How to BBQ Beef Brisket Like a World Champion

[Applause]there’s two different types of brisketsand what we’re cooking today and what Ialways cook in competition or what arecalled whole brisket the whole brisketshave quite a bit of fat on them so whatI want to do in competitions I want totrim as much fat as I can if I want toleave enough surface fat so that fatseasons the meat and tent and flavorsthe meat with the wood the fat and themoisture that’s going to come out of thefat but some of that this fat cap rightin here might be a couple of inchesthick and we don’t want to just seasonthe fat and cook the fat because we’regoing to have to trim that off whenwe’re done I’d like to buy good qualitybriskets I don’t think it’s necessary tohave USDA prime but I do think a USDAchoice one of my favorite brands ofbrisket is what’s called a CertifiedAngus brisket now the real secret forcompetition brisket when you’re cookingthe whole brisket and you want to turnin the whole brisket is there’s big packbig pockets of fat that separate thesetwo muscles you can see there’s one onthis side and there’s another one onthis side so now the trick is to goinside of there and cut that out one ofthe ways I know that it’s ready to go iswhen I can push down and I don’t feel alot of resistance we want to eliminateas much of that fat from the middle sothat when that when the judges see thempiece of meat they’ve got the meat fromthe top and the meat from the flatwithout too much fat in between wheneverwe’re ready to turn this in when we goto cut this we don’t have to do anyoutside trimming of the product anddestroy any of the look we’re gonna getwell I don’t want to do much moretrimming to that more competition andthat one’s pretty much ready to beseasoned the fires burned down to prettymuch just ashes so now we’re gonna goand close up the cooker and go ahead andlet the cooker start to generate heat[Music]we’re going to be cooking at 225 degreeson this thermometer and this one overhere will end up about 200 degrees we’regonna season the briskets the exact sameway we do the pork butts and we’re gonnause the same rub real important to getall the edges on the brisket is thatrubs gonna help seal it up on that whenthe heat hits it the rub is gonna helpseal it and keep a lot of the a lot ofthe juice and moisture innow the briskets are a little differentfrom the pork we’re going to cook thoseand at about the six or seven hour markwe are going to flip the briskets upsidedown we are going to cook the brisketsthat side up or the points side up we’vegot the flat here so this is going to bethe bottom side we’re gonna start themwith the wood the fat side up and thenin a cook-off time it’s usually rightaround midnight by the time I’m thinkingabout going to bed we’ll usually takenand and baste or spray the briskets onemore time and then I’ll flip them upsidedown one of the things I like aboutadding cold charcoal on too hot is allthat smoke that’s being generated rightnow it is a wonderful flavor so I alwaysadd cold charcoal to hot we’ve justadded the charcoal and we’re gonna openthis butterfly damper all the way that’sgonna allow as much air as possible inthere because we do want to go ahead andlet that let that charcoal catch as soonas possible since we want to get it upto temperature within the next half hourthese are ready to go on the cooker nowour cooker gets 225 degrees over thereon that door just like we said we’regonna put the larger brisket on to thecompetition cooker and I like to startmy briskets and pork butts up in whatI’ll call the top left of the cooker andwe’re gonna take the larger pork buttand do the same thing and we’re gonnaput them right up there and they’regonna be just fine like that forprobably a good two or three hours untilthat rub sets up and starts to form acrust we’ll get some smoke working withsome added some wood right nowone of the biggest mistakes than anyamateur or backyard barbecue makes isthey make the mistake of cooking withtoo much wood I like these real smallsticks of wood they’re perfect foradding flavor they don’t generate toomuch heatwe’ve got oak wood Applewood cherry andHickory in there right now and you cansee they’re already smoking and we’regonna start our basting procedure whichis really very simple we fill up a spraybottle with apple juice apple juiceapple cider whatever your favorite brandis I wouldn’t use anything that wouldhad any added sweetener to it applejuice is already plenty sweet enough andwe spray it we’re gonna be spraying itprobably every two hours up until wewrap the product the reason that I likeusing apple juice it’s got a nice mildflavor it’s not gonna add any anythingtoo aggressive to the flavor but it doesalso have a nice sweetness so the morewe spray and the more the heat hits itwe’re gonna get some caramelize ation ofthe apple juice and that’s going to givethat barbecue three four five six hoursdown the road it’s gonna give us thatnice