Saturday, April 05, 2008

Meat III

This shit is wearing my tired ass out. 24 hours later it appears that the brisket is within five degrees of being done. I've learned alot in the process. I've also drank a superhuman quantity of vodka and listened to a shitload of good music. The ribs cooked flawlessly in just a few hours. But the brisket will be the piece de resistance. More later.

6 comments:

MikeD said...

Isn't your smoker a Bandera? I know I saw it, but it was rather late as you may recall, and things had become a bit hazy.

That BBQ Brethren website I sent you has some mods on dealing with heat distribution and leakiness. The only one I've done is the baffle that helps distribute the heat better in the smoke chamber. Other folks, though, have done all kinds of crazy shit - sealing the doors with oven door type gaskets, wrapping the whole smoker box in insulating material, putting in automatic baffles controlled by a thermometer, etc.

How did you have your baffles set when it was getting so hot?

Dick Logan said...

Steve--

Try this experiment: next weekend, cook a brisket in the oven. It's no hassle (i.e. no fire building, less cleanup), you get consistent results, and you probably wouldn't notice a difference in taste...

MikeD said...

Dick - I am stunned. Steve is a Texan, for god's sake.

If he's going to stoop to cooking one in the oven, he should just buy a pre-cooked one from HEB. Oven-cooked brisket is for women and Yankees (my wife read this over my shoulder and took offense. I told her I would retract the women part if she named me a single woman she knows who owns a smoker which she couldn't do).

Karrie said...

Being both a woman and I Yankee, I can say that brisket cooked in the oven can be quite good.

That being said, its fun to follow the smoker trials and tribulations. How about some pictures??

Steve said...

Mike, I don't know if I have "baffles." It's a New Braunfels.

What's your experience with Pecan vs. something like hickory when it comes to how hot it burns?

MikeD said...

You don't have a baffle if you didn't make it yourself. You need roof flashing and some tin snips and can print a template off that bbq-brethren website.

I almost always use oak. I've never used pecan or hickory. Were you using big logs, like split firewood or smaller stuff? The larger, split firewood will definitely last a lot longer.