Exposing the Brisket Deception
A Gripping Saga of Flavor and Betrayal
Monday, we marinated in another two-inch rainfall, and the crops were submerged for what feels like the thirteenth time this season. Honestly, I feel a speck cranky about it and would prefer not to discuss farming this week.
With the elevated water, stress levels, and most of our soil’s mobile nutrients packed up and headed south, I’d rather goof off on America’s birthday week.
If you’re not into that jazz, I won’t be offended. Hopefully, you’ll forgive your humble narrator and head back next week to see what’s cookin’ on the Northern tier.
I hope you had a happy Independence Day and kept all your digits attached to the appropriate places.
This old truck-drivin' cager I used to work for used to tell me I was a glutton for punishment, and that was long before I ever smoked brisket.
Do yourself a favor if you’ve never smoked one of these enormous meat tablets.
Don’t.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy smoking brisket like many middle-aged suburban men with no friends; it’s just that I could do without the twelve-to-twenty-four-hour production it usually turns out to be.
And that’s the other problem. Smoking brisket may take twelve hours. It may take the rest of your life. Most likely, somewhere in between.
How is a guy supposed to prepare for that?
If you tell folks to show up at noon, everybody hates your guts and your stupid Traeger by five pm cause the stupid brisket isn’t done yet.
Or, you tell your guests to pop over at five and end up with one of those rare briskets that don’t get stuck in a five-hour meat stall (IYKYK) and the thing is done by noon.
When that’s the case, the only viable option is either serving cold leftovers or getting creative and designing a new concoction, like brisket tacos, which creates a host of new problems and expenses since you now have to go back to the store for the materials to put that project together.
Gee cripes.
I read somewhere today that it takes something happening seven times for most people to learn a lesson. This being my third or fourth brisket cook, I (obviously) have a ways to go before I finally abandon these silly things and enjoy my smoky meat treats at Ribfest like a normal humanoid.
So anyway, all that said, last weekend, with a full plate of farming, writing, moving house, and hosting a backyard camping adventure with my two youngest, I decided I didn’t have enough to do and set out to purchase a brisket.
Friday 5:08 Sam's Club
I nearly fainted when I entered the club and saw a crowd gathering near the meat department. I abandoned my shopping cart mid-stride, fearing a run on the briskets was underway.
I’ll rendezvous with the cart once the brisket is secured, I thought, as I summoned the strength not to get sucked into the office supplies section that croons my name every time I invade the giant warehouse.
I weaved past the crates of Slim Jims and Fruit Roll-ups, carefully navigating the barrels of baked beans. Surprisingly, my panic faded as I realized the crowd wasn't congregating near the meat counter.
They gathered around the rotisserie counter, where a young woman nervously removed sixty-four chickens from a medieval cooking rack.
The tension was thicker than July Georgia air, and it was clear why she looked so uneasy.
A ravenous Friday at Five tank-topped crowd ogled over a savory chicken bouquet. It wouldn’t be long before one of these savages leaped across the barrier, and the place erupted in pandemonium.
I checked my watch. Shit. Forgot my watch.
I turned the other way, secured the first $71 hunk of meat I saw, and scooted before the pitchforks came out.
5:58 pm - Oops
After arriving home, I remembered the shopping buggy I recklessly abandoned, which I was supposed to fill with brisket-cooking tools and accessories.
So, I returned to Samantha’s Club on a reconnaissance mission. Fortunately, the chicken mob cleared out so I could check the remaining boxes on my shopping list.
11:44 pm - Uncertainty
Lying in bed, tossing, and, believe it or not, turning, I debated whether to wrap my meat in foil or butcher's paper during the late stages of the smoke show.
Double-wrapping with foil turned my last brisket's outer bark into a wet sock; I couldn’t have that again. There was too much at stake.
My pops always told me if something was worth doing, it was worth doing right.
I told myself I'd score some butcher's paper in the morning, which was enough to ease my worried mind to sleepy town.
Saturday 2:29 pm - Score
Finding the pink butcher paper turned out to be quite a challenge. I visited several local meat counters and Ace Hardware stores and even ended up at a synagogue.
For some reason, I thought the Good Lord could assist me, but unfortunately, they, too, only had freezer paper, which the man at the grocery store meat counter told me would catch fire and ruin anything wrapped inside.
Eventually, I managed to secure the last roll in town, cleverly hidden in the Columbia Mall. It should be large enough to last me well into my mid-50s.
So, even if I die today, at least I've got that pink butcher paper thing handled.
8:16 pm - Preparation
After injecting beef froth and salty fufu powder made by something called Meat Church, I dried and seasoned my brisket with hairline precision, using a 50/50 blend of half Traeger Coffee Rub and half Traeger Prime rib rub.
The seasoning blend is not scientific. I had it in my extensive inventory of spices and herbs, and my gut said it was the way to go.
11:49 pm - Go Time
Before turning on my smoker, I gave it a pep talk similar to the one Harry Hoggie gives to Cole Trickle's Chevrolet Lumina before the big race in the 1990 Hollywood classic film Days of Thunder.
Tomorrow's a big day, champ. We got this.
Sunday 12:29 am - Green Flag
Brisket dropped. I topped the hopper with cherry pellets because the Google tells me that's best for Texas brisket.
I'll let you know a little secret: What the Google says, the Adam usually does.
Per the Google, I inserted the temp probe, set the temperature to 180 degrees, and headed to our backyard tent, where my family was already sound as a pound.
After setting my internal alarm clock to four am to rise with the birds and bunnies, I found it surprisingly easy to fall asleep, where I dreamt about one day wearing nothing but bib-overalls and owning a roadside BBQ stand in West Texas.
