Well I've been really busy lately and I'm sorry I haven't posted the pictures from last Wednesday's cook as promised. We're in the middle of a major house remodeling project and I've been kinda swamped with that.
I only have a couple of pictures from Wednesday's cook. I had some pictures that the caterer who supplied the side dishes took of the sliced brisket, but I accidentally deleted them from my phone :shock:.
I cooked three prime briskets from Costco and three 8-10 lb Boston butts.
The food was being served at noon, so I started the fire on my Shirley 24X65 at about 2:30 am and put the meat on at 3:30 am. I was using post oak, cherry and peach for my smoking woods and running the Shirley where it likes to run; 275-300.
I injected the briskets with Butcher BBQ brisket injection, applied a lite coat of Morton's coarse kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper and then rubbed them pretty liberally with Oakridge Black Ops. The butts were injected with a modified Chris Lilly injection, slathered with mustard and a liberal coating of Oakridge Secret Weapon.
After about five hours, when the briskets and butts had good color, I wrapped the briskets in butcher paper and the butts in foil pans. The internal temp on all at that time was in the 160-170 range. This was at about 8:30.
I had never loaded the Shirley up that much before. I put all the meat on the upper rack, because it runs a little hotter than the lower rack and I'd rather have the meat done early than late. Usually the smoker runs a very uniform temperature across the whole chamber, but I guess all that meat blocked the airflow some because the left side ran about 30 degrees hotter than the firebox/smokestack side the whole time.
I started probing and checking temps around 9. A note to all those that have questions about when the briskets are done-I had been struggling in the past with getting them right, and the best advice is like many say here-They're done when they're done. One thing I have learned, when probing for that no resistance butter feeling, probe in the area of the flat where the most of your slices will be coming from. If you probe from the edges or end of the flat where it's subjected to direct heat (bark) you will probably never get that no resistance probe.
I got very lucky and all the meat ended up being done (briskets probe tender and about 200-210 and butts 200-205) around 10:30. I allowed them all to vent for about 30 minutes and then placed in ice chests for around an hour.
The end results were outstanding, I received a lot of very, very flattering compliments. When the lady who was catering the side dishes tasted the brisket while we were slicing, her comment was "Damn that's good, I wasn't expecting that, how did you get it so juicy and tender and the flavor so good?"
Thanks to all the brethren for their advice, it's helped me a lot. And much thanks to Paul and Tyler for building such a fine smoker that is an absolute pleasure to use.
