…meat that is. This bad boy creates a perfect blend of moist meat with a smoky crust of deliciousness. I’ll share some secrets with you. …and I’m actually quite jealous too – my fiancé’s at home enjoying the leftovers while I’m in Charlotte on business. I have a feeling there’s going to be nothing left to enjoy when I get home.
In terms of equipment, we use a nice electric smoker – it takes all the hassle out of everything. You literally fill the side with these pre-bought, wood chip circle thingies and turn it on. It’ll smoke for a long time as long as you keep the wood chips filled. For the wood itself, we used a combination of mesquite and hickory.
So what will we be smoking? Ribs and brisket of course. I’m from Texas, so to smoke without beef is blasphemy. To all of you who are notorious for smothering your meat in BBQ sauce, this meat will remain pure. It’s so delicious and flavorful all by itself (and delicious cold too – I can testify it tastes wonderful right out of the fridge).
The key to a great brisket is a good cap of fat. Sure, make sure it’s an overall good piece of meat, but don’t be cutting at it with the trimming knife unless there’s a big knob or hanging fat.
Ribs are pretty standard. We could have gone the dinosaur bone like Beef ribs, but we tend to like pork in this aspect. In terms of spare or baby back, I prefer baby back. Both kinds are taken from separate areas of the rib cage. Spare ribs usually are a little less meaty with more bone and fat. …for now, we’ll stick with baby back.
The recipe for this is fairly simple. We’re not a fan of sweet meat that much, so you’ll see there’s no sugar in our rub.
Spice Rub
3Tbs Paprika
1Tbls Lawry’s seasoning salt
1Tbls garlic powder
2Tbls onion powder
2Tbls kosher salt
1Tbls black pepper
Mix all of the above together and before you put on the brisket, take some extra kosher salt and season the brisket first. It may seem like a lot when it’s in the rub and on the brisket too, but it’s not – believe me.
First drizzle a little Worcestershire sauce over the brisket to make it a little moist, then sprinkle the spice rub liberally over the meat – pat it down with your hands so it looks moist and won’t fall off the brisket when you turn it over. Do the same to the other side as well as the ribs.
Once the meat is good and seasoned, wrap in foil well – wrap 2 times just in case because you don’t want the juices to drip everywhere. It makes a tasty sauce later…
After that, you can either place in the oven on 250 degrees or in the smoker. For us, we placed the brisket in the smoker at 7:30 that morning and around noon, we took it out, snipped a corner of the foil and drained the juice into Tupperware. Remove it from the foil and place it back in the smoker to develop a crust. At that same time we also placed 1 rib packet in the smoker and the other rib packet in the oven.
From here, the brisket is just going to smoke away, but you’ll need to remove the foil packet from the ribs in about 2.5 hours so it has time to smoke as well. Here’s the breakdown of our timing:
Brisket: 5 hours in the foil, 5-6 hours out of the foil in the smoker
Ribs: 2 hours in the foil, 3 hours out of the foil in the smoker (or the whole time in the oven)
This is what the brisket will look like – it’s not burnt, but a delicious spice crust.
…and of course the money shots. You may ask why the ribs look different. I cooked 1 in the smoker as described above and 1 in the oven. For the oven ribs, I took out at the very end, basted in a little BBQ sauce and put under the broiler. They’re were both absolutely delicious. The oven ones were a little more moist, but that’s expected – but the smoked ones had of course the flavor that you just can’t get from an oven.
Also don't forget you have the beef spice juice. I usually put it in the fridge to get cold so i can skim the fat off ...then you have delicious juice to moisten some of the edge pieces and leftovers if they're a little drier the next day.
Long story short, if you don’t have a smoker- get one …you will not regret it.
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