1 10- to
12-pound beef brisket
2 cups All-SouthBarbecue Rub
2 cups Basic All-American Barbecue Sauce on the side
1. Rub the brisket
thoroughly on all its sides with the barbecue rub, and allow it to come to room
temperature.
2. In the pit of a
covered grill, build a very small fire on one side as far up against one wall
as possible. Place the brisket on the grill on the side opposite from the fire
so that none of the brisket is directly over the flame. Put the top on the
cooker, pull up a chair, and grab the cooler.
This is where a person learns about the Zen of Barbecue. You
gotta keep the fire going, but very quietly. If you’ve got a thermometer on
your covered grill, you want to keep the temperature between 180° and 220°F.
Remember, “Slow and low is the way to go.” You have to figure out your own
personal refueling policy. The one I like is one handful of coals or wood
chunks to every beer.
This goes on for about 8 to 10 hours or however long you can make
it, the longer the better. Don’t be scared by the darkening of the exterior,
the outside of the brisket will be superdark—my personal favorite part.
3. Upon completion,
pull the brisket out, trim off any excess fat, and slice it thin. Serve with
barbecue sauce on the side—no pro would ever cover properly cooked brisket with
sauce, he’d just dab on a touch.
Obviously the key here is a tremendous amount of patience and a
day when you want to do nothing but sit around. But the end product is one of
those great culinary events that results from spending a lot of time doing
something that is relaxing and enjoyable. Make sure you have plenty of tall
boys for eating this.
In my estimation, beef brisket just might
be why the barbecue process was invented. My research, sketchy as it is, shows
that there was a strong German immigrant community in Texas around the turn of the
century. It has some of these Germans working in the booming Texas cattle
industry, and others working in butcher shops, what with their strong background
in butchering and charcuterie. It being common knowledge that butchers are
constantly trying to turn tough or inexpensive cuts of meat into a usable
product that brings a higher cost (witness sausages and pâtés), it has these
German butchers faced with the brisket. This cut of beef is particularly
unwanted because of the huge percentage of fat that runs not only on the
surface, but throughout the cut. Traditional technique would braise or pickle
this cut to tenderize it, but the brisket also has a lot of beef flavor. In my
personal opinion, a very smart German butcher who was looking for a way to
market this cut barbecued it. We’re not talking here about the open-pit
roasting that was already popular in this area, but rather closed-pit cooking,
in which the cooking is done by convection rather than conduction. It is
similar to braising in theory, with the smoke replacing the water. It is cooked
at very low heat for a long period of time, and the high fat content protects the
meat from drying out but also disappears through the 10- to 18- hour cooking
process. What you are left with is very tender meat with little or no fat and a
tremendous smoky beef flavor. I think the meat and the process were literally
invented for each other.
Now, I don’t think that you will get any disagreement from the professional
barbecue industry when I say that brisket is the hardest to master—but, hey,
learning is half the fun. And, in the words of Remus Powers, famous barbecue
aficionado, “The best barbecue I ever had is the one on the plate in front of
me.”
These are guidelines for the closed-pit barbecuing of brisket,
a basic technique with many variables which is wide open for personal interpretations.
• Serves 8 to 10 beer-swilling
cowboys/girls
SERVING SUGGESTIONS: I
like this with Hot Pepper Corn Bread, Grandma Wetzler’s Baked Beans, and
Tidewater Coleslaw. Your Basic Grilled Corn is good, too, and don’t forget the
watermelon.
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