What the Best Temperature for a Tender Beef Brisket
Brisket is a tough cut of meat, so it needs to be cooked correctly, otherwise it will be inedible. There are several techniques you should also use when smoking brisket to ensure that you get best results. I asked some of the world's best pit masters how they attempt the smoked brisket to ensure it's tender and juicy every time.
In order to tenderize a brisket, it needs to be cooked low-and-slow for many hours. Brisket contains a lot of fatty connective tissue that needs time at low temperatures to break down. Therefore, it is critical that you hold the temperature of your smoker within the 225° F to 250°F range. Also, for a tender brisket, it needs to be cooked to an internal meat temperature of 203°F to be probe tender.
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Why is Brisket Tough?
Brisket is a tough hard-working muscle from the four-quarter of the animal with a large amount of connective tissue. Tough cuts of meat like brisket need to be cooked at low temperatures, otherwise the meat will be too chewy. The only way to break down the connective tissue is to cook it slow. Traditional roasting instructs us to cook according to time. Low-and-slow cooking, where tenderness is paramount, we cook to internal temperature rather than time. The connective tissue is also the reason brisket is so delicious when cooked correctly. The fat and connective tissue turns into a delicious gelatin-like texture when it melts. We all know fat equals flavor, and brisket has a lot of intramuscular fat, which gives it the wonderful flavor.
How To Avoid Tough Brisket
The best way to avoid a tough brisket is to keep the temperature in the low range. If you lose control of your smoker, or you keep the temperature above 275°F, the brisket is going to lose moisture. There are other techniques which will also improve your chances of a tender brisket.
1. Wrap Your Brisket In Foil or Butcher Paper
Wrapping your brisket plays in important role in the smoking process. It will help tenderize the meat, and it will trap moisture inside. There are two common wrappings. The most common is aluminium foil, and the other wrap is butcher paper (popularized by Aaron Franklin). Both types of wrapping will make the brisket taste slightly different, and they will give the brisket a different texture. Butcher paper allows the brisket to breathe, so the bark will end up crispier. As Aaron Franklin says, foil will give the brisket more of a pot roasty taste.
2. Inject Your Brisket With Marinade
Injecting your brisket is a great way to tenderize the meat. By injecting a needle into the brisket and pumping it with marinade is one of the few ways to get moisture and salt into the center of the brisket. There are several great products on the market, marinades that are used in barbecue competitions by professionals. Butcher BBQ is the most popular and one of the few products available on Amazon.
Meat injectors are inexpensive and you can get them on Amazon for about $30 or $40. You can use broth or stock to inject the meat, or salted butter, or any other ingredient you might find. I've written a full article and how to inject a brisket and you can check it out here.
This brisket injection marinade is the secret used in competitions and made by a World Barbecue champion.
3. Keep The Temperature Low
The best way to tenderize your brisket is to keep the temperature nice and low. If you cook the meat too fast, or if the temperature exceeds 275°F, then don't expect a tender, juicy brisket. The ideal cooking temperature for brisket is between 225°F and 275°F. To be safe, I recommend keeping it in the lower range unless you have a good handle on the brisket fundamentals. Also, if you are smoking a low-grade beef, I would keep the temperature at 225°F.
4. Spritz The Brisket To Slow Down The Cook
The key to smoking a tender brisket is to keep the meat at a low temperature for a long period. Spritzing or mopping the meat will slow down the cook. Wetting the meat will have a cooling effect, slowing down the total cook time, which is what you want. The longer the brisket can sit at that low temperature, the better.
To spritz your brisket, buy a spray bottle and fill it with apple cider vinegar or apple juice. You can also use beer, wine or any other suitable liquid. Spritz the brisket every hour during the first phase of the cook. However, don't spritz the meat too early. For the first few hours of the cook, just leave the brisket alone, giving it time to absorb the smoke and keep the temperature of your smoker stable. I've written a full article on spritzing brisket and you can check it out here.
5. Buy Higher Quality Beef Grade
The beef grade plays an enormous role in the finished product. You can do everything else right, from the spritzing to the wrapping or the injecting, but it won't matter if you buy the wrong brisket in the store. If you want to tender brisket, purchase a USDA Choice grade brisket, or USDA Prime brisket. The lower grade briskets can still be tender, but they are lean and will dry out easily.
6. Use a Quality Meat Thermometer
A good meat thermometer will be your best friend whilst smoking brisket. This is the only way you are going to know what is going on inside your brisket. A wireless thermometer usually comes with one or two thermometer probes. By inserting these probes into the meat, you'll be able to keep track of the internal temperature. This allows for precision cooking, which differs from the traditional cooking methods where we used to cook to thyme rather than temperature. There are dozens of great products on the market, ranging from $50 thermometers through to $300 high-tech Wi-Fi thermometers that you can control with your phone.
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7. Learn To Test For Tenderness
You often hear pitmasters refer to meat being "probe tender". During the final stages of the cook, a perfectly tender brisket should feel like a stick of butter. When you insert your instant-read thermometer into the brisket, test the resistance. If you don't have a thermometer, you can use a toothpick to test the meat.
8. Hold Your Brisket in a Cooler
Once you have removed your brisket from the smoker, you can hold it at a serving temperature for several hours. Keep the brisket in its foil or paper wrapping, and then place it in a dry cooler where it will stay hot for about 4 hours even longer. The brisket will continue to cook during this time, and continue to tenderize. Check out this article: Resting Brisket In A Cooler
9. Slice Against the Grain
Never slice brisket with the grain, always slice against the grain. This will ensure that your brisket is not chewy but nice and tender. Keep in mind that the flat and the point will have grain that runs in different directions. It's best to separate the point in the flat before slicing and slice against the grain once you've identified the direction.
