Becoming a Man.

Y’ALL I SMOKED A BRISKET.

Lemme walk you through it because it is a lot. 

You exist, Reader.  Right? 
RIGHT?

Ok, so.  Last weekend we did Passover at my house, which I’m sure you know about, Reader, because you totally actually exist and care very deeply about my life and my posts.  

20 people coming over for a big involved dinner, and I decided smoked brisket made sense as a life choice even though I have never smoked anything, I don’t have the equipment, and I could totally have just baked chicken thighs…or honestly scrambled eggs, or ordered take out; so long as people eat they’re happy; the world was my oyster.  And in the oyster of my world, I decided smoking a brisket was definitely the most best choice and also probably going to be fine.

Step one here is that brisket is a traditional Passover dish, but I didn’t want the traditional brisket I’ve eaten at other Passovers.  Smoked brisket is super delicious and for me, there really is no comparison. 

So step two, I turn to the internet.

The internet, it turns out, has a lot of respect for a smoked brisket.  There are upwards of one thousand million website shrines dedicated to the art and science, the spiritual journey, the rite of passage, the magic and mystery of smoking The Perfect Brisket.  Most of them revolve around how manly it is…or at least how part of the pay off is how much of a man you get to feel like when your 

Brisket is the Axe Body Spray
 of the culinary world

tender, juicy brisket melts in the mouths of, I can only assume, hordes of adoring ladies and their suddenly jealous, shaken men.  It appears to be the food of all foods by which your depths of strength, virility, and resolve are tested and found true—or lacking.  It is the culinary equivalent of being calm in a burning house; it is menfolks’s equivalent to the perfect dessert or just hosting the party in the first place.

So the internet told me.  Again, I don’t know how to smoke things.  My grilling experience is limited to the first food service job I had at 14, Nick’s Charcoal Grill, which used a real grill, and….nope, we’re done, really that’s it.  But every time I pan cook a steak I set the fire alarm off, and that’s smoke, so I figured I’m half way there. 

For the second half, as I said, I went to the internet, and v quickly learned of the importance of proper equipment.  This consists of a grill thermometer, which you should buy because apparently built-in ones are garbage.  Also you should have a bad ass grill, which men around the nation already know is as important to have in your house as toilet paper.

 

Garbage                                       Money                              Wizard

We do not have that grill.  We have _a_ grill.  It is not that that grill.  

It is…I think the technical term is dinky, but certainly fine and has been the centerpiece of countless backyard burger frenzies (I mean our grill doesn’t even have a built-in thermometer but I promise you Reader, no one has died yet at a cookout here).  The internet informed me that this lack was surmountable and if successful, my character would def level up, but I’d be at a -5 and I might not make it back from this adventure.

And wood chips and charcoal, and OBVIOUSLY a charcoal chimney, WHO DOESN’T USE A CHARCOAL CHIMNEY, that shouldn’t even need to be listed in equipment because if you’ve made it this far you have 

Are you taking this seriously?

OBVIOUSLY ALREADY GOT A CHARCOAL CHIMNEY.  Also, you shouldn’t even be using charcoal, except to start, because wood smoke tastes better.  But wood chips are fine in a pinch if you really insist on not taking any of this seriously.

And, of course, the brisket itself.  So I go to the Kroger, and, as I mentioned I’m doing all this for Passover, so I need to hit the butcher up anyway because I need a lamb shank bone (if you’re not Jewish, Google it.).  My Kroger, as I have never noticed before, has a really pithy butcher.  I mean, there’s a meat section, but the butcher is more of a suggestion than a practical accessory, and that butcher’s suggestion is, “why don’t you go buy some of our other prepackaged meat?”.

So I go to Publix, and they have a better butcher.  I say, as I have said to every chain grocery butcher since time immemorial except when I was on the remote, rural farm, or in Madagascar, “hey, I need a lamb shank bone.”  Every other grocer has said, “M’kay, cool, here,” and handed me a packaged bone left over from, I assume, deboning a lamb shank and saving the bone because Passover is coming up and for Passover, having a lamb shank bone is totally a thing (Did you Google it?).  The cost has been no monies. 

But this guy, he says, “….What?” 

He tried to sell me these.
These are not what I want.

This begins a whole back and forth where I realize how nonexistent the Jewish population is in the area of town where I live, and also that I’m going to have to buy a lamb shank.  Like, a real one, that you would get for dinner.  They have a $23 version but I don’t need a leg of lamb, I need a bone. So I get the $5 version and honestly, I don’t know or care enough to tell you if it is like more of a lamb ankle?  Or maybe the shank is the ankle?  Or maybe it’s like a sad disabled lamb?  Or whatever.  Five bucks.  I’ll eat some lamb, I think I’ll make it.

