• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

WooPigFoodie

  • Home
  • My Favorite Photos
  • About Me
  • Navigation Menu: Social Icons

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Tumblr
    • Twitter

How to Smoke a Texas-Style Beef Brisket

October 18, 2015 By WooPigFoodie Leave a Comment

Beefy, smoky, peppery and a little bit charry, smoked beef brisket is a delicious thing. It can also be one of the most difficult BBQ dishes to perform correctly—to end up with a juicy and succulent brisket instead of a tough and chewy one. Because it requires good technique to make a good brisket, I often use the “brisket test” to judge how good a BBQ restaurant is. (Unfortunately I’ve had many bad briskets at those “famous” BBQ restaurants. Very often, I find the brisket is tough and cut too thick to disguise their problems.). My thought is that if they can’t do brisket right, there’s no point in eating the rest of their BBQ. For the most part, that’s been true.

Here’s a nice, easy recipe that shows you how to make your own succulent, juicy, beefy and peppery and smoky brisket.

It’s super easy to do. The only tough parts are to be patient (generally, a brisket will take at least 1 hour per pound of meat plus 2 hours of resting time) and to watch your meat temperatures. If you have a digital thermometer that can give you regular readings, by say piping it to your phone over Bluetooth, that makes it even easier. (Here’s what I use.)

iGrill2 Bluetooth Thermometer

If you don’t have a Bluetooth thermometer, you can just check the temps every hour or so with a good digital thermometer. (Here’s my favorite non-Bluetooth thermometer.)

Thermapen Classic Digital Thermometer

Here’s how to do this. (The full recipe is at the end.)

Buy a well-marbled brisket from your favorite store. When I say well-marbled, I mean one that has lots of fat lines throughout. Don’t worry about how thick the “fat cap” is on the back—focus your attention on the other side, the meat side. That’s where you’ll decide if this brisket is good enough to bring home. Also, I like to get a nice “floppy” brisket. I’m not sure that makes a difference, but I figure if it starts out floppy it has a good chance of staying soft when I cook it—especially if it has lots of fat marbled throughout. I like to hold the brisket at one end and see if the other end flops down right away. I think that is a good sign.

When you buy a brisket, you should purchase what is called a “packer’s cut,” which is composed of the flat, a long flat portion of meat, covered at one end by the point, a thicker belt that crosses the top of the brisket at an angle. (The point is much fattier internally than the flat, so the point is used to make burnt ends, a tasty square nugget of beef that is cut off the point after smoking, drenched in barbecue sauce, and then put back on the smoker until caramelized.) A “packer’s cut” weighs about 13 pounds. At roughly an hour per pound plus additional time for resting, that’s a long day of smoking, so you may want to start it the night before, or very, very early in the morning.

When you get your brisket home, give it a good rinse and set it on your cutting board. I don’t do much trimming to my briskets, because I want to keep as much fat on them as I can. You can “square it off” if you like, which means to cut off any curves to make the brisket more of a rectangle. I don’t worry about that.

Take a look at the grain of the flat and point. When you are ready to serve, you will cut across the grain, so this is a good time to check and see what direction it runs. When you serve the brisket, you will want to cut directly perpendicular to those lines you now see in the meat—that way the meat will be the most tender because the grain will be “broken up” into smaller pieces. If instead you cut it along (in the same direction as) those lines, then the meat grain is not broken up and the meat will be very tough and hard to chew. So note the way the grain runs, and maybe snap a picture with your camera, because you won’t see those lines after the brisket is smoked.

Another good trick is to make a small cut in the corner of your brisket, which will guide you as to the direction you want to cut the brisket when it is done, as you can see in the below photo. That cut is perpendicular to the grain, which is pretty easy to see in the below picture.

Making a direction cut

Make your cut perpendicular to the grain.

It’s time to season your brisket. Most true Texas-style beef brisket recipes only allow for two ingredients, a 50/50 mixture of kosher salt and cracked black pepper (Aaron Franklin of Austin’s Franklin Barbecue likes pepper that is not freshly cracked. I agree—it can be way to hot. Instead, buy pre-cracked pepper and use that.). Sometimes recipes call for an addition of granulated garlic (not garlic powder or garlic salt). Here, I’m using Meat Church’s Holy Cow rub, which is a nice savory mix.

Meat Church Holy Cow Beef Rub

Liberally sprinkle the rub all across the top of the brisket and pat it in. You don’t have to pat it hard, just give it a “good job” kind of pat. Flip it over and give the other side, the fat side, a good sprinkling of rub too. Truly, most of that fat will melt away so you may not need to sprinkle it there, but I do. I don’t sprinkle the sides with rub. I like to look at the sides as I go to get an idea of how done the meat is. That’s a second check on the thermometer.

