Mother's Day 2018

Mothers's Day started early for me.  I started tonight's dinner, a smoked beef brisket, last night right before midnight.  My smoking equipment allows me to get about 6 hours out of a load of wood chips, but the chips tend to not fall down into the zone where they smoke, and by two hours into the burn, they need to be given a bit of a shove (I use a BFS - a big screwdriver).  As I usually do, I set a timer on my phone to wake me in two hours and went to bed.  Got up at 2AM, took a quick inspection, poked down the chips, set the time again, and went back to bed.  I basically got up a 2, 4, 6 and 8 AM (a few minutes later every time).  It went about as well as these overnight cooks go, and I got a decent amount/quality of sleep. 

The brisket reached its desired internal temperature by just before 1:30 this afternoon, and we quickly wrapped it in parchment cooking paper and stuck it in a cooler to let it rest for a while. 

Nice bark, but no pink smoke ring (a known drawback to these electric smokers), and a bit too dried out.  This is just the flat of a brisket; a higher quality brisket to cook is what's called a packer brisket, which has the flat and a higher-fat portion called the point.  The thinner sections of brisket, near the camera, were more dry than sections cut better across the grain farther to the right.  The thicker portion of the brisket came out more moist.  Slices the width of a typical #2 pencil should not break when supported by their middle, and they don't.  Grading myself, I'd give it a C. 

As I've mentioned before, with the kids living out of town and both of us now the oldest parents in the family, it tends to be low key here on holidays. 

We're in for an unusual week here, at least for May.  80% chance of rain tonight and tomorrow, and it stays above 50% through next Friday.  Good time for cutting some metal.