Smoked Wagyu Brisket.

I have a love/hate relationship with smoking brisket, i reckon my success rate of getting something great is around 50% at the moment. It’s not like the concept is hard at all, slow cooking a hunk of beef, it’s just things sometimes don’t go to plan.

The key i’ve worked out is to start with a good marbled piece of brisket - this wagyu has fat for days, so at least that’s a start, the second is temperature - too hot and you end up drying out the brisket and turning it to leather, but then if it’s too cold you don’t get the fat to render leaving the brisket gristly.

I’m using a pit barrel smoker, I find it good for ribs and faster cooking pieces of meat, but it’s a bit of a challenge to cook brisket as the temperature is hard to maintain at a consistent level for a long period of time.

Lump charcoal seems to be the best at keeping temp, then i add apiece of two of redgum to add some smoke flavour.

To prep the brisket, i just leave it out of the fridge for an hour to bring it back to room temp, then pat it dry with paper towel before coating it with a 50/50 salt flake and cracked pepper rub. It’s generally pretty warm where i am, so the beef will sweat allowing the rub to adhere without the need for a slather of mustard or similar.

Trying to keep the temp inside the barrel around 120˚c should give the brisket a good start, I generally leave it alone for the first 2 hours before checking on it, then if i need i’ll add some charcoal or open the air vent to get some more heat if needed.

After about 4 hours i usually wrap the brisket ( depending entirely on size ) I don’t like brisket overly smoky, and i don’t want to lose a lot of moisture, so 4 hours is generally enough. Once it’s wrapped in paper i give it another few hours - checking periodically by poking it to see how squishy it is.

This brisket was in the smoker for 7 hours.

I let it rest wrapped in cling film for another 2 hours just at ambient temp in a cooler.

At this point you can either slice it up or vacuum seal for later. I usually vac seal it to serve the next day.

To reheat i soak the bag in a sous vide at 70˚c for about an hour, just enough to get it up too temp. Then slice it up.

This time round i made some garlic and rosemary smashed potatoes, here’s how i do that.

Par cook whole potatoes in boiling water with salt until they are just soft. let them cool slightly before cutting in half.

Squash each half between 2 pieces of grease proof paper. while pre heating a cast iron pan in the oven.

add some oil to the pan and place your squashed potatoes in and season with salt and pepper. Add some crushed garlic, rosemary and a little butter on top of the potatoes.

Given the potatoes are mostly cooked, you just want them to get brown and crispy, crank your oven to around 200 - 220 and it should take no time at all.

This brisket turned out great - super juicy, subtle smoke and butter soft, the potatoes were a winner too.