10. Rest Your Brisket
One of the biggest mistakes you could make is to slice your brisket too soon. Allow at least 1 hour to rest your brisket after you've removed it from the smoker. If you slice the brisket too soon, all the precious juices will spill out onto the cutting board and be lost. Resting allows the brisket to relax and reabsorb some of the moisture.
Try Finish Your Brisket in the Oven
If you want to close your smoker and go inside, once your brisket has reached the wrapping stage, you finish the brisket in your oven. This will save a lot of fuel and it is more convenient. The flavor is developed during the first phase of the cook, so it will have no bearing on the finished result.
The Best Rub for Brisket
There are dozens of rubs on the market, and some of my favorites are Killer Hogs and Harry Soo's Slap Yo Daddy rubs. However, these days I prefer to make a barbecue rub at home because I like to control all my ingredients, especially salt. If you want to great recipe, follow this and make up a huge batch of rub. You can use it with pork, beef, chicken and fish.
Brisket Planner
Planning brisket can be a nightmare, especially if you need it done by a certain time. You can partially cook your brisket, and finish it the next day, but it won't turn out as good. I've written a full article on this, and you can read it here. Here is a basic brisket planner where it shows you when to wrap, and when to remove and when to spritz, etc.
| Brisket Total Cook Time | Start Time | Begin Spritzing | Wrap Brisket | Finish in Oven | Done Time (203°F) | Holding Time In Dry Cooler (1-4 hours) |
| 12 hours | 6pm | 9pm | 12am | 12am | 6am | Between 7am – 10am |
| 15 hours | 5pm | 8pm | 11pm | 11pm | 8am | Between 9am – 12pm |
| 18 hours | 2pm | 5pm | 8pm | 8pm | 8am | Between 9am- 12pm |
Brisket Leftovers
There are a few ways to restore your brisket leftovers, so they are almost as good as they were after you sliced it fresh out of the smoker. If you have a vacuum packaging machine, vacuum your leftover brisket as an entire piece and put it in the refrigerator for about 2 weeks, or into the freezer for an extended period. When it's time to reheat your brisket leftovers, place the bag into sous-vide bath, or onto a pot of water and bring it up to temperature at a very low heat. Check out my article on sous-vide brisket to find out more about this French cooking method that has taken the barbecue world by storm.
My Favorite Brisket Tools
Thanks for checking out this article. I hope you learned a few things. Here are some of my favorite tools I use when smoking brisket that may be useful to you. These are affiliate links, so if you decide to purchase any of these products, I'll earn a commission. But in all honesty, these are the tools I recommend to my family and friends who are just starting out.
Meat Injector: Injecting meat is a great way to take your barbecue to the next level and help you make competition-style brisket. An injector is the only way you will be able to get flavor and moisture into the middle of the meat. The Beast Injector is a stainless steel injector that is sturdy and affordable. Check the latest price on Amazon here.
Brisket Marinade: The best injection solution on the market is the Butcher BBQ Brisket Injection. This marinade is used in competitions and is made by World Barbecue Champion pitmaster, Dave Bouska. You can find the marinade on Amazon here.
Butcher Paper: Wrapping brisket in butcher paper has become a huge trend in barbeque thanks to Aaron Franklin. Wrapping your brisket in paper will give you a nice brisket bark. However, you can't just use any old paper, it has to be unwaxed, food grade paper. You can find it on Amazon here.
Brisket Rub: These days I make my own rub when possible, but I always have a few pre-made rubs for when I'm running low. Barbecue guru Malcom Reed produces Killer Hogs, one of the best brisket rubs I've found over the years. Another great rub is Slap Yo Daddy, made by brisket master and multiple World Barbecue Champion, Harry Soo.
Meat Thermometer: There are dozens of fancy thermometers on the market, but I still use my trusty TP20. For around $50, I have a high-quality meat thermometer with two probes, and can track the temperature of my smoker with one probe, and my meat with the other probe. The ThermoPro TP20 is an Amazon Best Seller because it's the easiest thermometer to operate, is durable, highly accurate, and comes with pre-programmed meat settings.
Instant Read Thermometer: Arguably, the second most important tool you need is a fast and accurate instant-read thermometer. These tools play an important role in the latter stages of the cook when the meat needs regular checking in multiple areas. I use the ThermoPro TP19 because it can do everything a ThermaPen can do, but for a fraction of the cost. You can check out the TP19 on Amazon here.
Advanced Thermometer and Automatic Temperature Controller: Once you're ready to take things seriously, the FireBoard 2 Drive is a six-channel Bluetooth/Wi-Fi thermometer that can monitor up to 6 pieces of meat, control and graph your cook sessions on your smartphone, and attaches to an an automatic blower that will convert your charcoal smoker to a set-and-forget. This is one of the most advanced meat thermometers on the market. You can check it out on the FireBooard website here.
More Brisket Articles:
Can You Finish Brisket In The Oven? (The Secret To Overnight Cooks)
The Brisket Rub Guide: Recipes From The Experts (Plus The Top 5 Best Pre-Made Rubs To Buy)
How to Get Bark on a Brisket
Should I Brine a Brisket?
Basting Brisket While Smoking
How To Spritz Brisket – The 10 Best Liquids For Smoking Meat
How To Get Tender Smoked Brisket Every Time
Tough Chewy Brisket? Here's Why
Smoking Brisket The Day Before – Can You Serve The Next Day?
Dry Smoked Brisket? Here's Why
How To Smoke A Brisket Flat
Should I Smoke Brisket Fat Side Up or Down?
What's A Brisket Point? The Ultimate Flat vs Point Comparison
How Long Should I Rest Brisket?
Brisket Leftovers: The Best Way To Reheat Brisket
Source: https://meatsmokinghq.com/how-to-make-brisket-tender-10-ways-to-tenderize-smoked-brisket/
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