Brisket Cooking Details (Photos)

Our oldest grandson got married yesterday, culminating a very busy three months of work by my wife (MHNBPF) who designed and sewed the bride's gown, with close to 200 hours hand applique work on the gown and veil lace, and my patiently watching her do her stuff while I was not watching TV or snoozing in my recliner.









The wedding was beautiful and went well.

My part in the festivities was to take on the role of "MD the Elder" (There is an MD Jr, and the groom, who is MD the younger). Oh, and on Tuesday, I cooked a brisket for the rehearsal dinner, which was held Wednesday night.

I decided to take some photos as I dedicated 9 hours to TV watching, Diet Dr. Pepper drinking, and grill watching as the brisket did it's thing.

It was an interesting day, since I had not cooked a Brisket on this grill, which is substantially smaller than my old offset log burner.

Old Grill in Meridian



New grill in Clinton



The smaller size and totally different heat dynamics of the new grill demanded a change in the cooking/smoking process, but it was worth the effort for the grandson, his bride, and their friends.

Here is what I did.

I started with an 8 pound brisket, since we had only about 50 people scheduled to attend the rehearsal dinner and my Son (MD Jr.) was doing 2 Boston Butts on his grill and there was lots of other food.



Here is the brisket.







After removing the Cryovac wrapping, I rinsed the brisket and then dried it off with some paper towels. Then I got out my seasonings. yellow mustard, Lawry's garlic salt, black pepper and The ICA Spices (Memphis, TN) dry rub I have used for years. This one (# 02-1993) contains salt, sugar and brown sugar, black and red pepper, paprika, garlic, onion powder, Monosodium Glutimate, natural hickory smoke flavor, and trisodium phosphate. In a previous job, I did business with ICA and they are a (large) first rate company. They are on the internet, and will sell any of their numerous blends, sauces, and pure spices to you, although they now have minimum quantities that may be difficult for some to meet, unless they cook commercially.



First, I coated the brisket with yellow mustard.







My intent was to cook the brisket "Fat Cap Up", so I only seasoned the meat side in the kitchen and then did the fat cap after placing it on the grill. I don't measure mustard, garlic salt, or dry rub. You can tell, I use a lot.



Heat source on the grill was lump Mesquite charcoal.





Topped the lump coals with wet mesquite chips,



I added charcoal about every 15 minutes if needed and more chips each time I checked the fire. The fire was never much larger than shown above. I rotated the brisket every hour or so. The temperature gauge on the pit never got any hotter than just below 250 degrees F.

Here is the brisket after an hour or two.



Here is the brisket later.



And after close to 9 hours.



Sliced and ready to take to the rehearsal dinner at the Wedding venue the next day. It was very tender and in spite of the way the photo might look, nice and moist. I did not serve it with sauce.

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