I did the Sous Vide Brisket so you wouldn't have to....

LINK to Serious Eats Article

After the article hit and was posted here, I thought I would give this a try once and see if it really was foolproof, as smoking a brisket for 3 hrs at a tailgate is certainly a lot more do-able than 14-16 hrs or so.

I picked up a prime packer-cut brisket on sale at Sam's last week for $2.19/lb, which is the cheapest I've seen prime briskets here in the MW for a really long time. I didn't want to smoke a monster one because I wasn't sure how well it would fit in my sous vide tub, so I got a relatively small 9.5-pounder.




From there, I trimmed the hard fat off of the cap, split the flat in two pieces and (poorly) sliced the point from the flat to use for burnt ends. Into the water bath at 155 for 32-ish hrs.



32 hours later, here is what the flat looked like:



Here's the water/fat that was squeezed out of the meat during the cooking process; there was even more than I had assumed would come out:



Cooled in an ice-water bath in my sink for about 90 minutes, it was onto my WSM for 3 hrs at between 250-300. This was my first mistake; given the relative small size of my flat I don't think the meat was thick enough to require a 3 hour smoke at this point. Anyway, here's what it looked like coming off the smoker, both the flat pieces and the diced point:



And the final verdict on the sliced portion of the flat:


So here are my thoughts:

- The burnt ends were great, and they could take a few more hours of smoke and been fine. There was great marbling you could see after the water bath, and they were juicy. They were up there with the best burnt ends I've ever made, even if they didn't have as much smoke as they typically get.

- The flat was fine; I would put it square in the middle of the briskets I've made. I was pleasantly surprised that only 3 hours of smoke produced a smoky flavor that was on par with a full smoked brisket. I think that due to the relatively small size of the flat, I cooked it too long, both in the water bath and in the smoker afterwards. It had decent moisture, but certainly not as much as I've been able to produce when doing nothing but a smoke. On the flip side, it had more moisture than some that I have charred, so it was a good brisket, just not a great brisket.

- When smoking on the WSM, I didn't use a thermometer; I just assumed it would be cooked under the typical temperature I pull my briskets at. That was probably a mistake.

- Visually it looked not as bad as I thought it would, but not as good as I expect a fully smoked brisket to look. There was no smoke ring to speak of, which doesn't bother me, but I didn't get the charring on the outside that looks so great.

- I'm a bit upset I didn't weigh the thing after, as I really wanted to see how much meat we got out of a 9.5-lb pre-cooked weight brisket.

Will I ever do this again? Probably, but only because I am pretty stubborn and if Kenji says this produces super-juicy brisket then I think that means I did something wrong. For me, getting the chance to smoke a brisket is a pretty rare occurrence, and with three kids 6 and under at the house babysitting the WSM all day isn't something that's easy for me to do. This is easily something I can put in the water bath one evening during the week, can take out when done and put in the fridge for the week, and then on a weekend I can throw it on the smoker for a couple of hours and have a pretty good product. But this one was in the "C" range, although C-grade brisket is still better than eating a salad for lunch.