Brisket success!

Hi, friends!

I wanted to tell you about my weekend and a fun party we had for my flag football team. It was a great season -- my dad coached us, and a friend's dad also from Scouts was the assistant coach -- even if we didn't win too many games. But we sure accomplished goal #1: have fun!

I was super excited to have my teammates over to our house for an after-season party. I made sure to tell them I was going to barbecue. And what would be the best thing to barbecue for a great group of kids and parents? Brisket!

Now my dad and I haven't had consistent success with smoking a brisket. It's a hard piece of meat to barbeque well. It has a really thick side and a thin side, and the whole thing takes all day to cook. It is a challenge to cook it all day and keep the uneven piece of meat juicy. The previous time we barbecued a brisket it turned out all burnt up. Not good. And my mom kinda thought it might be a bad idea to try it again, especially for friends coming over. Mom was thinking it might be less risky to try it just for our family first, to see if we can pull off a good brisket, before we introduce it for friends.

But we insisted to try it again. My dad and I got up early, about 7 am, to start preparing the brisket that we aimed to serve around 6 pm. We got a great quality brisket, about ten pounds of prime cut, and our first job was to get it out of the bag and trim it.

After we trimmed the right amount of fat from the brisket, I next had to prepare the rub. I've made some really tasty rubs before, but this time I decided to keep it simple with just freshly ground pepper and some good sea salt.

By now it was about 8 am and it was time to get it in the grill. You've all seen that I work with a pretty small grill. Other barbecue pit-masters might say my grill is not really adequate to smoke real barbecue. There is no off-set smoker nor is there much space to keep the brisket away from the heat that is so important for the barbecue process. My grill might be more suited to grilling steak, hamburgers or hotdogs. But you've seen that I've been able to make some great ribs.

What my dad and I did was to be very careful in banking the charcoal to one corner of the grill. We put a drip pan filled with water to the far side, where we would put the brisket. Our goal, with the limited grill space we would work with, would be to keep the brisket as far from the fire as we could.

Here's how we started at about 8:30 am. I placed the brisket on the grill

And then it looked like it was a good fit!

Now we settled in for the long haul. We had a 10 pound brisket so we figured it might take us about 10 hours to cook. Our goal was to keep the temperature consistently in the 200-225 degree Fahrenheit range all day. With brisket it is imperative to keep the temperature low and steady -- if you get the grill too hot you're just going to burn up your meat.

So we played around the backyard and neighborhood, and add charcoal and wood to the grill all day long to keep the fire going at the temperature we needed.

Finally my friends came over. Not everybody from our team could make it, but here we're starting to gather!

Finally after about 10 hours we were just getting too plain hungry. My dad made some hot dogs for the younger kids, but hey, we were here for brisket. I pulled the brisket off with my good friend Patrick. It looks pretty good doesn't it?

Now what would my audience say? These are my teammates, their parents, not to mention my parents and brother (especially Mom still a little uncertain about my brisket capabilities).
Here's what the audience said:

I think it was a hit! At least that's what everyone -- including my mom -- said! We barbecued that brisket very carefully, and we enjoyed every bit! We had some great sides, and then played in the backyard after supper, even had a fire around the fire pit. It was a great day.

I'd say Come and Take It, but then seeing how good that brisket turned out, I'm a bit shy in sharing.

See you again soon!

Your friend,

--James