The doctor will see you now

The last time I cooked a beef brisket it came out with excellent flavour but the meat was dry. I hadn't followed the full recipe that time, so yesterday I gave it another go with a bit more attention to detail and some more barbecue toys.

First off I added a rub to the meat, left it overnight and then injected it several times with a mix of Imperial Stout and salt water

 

You do this because the meat cooks for at least 6 hrs, so it needs some additional help to keep it moist. Poke the needle in and squeeze gently as you pull it out. You can see the meat bulging as you pump it, it's very cool.

One for the beef, one for the chef

I got the smoker good & smoky at around 230F and left the meat on it for a few hours. I went mountain biking and I recommend that option to anyone cooking this (particularly Graham), but it doesn't heavily affect the flavour of the meat

After around 4 hrs (when the meat has reached 150F or so) I tightly wrapped the meat in aluminium foil with a few spoonful's of my injection solution, stoked the fire a bit (temperature was dropping) and left it for another couple of hours. This is called a 'Texas crutch'. Apparently at around 150F there are a lot of juices coming to the surface of the meat which evaporate and keep the meat from further heating up for a couple of hours ('the stall'), and the Texas crutch helps prevent this by capturing the juices instead.

I waited for the meat to hit around 200F and then took it out  and opened it up. Yum.

Blade (which I think is the Australian term for what Americans call brisket) has two distinct pieces of meat on it, the main chunk and a smaller top section called 'the flat'. I took the flat off , re-wrapped the main body of the meat and left it in an esky for half an hour or so (should have been longer but I was hungry). The flat was chopped up and cooked in the juices that came out of the tinfoil; this is known as 'burnt ends'.

Fresh buttery brisket, home made mustard and a home-brewed beverage. And some green stuff for health purposes...

After some time in the Esky the beef came out looking, smelling and tasting fantastic. Much moister than last time and melt-in-the-mouth. You could almost cut through it with a butter knife.   

The only problem is that it only holds this texture whilst it's warm. Once it's been stored in the fridge it's still tasty, but it won't have that smooth butteriness. So I had to eat as much as possible that evening...