dark caramelized look as we can seethe rub is settled up it’s forming alittle bit of a crust there it’s notgonna run off it’s still a nice littlebright red color and now’s when we’regonna spray our apple juice on those andat this point we’re gonna be sprayingevery hour and you just almost can’t puttoo much on there we’re going to goahead and check the briskets in pork nowup to about 165 to 170 it’s gonna be inthis in the cooker getting smoke gettingbasted then at about 165 to 70 we’regonna wrap it in aluminum foil and putit back on the cooker the foil what itdoes is it allows it to sort of pressurecook or cooking its own steam it doesn’trich it doesn’t hurt the smoke flavorvery much but it definitely keeps keepsapart from drying out and it acceleratesthe cooking process it would take a longtime to get this the brisket and thepork up to 190 195 we didn’t wrap itI try to leave my scenes or I alwaysleave my scenes pointing straight upthat way you know you’re not gonna haveanything leaking out of the scenes andwe want to wrap it as tight as we canand then we’re just going to put themright back on the cooker in the exactsame spot it’s part of the science tobarbecue that not a lot of peopleunderstand in the beginning but if youwant to be really good at barbecue youhave to use those internal meatthermometers to understand when yourfood is reaching what stages oftenderness and moisture and all that thebuzzer went off therefore our briskethas to be at least 193 it says 194 rightnow that thing can get annoying after awhile so we’re gonna go ahead and probeboth of the pieces of meat and see wherewe’re at and we’re up in the 195 to 200range right there this is where I liketo use this big spatula it’s got enoughweight to it that it’s not gonna Bendalso by using the spatula we don’t runany chance of pulling it across thegrates and breaking it open there’s alot of juice in there that we might needand we want to keep that steam in thereand not lose any of that liquid and wedo the same thing with the brisket bynow ideally if we’re to cook-off we’vegot about an hour to an hour and an hourand 15 minutes to win this has to beturned in we want to let both thebrisket in the pork set out of thecooker for about at least an hour beforewe cut into them or work with them thatallows those juices what we’ve done iswe’ve cooked these to an internaltemperature of 190 degrees plus a lot ofthe juice and all has moved to theoutside of the meat and over the nexthour we want a lot of that juice and andand natural juices in there to move backtowards the center of the meat and andand be be a little more consistentproduct so we’re gonna let these sitjust like this for about 45 minutes toan hour then we’ll start unwrapping itand it’s starting to get ready toprepare itokay it’s been about an hour and we’vegot our brisket and pork butts that aredone and we’re gonna take them over toour carving station they move thebrisket over to the cutting board one ofthe first things that I want to do isyou want to make sure you understandwhich way the grain is running now awhole brisket has the two differentmuscles the flat muscle on the bottomand the the point or camp on the topthose grains do run they don’t run thesame directions so you’re gonna becutting the wrong way on one of them wewant to cut the product against thegrain with the flat so we can see herefrom that cut that the flat the grain onthe flat is running this way so we’regonna want to cut perpendicular to thatgrain with our very first cut I’d liketo see for competition how nice my smokering is I also like to see if I missedany of those pieces of fat and as we cansee from this one we don’t really haveany of those bad pieces of fat what Ilike to do is I like to slice the partthat has more of the fat on it and whatwe’re gonna do is we’re going to cutthese about quarter inch slice theabsolute best eating this is rememberthis is a flat and this piece up here isthe point the absolute best eating onthe entire brisket is up here in thisarea this is what we in Kansas City anda lot of other places of the countrycalled the burn ends that came off thetop of the brisket we trim a little bitof flat that was there in the middle andlike I said before now that the BRITproducts cook the fat is the softestpart and we’re just kind of goingthrough and take a little more fat offand then we can chop this up for ourburnt ends and what I like to do in a ina presentation is we’ll we’ll shingle upabout six or seven pieces of brisket andthen we’ll put some burnt ends rightthere in the front the nice thing aboutthe burnt ends is you’ve got that niceblack and what I try to do is show asmuch of the black edges to the judges aswe can if they were looking at it andTaner we want him to see those blackedges not only does it look pretty it’salso the best-tasting part and there’syour brisket you got your sliced brisketwhich is primarily from the flat and theburnt ends from the topyou