Brisket on a kettle

[SKINSFAN]

Use my Weber kettle all of the time for chicken and ribs. I have tried brisket before on my kettle, but must have cooked at a high temp for too long. It was dryer than i liked.

That said, i bought 2 briskets for my superbowl party. 1 - 7.5 pound and 1 - 6.8 pound. I would really like to cook/smoke these on my kettle, but i really dont want to ruin 14 pounds of nice lookin brisket. i have my dry ryb on them already. Need some advice tips or i may have to put them in the oven!

help!

[Razcal]

try cooking it for 4 hours at 300 then foil it for 1 hour then take it off the smoker and rap it in a blanket for 4 hours still in the foil , it in a cooler then it will be nice and juicy .

[SKINSFAN]

when you say "cooler", you just mean an empty beer cooler?

[Big George's BBQ]

Yes empty beer cooler. You casn put in some hot/boiling H2O for a little while to warm it up, empty it and put in your wrapped meat. It will keep it hot for hours. Cook your meat to te desired Temp- till probe goes in like butter. Check temp of the flat. You can wrap it if you want around 165 degrees and continue cooking Some put in a beef broth or a marinade like stubbs when they wrap Let us know how it turns out

[Razcal]

Originally Posted by SKINSFAN

when you say "cooler", you just mean an empty beer cooler?

yes

[Ron_L]

I don't think it was mentioned above, but you'll want to set the kettle up for an indirect cook, not for grilling, and I'm not sure if there will be room for two briskets. You may be able to rig up some way to stand them up on on edge to give you more room and then rotate them part way through the cook.

There is a good diagram or picture around here that shows setting up a kettle for an indirect cook. Let me see if I can find it. BRB

OK... I'm back...

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/sh...d.php?t=129246

Our resident kettle smoking expert (at least that's what he calls himself ) shows various set up for smoking on a weber kettle.

[HeSmellsLikeSmoke]

Time and temperature are just general guides. Probe for tenderness before you wrap in towels or wadded up newspaper and put in a cooler. The probe should go in easily, like a hot knife in butter is the saying. Remember that each brisket will take its own good time to get to probe tender.

[SKINSFAN]

Thanks for the replies, suggestions and advice. Feeling more confident now. The key for me is to keep an eye on the temp so it does not decrease or increase drastically. I think if i keep it in the 250-300 range i should be fine.

Thanks again, time to get to work

[Enkidu]

Are these flats or packers?

BTW, with the exception of one packer I cooked on my mini-WSM, every brisket I have BBQ'd in the last year has been on my 22.5" OTG (and I dare say as a relative novice to BBQ, with some pretty damned good success).

If you want to give yourself the most cooking space, I suggest using the snake/ring of fire method on your kettle. You can also bank the coals to one side behind some fire bricks and cook the briskets on the opposite side (although you will have less room, IME). The snake/ring of fire method works pretty well if you want to do LnS with one load of coals and no need for a water pan. I can get 10-12 hours at around 220 using this method which makes it great for overnight cooks.

The second method I find better for HnF (or MnM) cooks. Yes, you can do LnS on a kettle banking to one side, but temperature control is a little bit more difficult. That said, unless you have a large hunk of meat that you want to cook overnight, my limited experience is that HnF (or MnM) is a better way to go since you can get equally good results, with less time.

There are people here with WAAAAAAAAAAAY more experience BBQ'ing than I have here, but, I am willing to bet that I have a fair amount of experience cooking briskets on a kettle when compared to many here simply because I don't yet have a large capacity dedicated smoker (which I will remedy next weekend when I build my first UDS) and I am brisket-obsessed (I seem to cook more briskets than anything else).

BTW, if you are cooking flats and not packers, my advice is of limited help because I don't have much experience with flats, and the limited experience I did have with flats on a kettle were somewhat hit or miss. The best result I ever got with a flat was when I cooked at about 250 after injecting with beef broth until it hit the stall, then I foiled until it was tender. The only downside to this was that it didn't have the best bark.

[bigabyte]

MY advice, if not mentioned in the thread link that Ron_L posted, is to make sure and use a water pan to help control temps when doing offset smoking in a kettle. Otherwise all you need to know should be in that thread.

[Enkidu]

Originally Posted by Ron_L

OK... I'm back...

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/sh...d.php?t=129246

Our resident kettle smoking expert (at least that's what he calls himself ) shows various set up for smoking on a weber kettle.

I think this was the first thread I ever read here at BB-Brethren back when I was researching whether or not to buy a smokenator.