Brisket, Butts, and Chicken Cook 4 October 2024

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Is this thing still on? 

I noticed our freezer stock of BBQ was looking a bit bare.  So, last weekend, I fired up my big smoker to smoke a brisket, two pork butts, and some chicken. 

Here are some notes from that cook. I hadn't been cooking a lot so this time, I was trying to use up a lot of products that I had on hand.

Meat Prep

• Brisket - 
• Meat - It was a 17.44 lb USDA Choice brisket that I wet aged for 28 days. I prefer CAB briskets but with the cost of beef these days, I buy what I can get for a decent price that looks good.
• Trim - Minimal trimming, just enough to get the fat cap about 1/4" thick and to achieve an aerodynamic shape so the smoke flows over it. If I was cooking this on a Big Green Egg I would have gone with the competition trim and split the point and flat sections.
• Injection - I used Butcher's Original Brisket injection. I used that mostly for competitions. At home, I'll often just use seasoned stock or nothing at all. 
• Seasoning - I gave the whole trimmed and injected brisket a 12-hour dry brine. I used Four 41 South's Fat Henry's Classic and Gentry's Beef Brigade. I put that on a tray and rack, covered it with a plastic food bag and stuck it in the fridge.
• Pork butts
• Meat - They were two 9 lb bone-in pork butts from Sam's. The were almost exactly the same size, 6 hundredths of a pound apart.
• Trim - Minimal trim of the exterior fat.
• Injection - I injected with Chris Lilly's World Championship Pork Shoulder Injection recipe from his first book. I've found you can't go wrong with that one.
• Seasoning - I dry brined them for 12 hours as well. I used a mix of Denny Mike's Sublime Swine and Kansas City Cowtown's Sweet Spot rub. In general for pork I like a combination of a sweet & spicy rub and a savory rub.
• Chicken
• Meat - Normally we would use bone-in, skin-on chicken for this. But for a couple of reasons, we had to use boneless, skinless thighs and breasts. It wasn't ideal but we worked with it.
• Trim - I cut off the excess fat from a few of the fattier pieces but that's it.
• Seasoning - I gave them a 4 hour dry brine in Denny Mike's Pixie Dust Universal Seasoning.

I wet aged the brisket for 28 days. It isn't as effective as dry aging but it is a heck of a lot easier when you don't have a dedicated dry aging fridge.

Usually, I used my Beef Rub v.2 but like I said, I was trying to use up stuff that I had on hand. Fat Henry's Classic was a good choice. Even though it was so old from sitting, it still had a great flavor that complemented the brisket well. 

Brisket trimmed, injected, and seasoned. 

My neighbor and teammate bought me the Kansas City Cowtown's Sweet Spot during a trip to Kansas City and I have enjoyed it quite a bit on pork. 

I thought it was cool that I got two butts that were only 6/100ths of a pound apart in size. Here they are ready to go into the fridge for 12 hours before smoking.

For the chicken, I used Denny Mike's Pixie Dust Universal Seasoning Blend. It has a smoky, salty, and mildly sweet profile that goes well on BBQ chicken.

Smoker Set Up

I love cooking on my Deep South Smoker GC36 but I don't do it often because it is such a big cooker. It's a gravity fed smoker. That means it has a vertical chamber that you fill with lump charcoal, which gradually feeds the firebox below as the fire burns. This gives long, steady cook times. Sadly, last time I looked, the fabrication shop had quit making the smokers. 

This section is where I keep my thermometers and fan controllers. The two black caps unscrew to open pass throughs for thermometer wires. On top, you can see the chute door, that is where you load the lump charcoal from top down.

This is the door of the fire box. I can run the smoker manually just by controlling the air flow with this one ball valve. 

There are two ways to add wood to this smoker. You can mix wood chunks in with the lump charcoal, which requires less hands on. I prefer to add large chunks of wood directly to the firebox every 30-45 minutes for steady dosing and the maximum control. Either way works, just my preference.

But this was an overnight cook and I like my sleep, so I used my Thermoworks Billows fan to control the air flow. Yes, the same fan that controls my Big Green Egg can handle this big cabinet smoker! In fact, it is so capable, I run it with the "restrictor plate". 
Thermoworks Billows Fan [Affiliate link]

All set up and ready to go. The foil cap on the chimney on the upper left will come off when I start it. I only use quality lump charcoal in this pit. In this case, I went with Fogo.

