6 minute read
Kitchen Cache Parker’s BBQ Pit Brisket
STORY BY PAM BURKE
Parker ’ s BBQ Pit Brisket Rub and Recipe
Advertisement
With only two ingredients, the spice rub is as simple as it gets — but added to tender beef brisket, which gains much flavor from the cut’s natural marbling, then paired with a light smokey flavor and attention to cooking details, Steve Parker’s recipe gives you a brisket that takes center stage.
“My primary objective with keeping the rub as simple as possible is to let the quality of the beef speak for itself,” said Parker, owner of Parker’s BBQ Pit with his wife, Jennifer.
Brisket is a hands-on meat, Parker said. You need to maintain water in a pan in the smoker or grill to help keep the meat from drying out. You also have to spritz the meat at regular intervals to add moisture and flavoring to the meat. And the process requires attention to temperatures of both the meat and the cooker during a 10- to 14-hour cook time.
But you also have to be brave enough to keep the lid shut until it’s time to check the temps and spritz the meat — because if you’re lookin’, it isn’t cooking, he added.
“It’s definitely a labor of love,” Parker said. “Y’know brisket is the king of all smoked meats you got to be able to put the time in to put out a good product.”
Parker, who is the pit master for the family-run food truck business, said he makes his brisket in a central Texas style, which is cooked without a barbecue sauce and has a smoke flavor created with post oak, a tree native to the central Texas.
“It’s a little more subtle,” he said.
Not only is the smoke from post oak subtle, but he also only adds enough wood to create the smoke, not make the wood part of the heat source.
Post oak isn’t normally carried in stores in Montana, he said, so you’ll have to special order some. He said he’s found some private sources online, but he’s also purchased off of Amazon. Local stores do have hickory, he added, and that can be substituted in a pinch. It will change the flavor, he said, but the key is to put very little of the hickory on your coals to at least keep with the subtle flavoring.
“Smoke is flavor, not a cooking element,” he added. Like a spice, the smoking is meant to enhance the flavor of the meat, not overwhelm it.
To help the rub and the smoke penetrate the meat and create that quarter- to half-inch of outer darker or redder layer in the smoked meat called “bark,” Parker said, you have to remove the hard tallow layer of fat from the outside of the brisket. This is easiest done while the meat is still cold from the refrigerator, or even still partly frozen.
But don’t remove all the fat, he said. Leave about a quarter-inch layer of the softer fat layer that’s under the tallow and leave any fat that is marbled in the meat, or connecting the flat and point portions of the brisket. This “fatcap” and marbled fat will render down and bring flavor and moisture to the meat.
At the points in the smoking process when you spritz moisture on the brisket and check temperatures, Parker recommended checking internal temperature in a few areas of the brisket. And if you need to turn the meat to help even out temperatures, don’t flip it — you want to keep that fatcap on top.
Parker uses different styles of smokers for various cooking methods and different meats, but he also said he uses a regular “dad-style” propane grill, too.
He demonstrated how he uses a simple charcoal kettle grill as a smoker by arranging the briquettes or charcoal and the post oak in a semi-circle against the edge of one half. The pan of water is placed within the semicircle of coals. and the meat is laid, fat side up, in the center of the other half of the grill.
Smoking a brisket with a small grill this way is more difficult, but smoking any meats is a challenge that might not turn out perfect the first time, he said, but you’ll learn from the experience. In fact, he warned that even the weather — wind, humidity, temperature — can influence the smoking process, from one time to the next.
Becoming a pit master relies on and develops patience, adaptability and creativity, as well as experience, he said, but it’s worth working to perfect the technique.
ITE MSNEE DED
• 10-12 pound Brisket • Rub (recipe below) • Spritz (recipe below) • Pink butcher paper • Kitchen knife or knives • Well-insulated barbecue smoker or grill • Small heat-proof water pan • 40-50 briquettes or that equivalent in lump charcoal, depending on smoker or grill • Post oak, equivalent to 3-4 small logs (the size of small bread loaves) or 6-8 chunks (baseball to softball sized) • Meat thermometer probe • Ambient temperature probe to track the smoker temp • Insulated container (cooler, Cambro box, unheated oven)
BEE F RUB
Equal parts of kosher salt and 16-mesh ground black pepper, which is a bit coarser than ground table pepper. Combined making roughly ½ cup of rub for a 10-12 pound brisket.
SPIRT Z:
• 2 ounces 100% apple juice • 8 ounces water
Combine ingredients in a spray bottle and mix well. This will be used to spritz the brisket during the cooking process.
Brisket cooking process
(all temperatures are +/- 5 degrees F) 1. Pre-heat smoker to 225 F with charcoal, and post oak. 2. Fill water pan and place in smoker, near heat source, if possible. 3. Trim hard fat from cold brisket, and leaving roughly ¼” of soft fat on fatcap. 4. Apply beef rub generously to all sides of brisket and let sit, covered, at room temperature for 45-60 minutes. 5. Place brisket on grill fat-side up — with the point (thick end) facing the heat source, if it’s possible with your smoker. 6. Close lid, do not open for 3 hours. 7. After 3 hours, open lid, spritz the brisket generously with apple juice mixture. 8. Close lid. 9. Raise smoker temp to 265 F, by adding more charcoal, or opening vent farther if you have adequate coals already. 10. Continue cooking at new temp, with closed lid. 11. After 3 hours, check internal temperature of brisket in a few areas. If internal temp is 160 F, then raise smoker temp to 280 F.
Note: If internal temp is not at least 160 F, then spritz generously and continue cooking until internal temp reaches 160 F.
Add water to pan if needed. 12. Cook brisket at 280 F until the internal temp is 180 F. 13. Pull brisket off smoker, spritz one last time and wrap the brisket tightly in at least one layer of butcher paper. 14. Place back in smoker. 15. Continue to cook until brisket reaches internal temp of 203 F. 16. Pull and let rest, whole, in a well-insulated container for at least 45 minutes. 17. Slice meat across the grain before serving.
