At 2:07 Monday morning, I woke to the back door clicking shut and a flashlight moving across the patio. Matt, checking the pellet hopper. He'd set an alarm for it. For a man who bought a pellet grill specifically so he could sleep through a brisket, he did not sleep much.
The brisket was a 14-pound Prime packer from Costco at $5.49 a pound, $76.86, bought on our Saturday morning Costco run. It fed eleven of us on Labor Day: the five of us, Kristen and Ryan with Cody and Avery, and my mom and Gary, who drove down from Denton with a pan of brownies.
Why the pellet grill this time
Matt's offset smoker makes the best brisket I've ever eaten. It also needs someone feeding it a split of post oak every 45 minutes for twelve hours or more, and our long weekend was already spoken for: Cody's game Friday night, Eli's flag football game and Costco on Saturday, church on Sunday. Matt wanted to see whether the used Pit Boss we bought in March could handle a long cook while he did other things, like sleep. He also had the smoke tube the boys gave him for Father's Day, which helps with his one complaint about the pellet grill: its smoke is milder than the offset's, a point he has made more than once.
The trim and the cook
Sunday afternoon, Matt trimmed it on a sheet pan at the island:
- The fat cap down to about a quarter inch, so it renders instead of just sitting there.
- The hard fat between the point and the flat, the big chunk that never renders.
- The thin edge of the flat and any ragged bits, so the whole thing cooks more evenly.
About two and a half pounds came off. I rendered the fat into a little over a pint of tallow in the Crock-Pot, and roasted potatoes at our house have never been better. The rub was coarse black pepper and kosher salt, half and half, with a little garlic powder, about 1/2 cup in all, put on at four so it could sit in the fridge until the cook.
Here's how the night went, from Matt's notes on the back of an envelope:
- 10:00 p.m. Brisket on at 225, fat side up, smoke tube lit with oak pellets.
- 2:07 a.m. Hopper topped off. Smoke tube burned out, as expected.
- 6:00 a.m. The stall at 163 degrees, where the temperature sits for hours while moisture evaporates off the surface.
- 7:30 a.m. Wrapped tight in butcher paper, grill bumped to 250.
- 12:20 p.m. Probe-tender. My Thermapen read 203 in the thickest part of the flat and slid in like it was going into soft butter.
- 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Rested, still wrapped, in an empty cooler with towels packed around it.
Fourteen and a half hours on the grill used about 22 pounds of pellets, roughly $9.90 at $18 a bag.
Lunch for eleven
Matt sliced the flat pencil-thick across the grain and cut the point into thicker slices and chunks. We ate at 2:45 around the kitchen table with a folding table pushed against the end, while the AC did its best against 97 degrees outside. My job was the sides: Instant Pot charro beans, potato salad, coleslaw, white bread, pickles and sliced onions, and a peach cobbler made from two bags of the sugared peaches I froze in July. Kristen brought drinks and chips. Mom brought the brownies, because in her view cobbler doesn't count as chocolate.
Cody, a senior now, ate about a pound of brisket by himself. Wyatt hovered by the cutting board picking at the crusty ends of the point until Matt gave him his own little pile. Eli ate sliced flat with the bark trimmed off, no sauce, nothing touching. Rosie had white bread and pickles and declared it a party.
Matt's verdict: ninety percent of the offset for ten percent of the work. The bark was softer and the smoke ring thinner, and the thin far end of the flat ran a little dry, so next time he'll wrap earlier and trim that edge harder. Gary said it was the best brisket he'd had all year, and Gary does not hand those out.
What it cost, and where the rest went
- Brisket: $76.86
- Pellets: $9.90
- Charro beans: $6.10
- Potato salad: $7.85
- Coleslaw: $4.20
- White bread, pickles and onions: $5.40
- Peach cobbler (July's peaches at what they cost, plus butter, flour and sugar): $5.80
- Ice: $4.77
- Plates, napkins and foil: $7.12
That's $128.00 for eleven, about $11.64 a person, with plenty left over. A packer cooks down to roughly half its weight once it's trimmed and smoked, and we ate maybe four pounds. Tuesday's dinner was brisket tacos on H-E-B flour tortillas. Chopped brisket sandwiches are on the plan for Thursday's office day, and two 1-pound bags are vacuum sealed in the freezer, labeled "FRIDAY NACHOS. HANDS OFF, WYATT."
Wyatt has already asked whether one of those bags could go in his lunch jar instead. Negotiations continue.