Smoke Session

• 10pm - I fired up the pit. I light a single hay-wick on a piece of wood in the firebox, turn on the Thermoworks fan and let it come up to temp over two hours. If I'm in a hurry I can use a blow torch and get it up to temp in an hour. I wasn't in a hurry so I ran it at 250f. If this was a competition, I would run it at 290f. 
• 1am - (slightly before) Loaded the briskets and butts on the top rack of the smoker and placed steam pans below them to catch the drippings. I like keeping this smoker clean!  
• Every 30 or 45 minutes, Alexis or I would add a couple chunks of hickory wood to the fire box and about every 90 minutes, we would spritz the meats with apple juice. 
• 9am - (slightly before) The brisket and butts were at internal temperatures of 155f or so. Normally I don't wrap the meats (if I'm going to) until they hit an internal temp of 160f or higher but I had the color I wanted so I wrapped now.
• Brisket - I wrapped with beef stock and a small amount of dried onion.
• Butts - I wrapped with Parkay, apple juice and more rub.
• Turn up the heat! Since the meats were wrapped, I adjusted the heat to 275f. I used the app to change the setting on the Thermowork Signals which controls the Billows. Easy peasy.
• 10am - I drizzled Parkay over the chicken thighs and breasts, which were in steam pans, and put the steam pans into the smoker on the middle rack. I let them go until they hit an internal temperature of 155f. Then I brushed them with Pepper Palace's Chipotle Honey Rum BBQ Sauce  and let them finish to 160f.  If the thighs were bone-in, I would have taken them to 175-180f. 
• 12:46pm - I pulled the brisket off at an internal temp of 204/206f. It was perfectly probe tender at that point so I put it into a preheated Cambro hot box to hold.
• 1:00pm - I pulled the pork butts to rest as well.
• 2:30pm - I put a chunk of wood in the fire box to kick up some fresh, heavy smoke. I glazed the brisket and ribs with Blues Hog Original that I cut with apple juice and put them back in the smoker for a final kiss of smoke until the sauce was set.

Unsurprisingly, the DSS cooked steady and smooth all night long.

The brisket flat (155f) was slightly behind the point (159f) when I wrapped.
This is the Thermoworks Signals which controls the Billows Fan. It can track 3 internal temps and maintain the cooking temp all at the same time. Of course it connects wirelessly to their app so I can control my smoker even if I'm at the store. 
Thermoworks Signals Cooking Alarm/Controller [Affiliate link]

The two port butts were also right at 155f when I wrapped.
Here, I'm using the Thermoworks Smoke for tracking the internal temps. This just tracks two temps and connects to a remote device. It's not as fancy, feature rich, or flexible as the Signals but it's good for simply tracking temps.
Thermoworks Smoke [Affiliate link]

Here are the two pork butts before going into the wrap. They were plenty dark and didn't have to wait another 5 degrees to wrap.

Smoked brisket waiting to be wrapped.

Please excuse the harsh sunlight, not much I could do about it at this time of the morning. Pork butts wrapped upper left, brisket upper right, drip pans underneath, and pans of chicken below all of that.

Graph from the Thermoworks Signals for the brisket cook. One temp probe was in the brisket point (blue), one in the flat (yellow), one unused, and one for the air temp (green).

The Results

I was glad to find out that I have not lost my BBQ touch while I have been away :) Everything turned out deliciously!

The brisket had a nice bark and the aroma of a good, clean smoke.

Slicing up the brisket. I love the first slice or two because you can immediately tell how tender it is.

I'm usually full by this point from all of the "quality control" bites that I take.
This gave us 2 half-sized steam pans of brisket, packed tight. We kept all of the liquid from the wrap, removed the fat with a grease seperator, and then poured the beef jus over the brisket.
We ended up with 16 vacuum sealed packs of brisket for the freezer.

The chicken was sweet, spicy, and smoky - just perfect.

Look how juicy the chicken breasts were. Despite being so lean, they stayed moist.

We broke up the thighs and breasts for pulled chicken. We had 16 one-pound packs of pulled chicken for the freezer. These are fantastic when making soups, pasta dishes, etc through the winter. I can taste the chicken tortilla soup now.

The pork butts were excellent - smoky, sweet and a hint of heat. We got about 11 pounds of pork for the freezer. That will be killer for pork sandwiches, BBQ nachos and my favorite - carnitas tacos!

Of course, not all of that BBQ made it to the freezer. I had to have some pork carnitas tacos...

and some brisket nachos!

Twenty-four hours later, Big Red was all cleaned up and ready to roll back into the garage.