Beef Brisket Emergency!: 11 hours later

omba · January 2007

Folks,[p]For any other newbies out there and for your EGGtertainment, I thought I would share the near-results of today's brisket adventure. For those of you who may have missed my panic, my original message is here:
http://www.biggreenegg.com/wwwboard/messages/332898.shtml[p]For those of you who have followed along that previous thread, my guests were happy with hamburgers and bratwurst cooked on my (forgive me!) gas grill. They're home sleeping by now. :-)[p]On to my adventure ...[p]The temperature dial read about 230 degrees for most of the cooking time. At the 7+ hour mark I FINALLY cracked open the egg to check the temperature. My digital fork registered only 145 degrees!
By the eighth hour I barely broke the 150 barrier. And an hour later the brisket reached 160. That was after nine hours, and it wasn't easy gettiong the fork into the meat. Well ... it wasn't really difficult, but the meat was far from tender. I began to wonder ...[p]Could it be that my dome thermometer is off? No, I don't think so. I had calibrated it a couple of weeks ago. And I remebered how my pork butts had taken about 7 hours when I was accustomed to about 5 on my fake-smoker gas grill. Hmmm? Do all my "secret recipes" need modifications for my BGE? I don't know, but I suspect that they do. Anyway ...[p]It has been eleven hours since I put the brisket into the Egg. I could not be here for the past hour. It registered 186 at hour 10, and I just removed it at 203 degrees after the 11-hour egging. What a black mess! But it smells pretty darn good. :-)[p]So ...
Not knowing what else to do, I wrapped it in foil (Fat side up!) and stuffed it into a cooler with a towel. Now I don't know what I'm going to do. I need to get to sleep soon, and there's a dark thing sitting in a cooler in my garage, and I'm not hungry, and everyone I know is asleep, and I have had such a good time here with you folks![p]Later,
Peter

Newbs · January 2007

omba,[p]What you described as a "black mess" may be brisket perfection. Read this quote taken from the dizzy pig site
which I'll link to below.
"It’s been said that Texas brisket comes out of the cooker looking like a meteorite on the outside."
So your timing was a bit off. My first pork butt cook took longer than I'd hoped too. It sounds like you may have a nice chunk of meat to look forward to
Glad everyone enjoyed your dinner all the same.[p]Cheers,[p]John

[ul][li]Dizzy Pig Brisket Tutorial[/ul]

gdenby · January 2007

omba,[p]Since getting my Egg last spring, I've been collecting image posts from the Forum, as guides and inspiration. A lot of briskets have been nearly black. The few I've done, and the chuck roasts for pulled beef have been just about pitch on the outside. So the color is a good sign.[p]It took me about a month to forget a lot of the cooking methods I'd developed with other grills and smokers. The Egg is a different environment.[p]If your dome temp was 230, the grill temp was probably 15 - 25 degrees cooler for the first several hours, if not the whole of the cooking. That accounts for the meat taking a long time to reach the right internal. This is one of those getting used to things. The longest I was ever able to keep my water smoker going was about 5 hours. The Egg lets you go all day and night for low-n-slo's.[p]gdenby

mollyshark · January 2007

omba,[p]Oldie brisket maker reporting in here. I don't recall the size of your brisket, but I've had them take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours/lb depending on the amount of fat and connective tissue. So time on a brisket is reeeeeal variable.[p]A brisket will get up to 145 pretty quick. No biggie. It's not doing a whole lot other than heating up. When it hits 160 you're at plateau. It's gonna sit there a loooooong time. I've had 160s sit for 5 hours and not move a squinch. That's when your connective tissue is breaking down and giving up the ghost. At 145 it will not feel fork-happy, and really not at 160.[p]When you finally get the climb past 160, it will hit that 190 mark pretty quick and fork-happiness will start. It SHOULD look like a black mess if you've put on a good rub, particularly one with some sugar in it. But believe me, it's delicious. Just a matter of patience. When they start to clone every single cow, we will be able to predict brisket cooking times. After a few briskets under your belt (which is where they choose to stay, unfortunately unless you're me and then they also sink to thighs but that is another story), you'll stop worrying about them and just trust your handy thermapen.[p]You done good sticking it in the cooler. It's like a day at the beach for a brisket. It will relax a little, kick back, unwind. Hiring a massage therapist would not do as much for the brisket as that waiting period. When you hop out of bed (which I suspect you are if you are reading this diatribe), open it up and slice off a little piece. Of the brisket, that is. Then you may get all twinkly and do the happy fork dance.[p]mShark

WessB · January 2007

mollyshark,
Lady.....You got a way with words...LOL...that last paragraph did me in..[p]Wess

WessB · January 2007

<p />omba,
That "black mess" as you call it should be a measure of success....it`s all good..[p]Wess

eggophyte · January 2007

omba,
As my name suggests I am a newbie too (or does it suggest that I am an eggplant: see the Latin definition for phyte). I have never done a brisket before so I can offer no advice, but you can spin this positively by saying that there is now more brisket for you . Fortunately for all other newbies out there, we can learn from this; Get her done early and wrap her in foil for later. I am sorry to hear about the problems. [p]Eggophyte[p]

The Virginian · January 2007

omba,
Sounds like things should be fine, your only mistake was to assume it would only take 7 hours. I have have 12 lb briskets take 16-20 hours to finish. Even 5 lb flats often take 10-11 hours. [p]Brett

Unknown · January 2007

eggophyte,
assuming "eggophyte" is a play on "neophyte", it's the "neo" part of the word, not "phyte", that means new![p]Ken

eggophyte · January 2007

Ken Baker,
I realized this. It was initially a play on neophyte. It is a streach for met to recall my years of latin class. Admittedly it is a pretty bad name but I found it kind of funny that it was intended to be a play on neophyte but in reality it more closely resembles eggplant as per it's Latin root.

eggophyte · January 2007

With an understanding that the neo is sin qua non, I neglected to mention that neoegg sounds a lot worse than eggophyte. To further amplify the irony, my wife is a vegetarian and, as a result, the egg is used extensively for cooking vegetables. Ex post facto, the phyte suffix is quite apropos.

DannyV · January 2007

eggophyte,[p]Share some of the vegetarian recipes you come up with. Would be nice to add some to the recipe files.

Beef Brisket Emergency!: 11 hours later

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