some Pics of Texas briskets that have a smoke ring as thick as heck. Recently I ate at a local Q joint that cooks with 100% wood logs, no gas or electric. I ate the brisket and noiticed the ring wasn't that thick. This got me thinking that some of the pics I see on forums with a thick ring are chemically induced. Yours proved my theory. I was going to do the same thing on my next cook. Apply TQ and rinse off. Thanks for sharing.

I never seem to have a problem with smokerings on my briskets. I have noticed that when I am using my offset with straight oak/hickory or oak/mesquite that the ring is alot darker and thicker than say on the WSM or the BGE. This past weekend we cooked a comp and I cooked 2 flats one was 7.5 lbs other was a little over 8lbs. both injected with butchers bbq and rubbed with tx bbq rub. I ran the pit hotter than normal at about 280 tried not to let it get below 260. They were done in about 6 hours I think no more than that for sure. I wrapped in foil at the 165 mark. They both were 2 of the prettiest briskets I have turned out and really good flavor. I took 5th place with em. and this post is completely useless due to the fact that I was to drunk to remember to take pictures. I can snap a photo of the left overs if ya want =)

ZILLA said:

Well, the faster you cook them the less smoke they pick up. Our 4 hour briskets we used to do on the weber didn't have very much smoke flavor. All I could ever taste was FAB.

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I was gonna start my own thread about a my first high heat Kettle brisket that I made yesterday, but never took pics since the wife had the camera and I was doing yardwork all day long. I know the rule.....no pics dint happen.
I learned quite a few things. First, high heats can be very tasty, juicy, tender. I used Stubbs coal, the Kettle, and one fist sized cherry chunk placed on the grate just over the coals so it would burn slowly.
For the brisket, it was a small 8lb packer. I also wanted to try Funk's Dalmation rub. The amount of salt was something I wanted to experience. It was a Kosher salt, coarse pepper, and garlic powder rub. I made my own little variation and slathered the brisket with Louisianna hot sauce for stickage factor. I cooked at between 350-375 and the Kettle held a steady temp on one load of coals just like a champ.
I also didnt want to foil at all on this one. So when I hit a temp of 195, I pulled it, put it in a dish, and let it counter rest with a sheet of foil just resting on top of it.
The verdict..............not much of a smoke ring at all. I'll post a pic of the ring when I make brisket sammies for lunch. Smoke flavor was good for me. Could have used a little more, but was good as is. It cooked in a little over 4.5 hours. The Dalmation rub did bring some salt to the party, but what I noticed was that most of the salt bark got knocked off when I pulled it off the kettle, so that tamed the saltiness. The rub that was left on the brisket was just perfect to give each slice of meat the right amount of flavor it needed. Hot sauce gave this briskie a real nice color, didnt notice any big flavor from the sauce, but it added a nice deep red color. Overall, it was still oozing juice when I separated the point and flat and there was more juice in the pan then I've had come out of a briskie in a long time.
I will do high heats more often. The time factor is a bonus. We were eating dinner by 7 instead of midnight.:-D

I'll be putting what I learned and Wayne info together to hopefully refine the whole process. Thanks Wayne.

thirdeye said:

Now I use canning salt, it has a fine grind and is a pure salt product. I think the size of the salt makes a difference for the absorbtion too. Maybe Donny will jump in on this.

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I've been wondering about this also. When you give a ratio of lets say one part salt, one part pepper and 1 part Montreal seasoning, it can REALLY vary depending on how coarse the grind is. You could end up with twice as much (or half as much) of an ingredient. The difference between one cup of regular salt, Morton's kosher salt and Diamond kosher salt is pretty significant.

It would be nice if all recipes (not just here) would either give the exact brand of salt, or use weight instead of volume. Would save some experimenting time.