Brisket on the Big Green Egg

I have been wanting to try brisket on the Big Green Egg for a while now.   However, I was recently down in Seaside, FL and had the opportunity to try brisket from Barefoot BBQ (one of the Airstreams parker out front) and I was inspired.  (The picture above doesn't really express just how big this thing was.)

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I live in Memphis and it is a pork town, so finding a brisket requires some work.  Luckily, we have Charlie's Meat Market and they were able to find a 13 pound  USDA Choice "Packers Brisket" for me.  I have never bought a 13 pound pork shoulder, but I do know that it would be a lot cheaper than the $60 I a paid for the brisket!

Once I was ready to prepare the brisket, I slathered it in mustard and Dale's steak Seasoning  and coated it in some John Henry's Pecan Rub.  I also threw a little bit of Dizzy  Dust on to give it a little spice and wrapped it in cling wrap and put it in the fridge for the night.  The next day, right before throwing it on the grill, I pumped it up with some Dale's steak Seasoning (injection method), since this was my first brisket and I was afraid of having it dry out on me.

I put it on the grill, fat down, around 7PM at around 205 degrees and let it cook until about 7AM the next morning.  I had planned to just cook it on the egg, but the temperature on my BGE thermometer and the Maverick thermometer  (remote temperature monitor) were about 80 degrees apart and I wasn't sure which one was correct.  I should mention that I actually calibrated both thermometers before the smoke, but I thought this behavior was weird.  I decided to pull it off the grill, wrap it in aluminum foil and pour about a half can of Mountain Dew over it.  Then, I stuck it in the convection oven (in the house) on a cooking sheet to cook until it reached 205 (this is a method similar to what "TexasBBQRub" suggests).

About 11.5 hours later, the brisket was ready.  I should note that their was A LOT of juice that came off the brisket in the oven.  So much so that I would recommend using a pan instead of a sheet for finishing off in the oven.   By the time I noticed, my cooking sheet was nearly spilling over the side (which it did when I pulled it out to drain it into a bowl).   After that first draining, I drained it about once an hour, which made it easier to manage without spilling anything.

One it was ready, I let it sit out for about 30 minutes while wrapped, I then put a small amount of The Shed Southern Spicy Sweet BBQ Sauce  over it, and let it sit about 45 minutes unwrapped (we were starving, so we couldn't wait any longer).    Unfortunately, I realized that my knife wasn't sharp enough to carve it in "pencil thickness".  I had to make slightly wider cuts of the flat, but the meat was juicy and tasty and the bark was fantastic!  

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The first night, we made sandwiches with it and put on BBQ sauce to taste.  I took "the point" and put it on a separate plate.  It was very, very juicy, so I mainly cut it into cubes and shredded it away from any fat left on the bottom.   I should mention that I didn't carve off a lot of fat before the cook, only huge areas of it where thinned out because I read that it would be easier to remove later.  I think this is a personal decision, but you will miss more fat if you try to remove it after the cook.  The exchange for cutting it off early could be a dryer brisket, from what I have read, though.

The sandwiches were delicious, but we had a lot left over.  I decided to use the point section for making pizzas since it was already cut in small portions and it would be easier to shred and layout over the dough.  The next day, I made the dough using the recipe in Cook's Illustrated magazine, but they say you should keep it in the fridge for at least 24 hours, and I made one of the pizzas about 3 hours after I let the dough rise on the counter in a bowl.  I did make enough dough for 4 pizzas.  The dough for 2 pizzas went in the freezer and  the dough for the fourth pizza went in the fridge to make a couple days later.

Once the dough for the first pizza was ready, we put a layer of Shed BBQ down and then put the meat over it:

Then we added a thin layer of parmesan and smoked provolone cheese:

Unfortunately, I didn't do a great job of separating the dough equally, so I ended up with a huge first pizza.  It was so huge that the ends hung over the edges of my pizza stone on the Big Green Egg (it would have helped to make it more circular) and left the ends scorched.  Also, Cook's suggested letting the stone cook for an hour before adding the pizza and I found that to be too long considering the fact that this pizza needed to be cooked longer than a normal pizza:

The crust was burned on the ends, but the rest of the pizza was awesome.  

A couple days later, we made the second pizza.  We had taken the juices I poured out of the cooking sheet and put it in a bowl when we first prepared the brisket.  We stuck it in the fridge so the fat and juice would separate.  We then heated it up for several seconds in the microwave and separated the fat.  We took took the juice and sprinkled some of it over the meat after we put together our second pizza.   This pizza was smaller and turned out even better than the first.

Between the sandwiches, eating it by itself, and having it with two pizzas, I  think we got our money's worth from this meat.   Since this was my first try, I am sure there are things I could have done differently and I plan to try some different techniques in the future.  We will probably only make it for special occasions since it was so expensive and I would rather not eat brisket all week, if possible.  I should mention that my pups were very helpful when it came to finishing it off.  If you look closely, you can see one of them waiting for a slice in the pic below:

Everyone is fat and happy, but we are , unfortunately, back on our regular diets now.