Goals.
4:02 am - Rise and Shine
I woke up from the half-deflated (or maybe half-inflated, depending on one's perspective) air mattress, surprised to find that my internal alarm worked much better than my iPhone's.
Even better, my internal alarm doesn't have a snooze button, making life easier for Sheri Oteri and the boys since they didn’t have to endure my two-hour wake-up cycle with a snoozed alarm ringing every nine minutes.
My plan was to moisten the meat block every thirty minutes over the next several hours with apple juice spritzed from a Home Depot squirt bottle.
Hey, it’s not glamorous, but it's honest work.
7:49 am - Oops #2
I woke up on the couch, groggier than Rip Van Winkle after a meth binge. Wondering where I was, I realized I would never make Senior Pitmaster if I couldn’t even make it to the first spritz without passing out.
Trying not to beat myself up too badly for the blunder, I headed outside to check the progress when I saw the smoker's display reading 111 degrees.
As my cousin Brett used to say when we were young, what the world?
The lowest setting on this hussy is 165 degrees. What gives?
7:56 am - Setbacks
Heavy investigative work revealed that the Traeger's flame somehow extinguished itself during my slumber, meaning I'd have to sit while the meat cooker went through its seemingly unnecessary thirty-minute reboot process.
Crap.
The thermometer probe inside the brisket read 123 degrees and plummeted faster than this week’s cryptocurrency prices.
When setbacks like this happen, Sheri Oteri often tells me to enjoy the pause, but how could I do that when I'd already been paused for three hours and potentially ruined the evening's dinner plans?
Think Kuznia, think. Find some positivity in this, a silver lining, anything.
Realizing I could write about this foiled project comforted me enough to doze back off while the smoker did its thing.
11:11 am - Make a Wish
With the rotten thing stuck at 129 degrees for hours, I wished this stupid hunk of meat would rise in temperature.
My meat-smoking foe, the meat stall, showed its ugly face.
It's okay, Adam, I told myself. Smoking brisket is a great American pastime; try to enjoy yourself.
1:43 pm - Wrap
Usually, I wait until the brisket reaches 165 degrees before wrapping. However, my boys were scheduled to return to their mother in less than two hours, so the clock forced my hand into an early wrap job.
It's not perfect, but you never know. This unconventional approach may have led to a fantastic discovery in the world of brisket smoking.
It didn’t, but you could imagine. How's that for optimism?
4:32 pm - Return
My worries about the brisket overcooking while we were gone for two hours were all for naught because the thing was sitting at a measly 167 degrees, still 37 degrees from the goal of 204.
Heavens to Betsy, our guests were due to arrive in two hours.
It was time to face facts. There was no way.
Fortunately, I'm the overthinking type and had a plan B in mind before financing this brisket.
I planned to have Parmesan-encrusted chicken breasts on Tuesday evening, but I had to call them off the bench to pinch hit for the slothful brisket.
I thought what a disappointment this would be for our guests as I began slicing potatoes.
6:34 pm - Bummer
The neighbors arrived. They seemed cool about being promised one thing and served another, but I could feel their scorn for me from across the fire.
Both looked at me like I had two heads when I told them I'd been at this brisket project for eighteen hours with no end in sight.
Chewing on chicken with the texture and consistency of a Firestone tire, I wondered why I put myself in these situations.
At least the potatoes are tasty enough to keep our guests from storming out in pure disgust.
10:44 pm - Keep going, kid.
Twelve degrees to go.
I had too much invested to quit now.
Sunk cost fallacy be damned.
This brisket cook had become a quest like the Griswold's trip to Wally World.
I promised myself I'd see it through.
Monday 12:59 am - Paydirt
There went twenty-four and a half hours of my life I'll never get back.
Feeling sorry for how defeated I must’ve looked, Sheri Oteri helped me wrap the lazy brisket in two layers of foil and a beach towel before stuffing it in our most insulated cooler.
Usually, I rest these things for a couple-three hours (or so) before slicing and serving, but not this time. I’m not crazy enough to want to wake up at 4 am to eat brisket, so I decided to experiment with the overnight rest and let those juices do whatever the BBQ obsessors say they do.
After saying goodnight to my new arch-nemesis, I closed the cooler door and shut down the fatigued Traeger.
Exhausted and battered, I headed to bed.
6:38 am - Taste Test
After sixteen snoozes (I forgot about my more efficient internal alarm clock), I opened the cooler to a waft of dank hot meat smell that would gag a maggot.
Any interest I've ever had in brisket went in the garbage with the beach towel, which needs to be donated to science and researched because that smell was something else.
Nevertheless, I didn’t have it in me to waste such a pricey piece of beef, so I slapped it on the cutting board and started slicing.
Thankfully, the towel kept all the stank to itself, and a more respectable smell appeared after I cut into the piece of cow that had dominated my thoughts for the previous two days.
Being the gentleman I am, I offered Sheri Oteri the first bite and felt guilty yet quite satisfied when her eyes rolled back in her head, and she about blacked out.
That frickin’ good.
Can confirm.
The marathon brisket was worth writing home (or this 2000+ word story) about.
Thursday, July 4, 7:17 pm - Reflection
As I nibble on the last of the ten-pound brisket, I ask myself, was it worth it?
That is the easiest question I've ever answered.
Shite, no.
From now on, I’ll let some other sap deal with the nightmare of smoking something so ridiculous and complicated and frustrating.
Never again. Not even in two years have I forgotten all about this miserable experience.
Once again, Adam, you are one seriously gifted writer. And funny as hell. 🙌
🙏 Appreciate ya, Ken! Always coming in clutch when a guy needs to hear things like this. Hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend!