Extended Brisket hold times

Does your oven go to 140? Most residential ovens only go down to 170.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have held at long time at low temps and was dried out. I have decided not to do again and just stay up all night if I need to


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tkruse said:

I'm having people over on Sunday for a party and want to make a brisket. Planning on eating around 3pm. Any suggestions if I want to cook the brisket on Saturday afternoon/evening and serve on Sunday? If I plan the brisket to be done around 11ish pm on Saturday, let cool to around 145 then put it in the over set at 140, think it would be ok to serve 15 hrs later on 3pm Sunday? I'm looking for the best result on cooking it Saturday but not serving until Sunday. Any suggestions?

I've had very good experience holding for 5-7 hrs in a cooler but have no experience with an extended hold time or over hold.

All opinions/suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

I saw someone the other day suggest letting come down to temp then sealing and dropping in sous vide until before serving time to hold the desired temp and retain moisture.

I have not tried this but it seemed like a good idea.

I'm considering buying a turkey roaster or electric smoker off of FB marketplace for holding purposes. I think they both have better ability to hold low temps vs the home oven.

MustGoFast said:

I saw someone the other day suggest letting come down to temp then sealing and dropping in sous vide until before serving time to hold the desired temp and retain moisture.

I have not tried this but it seemed like a good idea.

Click to expand...

That was probably me. I've used this method several times and it works great.

If you don't have a sous vide the oven method works well. There's a few things you can do to make sure it doesn't get dried out. First, you can pour some rendered tallow on it and wrap it in butcher paper, then stick that in a large foil pan and seal the foil pan with foil.

Also, if your oven only goes down to 170, see if it has a dehydrate setting, which will go much lower. My oven only goes down to 175, but has the dehydrate setting and I can get it down in the 140 to 145 range using that.

One last thing... if you're going to use the oven method I would run sum tests first using an ambient temp probe to see how accurate your oven is. Mine for example is way off and runs hot. I found that to get it right in the 140-145 zone I was looking for, I needed to use the dehydrate setting and set the oven at 125. Testing over many hours the actual average temp was right about 145.

And last, with the brisket covered in tallow, wrapped in butcher paper, put in a foil pan and sealed with foil the dehydrate setting is not going to dry it out. I've also used this method several times and it worked perfectly. Just to be safe I left a probe in the meat withy an alarm, and left an ambient probe in the oven as well.

I cook ALL of my briskets the day before now and use one of these two methods to hot hold over night. It just makes life easier... no need to stay up all night with an overnight cook or wake up before dawn to get it going.

get you the countertop roaster oven. it's very handy for home bbq. not only do they hold low consistent temps but it provides a nice humid environment for the meat.

if done right it should be OK for that long...based on the anecdotal evidence I've read here. if you can swing it start the cook later and just stay up a little longer, that will lower the hold time.

what i typically do is time the wrapped period around bedtime. once wrapped I'll stick it in the roaster at 225 or even lower and slow finish. just have to be sure to wake up real early to check it. it all depends on your schedule and sleep patterns really bit I just seem to wake up early no matter what.

I started using a long hold and like the results. I’ve done it in turkey roaster and my home oven, but my home oven has a temp offset so I can manually adjust it up to 35 degrees cooler than the set temp (so 170 setting should be 135). In reality, when I stuck a probe in there for many hours, I found the temp to always creep up to 160-170, which resulted in dried out brisket. Now I do chud’s method with the foil boat (to get the bark) and I hold it in my toaster oven/air fryer as it can go down to 135 and 150. Also, I had to learn to pull a little earlier when I’m going to do a long hold…so maybe I’m pulling around 198-200 vs 203-205, etc. also let it come down to around 145-150 before throwing it in the toast oven


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

gtsum said:

I started using a long hold and like the results. I’ve done it in turkey roaster and my home oven, but my home oven has a temp offset so I can manually adjust it up to 35 degrees cooler than the set temp (so 170 setting should be 135). In reality, when I stuck a probe in there for many hours, I found the temp to always creep up to 160-170, which resulted in dried out brisket. Now I do chud’s method with the foil boat (to get the bark) and I hold it in my toaster oven/air fryer as it can go down to 135 and 150. Also, I had to learn to pull a little earlier when I’m going to do a long hold…so maybe I’m pulling around 198-200 vs 203-205, etc. also let it come down to around 145-150 before throwing it in the toast oven


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Click to expand...

good point about pulling earlier then normal. I usually pull before 200 with a long hold.

just recently seen chuds long hold in a toaster oven thing. you find the temps to be stable and high humidity like the roaster in there?

smoke ninja said:

good point about pulling earlier then normal. I usually pull before 200 with a long hold.

just recently seen chuds long hold in a toaster oven thing. you find the temps to be stable and high humidity like the roaster in there?

Click to expand...

So far it’s working ok. My cuisinart toaster oven is a little smaller than chud’s, so I’ve only done it with smaller briskets 12lbs and under). Going to try another one tomorrow actually and see how it goes.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

gtsum said:

I started using a long hold and like the results. I’ve done it in turkey roaster and my home oven, but my home oven has a temp offset so I can manually adjust it up to 35 degrees cooler than the set temp (so 170 setting should be 135). In reality, when I stuck a probe in there for many hours, I found the temp to always creep up to 160-170, which resulted in dried out brisket. Now I do chud’s method with the foil boat (to get the bark) and I hold it in my toaster oven/air fryer as it can go down to 135 and 150. Also, I had to learn to pull a little earlier when I’m going to do a long hold…so maybe I’m pulling around 198-200 vs 203-205, etc. also let it come down to around 145-150 before throwing it in the toast oven


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Click to expand...

Interesting suggestion to pull it a little early if planning for a long hold time - thanks.

I've done the long heated hold and it works really well. I don't add any tallow or anything special. I just hold the brisket in the paper wrap it finished cooking in.

11earl said:

Interesting suggestion to pull it a little early if planning for a long hold time - thanks.

Click to expand...

If I probe and it’s a bit tougher than I like (but still close) I’ll put it in my Alto Shaam @ 140* almost straight out of the cooker and use the carryover heat to finish. If it’s just about perfect I’ll let the brisket come down to 155-160* before putting it into the warmer. I think the longest I’ve held one in there so far is about 8 hours. An “active hold” really makes it easy to get done well in advance and still have perfect brisket for guests without stressing over timelines.

My 2 times doing the oven hold as low as it can go ended up with dried out flats, so I’m done with that. I’ll have to look at the turkey roaster method. Sadly I gave one of those away because I wasn’t happy with how the skin came out on turkeys.

I struggled going from a cooler to heated hold. I finally discovered through trial and error to let the protein cool on the counter to close to my hold temp then throw in the roaster. If you throw the hot meat in a 140 deg roaster the carry over cook time is greatly extended and dries out the meat.

Last brisket I cooked was done at 11pm Saturday and I slices at 5pm Sunday. It was fantastic.