Rubbed Brisket

Now its time to smoke the brisket. I like to smoke over oak and pecan and hickory when I do red meat, and today I did oak and hickory. Hickory gives you a nice spicy smoke, and oak gives you a great rich smoke backbone. Most Texas brisket is smoked over local post oak.

Texas-Style Beef Brisket

Brisket on the Smoker

Get your smoker lit and somewhere around 225 degrees. It’s ok if it gets up to 275 degrees or so, but it’s better to do a slower cook at a lower temperature. So, cool it down if you can. Set the brisket on your smoker and let it cook until it hits 162 degrees. I like to cook it fat side down, because it protects the brisket from the heat coming up from underneath, and I want the rub to form a crust on top and not slide off when I cut it–which happens if you put the fat side up. (And there’s no truth to the rumor that the fat “melts into the meat, basting it as it smokes.” That’s been debunked numerous times over.)

Texas-Style Beef Brisket

Brisket at the Turn (just before wrapping)

Once it hits 162 degrees, pull it off and take it inside. Wrap it up either in butcher paper, parchment paper, or tin foil. If you use parchment paper, you may have to use a few layers, like I do here. Before you close it up, add in one cup of beef broth. You can use the boxed or canned beef bouillon or use what I use: a tablespoon of Better Than Bouillon mixed into hot water.

Pour the beef broth down the side of the wrapping so that you don’t disturb that great bark that has been forming on the top of the brisket. I like to make a “boat” with the first layer of parchment paper, by gathering together the two ends of the paper as I do below. That gives a nice boat shape in which to carefully pour your broth.

Texas-Style Beef Brisket

Parchment Paper Boat

Then I close up the paper using the remaining pieces of parchment, sealing the brisket inside. Do the same with butcher paper or foil. Return the brisket to the smoker and let it cook until it reaches an internal temperature of 200 degrees. You don’t need to add any more smoke to it, just slow heat.

Texas-Style Beef Brisket

Brisket is wrapped and back on the smoker

Once the meat reaches 200 degrees, pull it off, keep it wrapped, and place it in a cooler to rest for at least two hours. Ok. At least one hour. (Yes, that feels like the last hour before summer vacation, but you can do it.) In fact, you can hold the brisket even longer if you like (or if your guests haven’t arrived yet). The reason for “resting” the meat is so that the meat fibers relax and soak up as much of the juice, as possible. If you cut the brisket right away, all those meat juices will pour out onto your cutting board, leaving tough meat. Resting is an important step, so don’t forget it!

Rest the brisket in a cooler

Once the meat has rested, it’s time to slice it. You want to slice the meat perpendicular to its grain. Think back to how the direction of the grain went and slice across those lines. (I like to take a photo to remind me of the direction the grain was pointing.) If you forget which way is which, if the brisket slices look like the below picture, you are slicing the wrong way, so turn the brisket 90 degrees and cut in that direction.

Cutting in the Wrong Direction

Cutting in the Wrong Direction

If you see brisket slices that look like the below picture, you are cutting in the correct direction. Keep on going!

Juicy Brisket

Cutting in the right direction

If you’ve cooked the meat correctly, a ¼” thick slice when held up by its middle with the back of a knife, should drape over the back of the knife and touch itself without breaking. It should also pull apart with a gentle tug. However, sometimes things don’t go perfectly. If you end up with tough brisket, it’s time to slice it very thin, make some mashed potatoes and beef gravy and eat it that way!

If you’re lucky enough to have leftover brisket, I like to keep it in tupperware or in a ziploc with some of the juice that came out of the brisket when it was wrapped. That will help keep it tender.

Texas Style Smoked Beef Brisket

Filed Under: BBQ, Dinner, Recipes

Categories

By Date

Search

Subscribe

for your weekly recipe fix.

Previous Post: « Homemade Garlic Dill Pickles
Next Post: Chipotle Tofu Sofritas »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Cooking, Eating, and Photographing the American South

Welcome to my Southern-focused food and photo blog! I'm an avid lover of all things Southern. I fish, hunt, cook, run, bike, grill, smoke, hike, and photograph throughout the wonderful world of Arkansas and its surrounding states. Follow me as we explore the very best of the Old and New South! Learn More →

The Thing About Fried Pickles

The thing about fried pickles is that you know they’re going to be hot. And you know that little cup of ranch dressing isn’t going to do it. You’re going to burn your mouth, your hands, and have hot vinegary dill pickle juice streaming down your chin and dripping onto the table. That’s just the way it is. And you don’t care. So you dive in, and burn yourself good. And it’s fantastic.
— review of Mustang Sally's in Perryville, AR

Categories

Archives

All Content Copyright © 2025 WooPigFoodie Omnimedia LLC. Any links from WooPigFoodie.com to Amazon.com are affiliate links. If you buy that linked product, Amazon may pay WooPigFoodie.com a small commission. (You still pay the normal price.) That small commission helps offset the expenses of WooPigFoodie.com.