I smoked a 4.5lb Brisket yesterday. This was my first attempt at smoking Brisket.
This is how it looked after I rinsed it off and added a generous amount of my dry rub.
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I cut up some garlic, hard pieces of fat (from the leaner side of the Brisket) and added some live oil and dry rub. After mixing this together I then took a knife and made 8-10 slits on the sides of the beef. I inserted 2 pieces of garlic and plugged the hole with the fat. This then sat in my fridge in a ziplock bag for 40 hours.
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I fired up the grill at 11am yesterday and kept adding in some beer soaked Hickory wood chips for the first 2 hours. You can see them above the coals on the right hand side. Theyre lighter in color and some actually have smoke coming out already.
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The trick with Brisket (or other meats with a fatty side) is to keep the fatty side up. This prevents coals from flaring up due to the grease dripping down but more importantly it allows the meat to keep moisture and not dry out during an extensive amount of time on the grill. For the first 2 hours I would brush on some of my bbq sauce to lock in the flavors and provide essential moisture to the meat. I used this sauce sparingly as I wanted the meat to maintain much of its original flavor. After a few hours, when the internal temperature is 140 or higher, you will see the fat start to heat up and liquefy. At this point I would take the brush and spread it all over the top to soak in the flavor. These next 2 pics are after about 3 hours on the grill when I was in the middle of this grease spreading process.
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After a total of 6 1/2 hours on the grill, this is the final product. These first two pictures don\'t do it justice at all. It wasn\'t really that dark or burnt looking. I blame it on the lighting in my kitchen as opposed to the sun. Not one piece of it was chewy or crispy either. Just juicy tender meat.
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