Easiest Smoked Brisket Recipe (2019)

Hi, Jason Ganahl, GQue BBQ. There are several ways to cook a brisket. However, today we're gonna show you the easiest way. It requires no injection, no trimming, and doesn't compromise the flavor. We're even gonna show you how to make burnt ends. If that's something you wanna see, it's coming up right now. So today's video is gonna be part of the easiest way to do blank series. Over the course of the next year, we're gonna do, hopefully, several videos showing you how to do different types of brisket on different types of cookers. One of those is gonna be a competition brisket that scored a perfect score in a KCBS contest. If that's something you don't wanna miss or any of the other brisket videos, hit that subscribe button down below. Hit that bell notification so you get notified when our videos come out. So we're keeping this as easy as possible, which means no injecting and no trimming. Today we've got about a 15-pound prime USDA whole packer brisket. And what we mean by whole packer is that a brisket has two muscles. It has this flat cut that's on top and it has the point cut that's on the bottom. And it's separated by a mass of fat. We're gonna leave it all intact because it's easy just to leave it that way. We're then gonna season it down with my favorite rub. Of course, that's the rub. This is an excellent all-purpose rub. It goes wonderful on chicken, pork, and, of course, beef. So we're gonna go ahead and coat this brisket down, maybe a light to medium coat. We're gonna coat it on the bottom as well where that layer of fat is. So we're gonna cook it on the drum. And where the drum gets a lot of its signature flavor from is the fat drippings hitting the charcoal and creating these flavor bursts of vapor. It's gonna come back up and hit the brisket. So we're gonna fill the fire basket up with hardwood lump charcoal. I'm gonna take these two fire starters. I'm gonna rip them in half to create four of them. I'm gonna put one in each corner and then put a piece of the lump charcoal on top of the fire starter. Once the fire starters are lit, I'm gonna return the basket to the Gateway Drum Smoker. These smokers are fantastic in that they cook food extremely fast, thus making it an easy cook. In order to get some hickory flavor, we gotta add some wood. I'm gonna place two strips of hickory down into the charcoal basket. So I wanna show you guys a quick tip that's gonna allow you to clean the grate without having to use one of those wire brushes. So just take a piece of foil and just rub against it when your grate is hot. Now you've got a clean grate without having to worry about wire bristles anywhere. The best temperature to cook brisket at is 300 degrees in this can. So I'm gonna allow the temperature to continue to rise with the vents open. Once we get to 300 degrees, I'm gonna shut down these vents to hold a 300 degree temperature. So now that we're at 300 degrees in the drum, I'm gonna go ahead and add the brisket. Since this is the easiest way to do brisket, we're not even gonna worry about wrapping this bad boy. We're just gonna let this guy cook until it gets the perfect texture. So this brisket's been cooking for about an hour and a half. Let's take a look at it. It's coming along great. We're getting really nice bark formation on here. We're just gonna monitor it and continue to cook it until it gets just the right feel. So this brisket's been cooking for about five hours. How do we know if it's done? We know by feel. What's the feel we're going for? We're going for a probe into jello feel. Should be very slight resistance where we put it in the brisket. So I know this brisket's done. It's ready to come off. We're gonna go ahead and take it inside, separate the point from the flat, rest the flat while we cube up the point and make burnt ends. I'm gonna use my fingers as much as possible to separate the two muscle groups. I'm gonna take the flat, wrap that in foil, and set that to the side while we cube up the point for burnt ends. Check out how wiggly this is. This is exactly what we're talking about with barbecue jello. This is a perfectly cooked piece of meat. So now that we got these separated, I'm gonna go ahead and remove any excess fat and cube up the point, season it with the rub, and return it to the smoker so we get delicious burnt ends. Okay, so these burnt ends have been going for about 25 minutes at 300 on the drum. Starting to get some good texture on here and some good color. So we're gonna go ahead and add some sauce to it right now. I'm just gonna keep this easy, right, and just pour it right in here. We're not gonna get all complicated. So add some sauce on these guys. Toss it around a little bit so they get nice and coated. Let them cook for another 10 minutes or so and then they'll be ready to eat. Okay, so it's been about 10 minutes since we've applied the sauce. You can see when I push it, I'm not getting any sauce on my finger. That means it's nice and set up on here. I mean, this is super squishy and soft. I mean, just what you're looking for. Good color all the way around on here. You also have that flavor of the sauce and the rub that we put on. So these guys are done. We're gonna go ahead and take them inside and slice up the brisket and see what we got. I'm gonna go ahead and remove the flat that's been resting while we cook the burnt ends. First thing we're gonna do is flip it over on the back, just remove any excess fat that's here. Now we're gonna go ahead and slice this brisket. We always wanna slice against the grain. So you can see the grain is running like that. So we wanna make our slices going right against it. So now we're about halfway through the brisket. Let's see what we got here. That's exactly what we're going for. I mean, nice and limp, pulls apart effortlessly. Got all this beautiful juice in here that's come out while it's rested. Now that we got the brisket all cut up, we're about ready to get a taste test. I wanna introduce our two guest taste testers today. We've got Hudson and Will. These guys are regulars in the restaurant. I saw them out there having lunch, grabbed them, thought they'd like to come back and try the brisket. You guys ready? Absolutely. All right, now for my favorite part, the taste test. Wow, that was absolutely fantastic. Definitely an easy way to do brisket without compromising the taste. We cooked that thing in about five and a half hours. We didn't inject it, we didn't trim it, and the taste was spot on. It was super moist, super tender, and super delicious. The burnt ends were out of bounds delicious as well too. What did you guys think? It was great. I always come in for the brisket and I was surprised to hear that it's only cooked for five hours because it's just as tender as the stuff that's cooked for longer. Awesome, yep. I totally agree too. Will, what do you think? Just like Hudson, I come for the brisket once a week. That was good stuff. Actually really liked the burnt ends. You still gonna come if we don't put them on the menu? Yeah, I'll probably still be here. Maybe only once a week. Maybe I come twice a week to put those on. Awesome, well guys, if that's something you like, if that's something you wanna try, give us a thumbs up. Until next time, Jason Ganahl, GQ Barbecue.