Climbing The Barbecue Mount Everest

I'll admit it: Brisket scared the hell out of me. I only recently bought my Egg, but before that I'd been smoking meat for a couple of years, mostly pig in the form of pork steaks or butts or ribs, but occasionally I've done a chicken or fish. Beef brisket? No way. That stuff is scary. "The Mount Everest of Barbecue," someone called it.

There are 563 ways to smoke a brisket, according to all I've read, and each of them is the only way. Each of them required at least one sleepless night and if you didn't follow the directions to a tee you'd finish not with a brisket but a bricket. Your wife will never sleep with you again, your kids will lose all respect for you, and, worst of all, you'll be the laughing stock of the smoking forums.

But then I got this Egg, and I had no excuse. If I couldn't smoke a brisket on a $1,000 piece of equipment, I should just sell the Egg and go back to eating cold Ravioli out of a can. So when my friend called from a local store saying, "HEY, they've got brisket packers for $1 a pound! Want one?" I could say nothing but "YES, YES, MY GOD, YES!" Otherwise he'd think I was a wimp.

So I picked Labor Day. Just to add to the pressure, I invited my friend and some others to eat that brisket, because 20 pounds of brisket is an awful lot of meat. So I spent a week-plus fretting and planning, planning and fretting. Do I cook it at a low heat for nearly a full day? Or should I go the quicker route and smoke it at 350? Rub it with mustard? Mop it all night? Beer? Wine? Old coffee? Sterno? 

Ultimately, I went simple. I'd do low and slow. Sure, it would take me a long time. I'd get no sleep and by the time my friends came over I'd be as cranky as my toddler gets when I turn the Wiggles off in the middle of a Big Red Car song. But at least I'd have room for error, and if there's anything I need when it comes to cooking, it's room for error. Make a mistake on high heat and your brisket ends up like a brick. 

I trimmed the fat -- and there was a lot of fat; so much so that my 20 pound brisket was probably about 15 when I finished. I rubbed it with Dijon mustard the night before the cook and let it sit in the fridge. A few hours before the cook, I rubbed it with my rub, which included paprika, ancho chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, salt, pepper and an herb I'm pretty sure was oregano. Here it is:

I let it rest for a few hours, and then I decided to fire up the Egg. I removed all of the old lump left over from a fabulous chicken wing session earlier, and got the Egg going. I decided to measure the temp at the grate level, and when I got it to a bit over 250, I put the brisket on. It was just after 11 p.m. on Sunday night. Here's what it looked like:

I had a couple of chunks atop the coals, and another couple of chunks soaking so I could put them on later. Otherwise, I stayed up a bit, watched some Family Guy on Netflix, kept track of the temp and let it settle at around 230, and set my remote thermometer for 260 to warn me in case the dome temp got too high. I then set my iPhone alarm for two hours later and fell asleep.

Every two hours I got up, sprayed the brisket with apple juice (not apple sauce, as I kept telling my friends, for some inexplicable reason, perhaps because I'd been up every two hours the night before; seriously, it was like a flashback to the days when my kids were infants, only less screaming). But, by 6:30 a.m., I noticed something amiss -- the grate temp had fallen to well below 200 degrees; it was still ON, but the meat was no longer cooking. Oops. Opened the vents up a bit to warm it up, and then promptly fell asleep, only to be woken by my 260-degree alarm a half-hour later. Thank God for modern technology.

And Thank God for low and slow, because the mistake was quickly remedied. Well, as quick as can be done on an Egg. For the rest of the time I kept the egg at a constant temp of 240, and sprayed it periodically. By 2 p.m., the thermometer in the meat was over 190, and my instant read thermometer slid through the meat like it was butter. Well, butter that has been sitting out all day. Not butter just out of the fridge. That metaphor needs clarification.

I wrapped the brisket in two layers of foil, and then some towels, and put it in a cooler. I had some time to throw some Andouille sausages on the Egg for a couple of hours of smoking. The result was a decent spread:

We made some corn (cooked in their husks on my gasser), some salad, cornbread (here's the link to the recipe; it's AWESOME), grapes and homemade baked beans. We forgot to serve the beans, which was probably better for the local air quality. The meat went quickly. I got plenty of compliments, and so did the Egg. And in the end I was satisfied at my first effort at conquering the Barbecue Mount Everest. 

And shortly after everybody left, I went into the bedroom and fell asleep.