Then I say, I need a brisket.  The briskets that they have are only the flat, not the point.  (If you don’t know what that means, Reader, I will explain: It means “go google how to smoke a brisket and you will learn an amount of meat lore you were not prepared for that will enrich your life in ways you can’t even imagine or in fact care very much about.)  So I have to buy 2 because I need ten pounds of meat to feed the absurd number of people I am having over, plus a lamb….something, it has a bone in it…and I’m ready to go.

This post is so long.
I mean seriously, Reader, we're not even half way there.

Ten pounds of flat brisket is large, and I have a passing thought for how big the grill itself actually is and if this is even feasible, but I basically decide we’ve gone too far so we are just going to have to figure this out, I’m sure you can stack them, it’s fine.  I buy all of the meat.

So the day before Passover, I’m looking at all my spoils.  I need to eat that lamb, because I need that bone.  I am going to smoke two square feet of brisket on a two-and-a-liiiiiitle square foot grill.  “Andy” is gone, I’m in this by myself, and everyone arrives in about 30 hours.  Deep breath time.

I decide to practice run smoking something in our grill- and I mean, I gotta cook that lamb so—smoked lamb it is!  I have, by this time, purchased the wood chips, the charcoal (boooo, hisssss, use wooooood) and the grill thermometer.  Smoking the lamb seemed like a good choice for the day before my brisket event—and it was.  I will not run you though all the steps, because if you are here, you also have the internet, but I will highlight some important learning moments. 

...the internal temperature
....is declining....

First, everything takes forever longer than it should.  I assume once you are a Wizard, your built up wisdom and lore helps you to truly know your grill, fire, and meat on a molecular level I can only begin to imagine.  But seriously, if you ever do this, give yourself more time than you think—like allll the more time.

Second, def get the grill thermometer, I am not a wizard, how else could mere mortal people know what temp the inside of their smokey, smokey grill is?

Third, I apologize for my snide tone about the charcoal chimney—I get it now.  The fire needs to burn, as mentioned above, foreeeeevvvvvver.  That means your charcoal burns out way before the meat is done and you need to add more to maintain the heat.  All the websites (that I 

Science!

assume you have open in other tabs by this point) are very loud about how your Grill Integrity is critical, you keep it closed as much as possible to retain the heat and smoke.  The temp needs to be as consistent as possible (so leave it closed) and throwing new charcoal on it is bad.  New charcoal catches fire, which is necessary for getting from the charcoal you start with to the charcoal you want.  But the fire process creates more immediate heat, and much higher temperatures.  So it’s bad.  It takes like 15-20 minutes to get to the ashy red delicious charcoal of your dreams (more consistent heat). 

Enter the charcoal chimney—you can just make the charcoal you want, before you need it and more efficiently, in a contained space, and add it when it should go in.  You should do this.  It’s better.

It's better!

I do not own a charcoal chimney, and did not buy one in my prep—but in my practice run, I came to respect it’s value.

However.  I’m not going to buy a charcoal chimney, because I am a stubborn jerk and I don’t understand why I can’t build one out of tin foil.  I Googled—no one else had uploaded a successful aluminum foil chimney project, or even a failed project, or a 'lessons learned', or a 'reasons why not'….apparently it just is not done.  This is probably related to how easy it is to just go buy the thing itself.  Ok, not foil, fine (though I am still sure it would work if you really committed…).  But there were many posts on how it’s really just a tin can and those are cheap.

(Reader, YES, I know chimneys themselves are also cheap.  I know!  I KNOW.  They’re not expensive…but that’s dumb.  Idk, it just is.  It’s just a tin can.  Sure, it’s got a fancy handle and a lever and there are probably simple ones, but not at my local Home Depot day-of-my-disastrous-delicious-idea, and also it feels like buying an ergonomic $20 bagel slicer when you already have one, it’s called a knife.  Anyway, I didn’t buy one.) 

So I, in my infinite wisdom, went to Food Depot to find the biggest tin can I could find, for the least monies.  This turned out to be full of field peas, fine, who doesn’t want a side of canned field peas at their fancy brisket dinner?  Nobody.  Everyone agrees canned field peas and brisket go together like bananas and peanut butter.  Perfect.  I take that home, can-open the ends off, and get my drill.  It’s not just a tin can I need to create, it’s a tin can with ventilation holes.   (This is the point that you remind me yet again that I could also just buy this thing for, again, not very many monies, and also by the way why don’t we just own a church key can opener that can put the holes I need in the bottom of the tin can?  But we don’t.  So the drill.  Plus then I get to use a power tool, extra points for me.)

Drilling holes in the side of a tin can is not as easy as one (me) might expect, but it is also perfectly doable when you have gone this far and are a stubborn jerk and are this committed.  It gets done.  I own a charcoal chimney now.

Nailed it.

Also worth mentioning about the practice run on lamb: there are all theses little holes?  In our grill??  All the websites are very clear, you leave your top ventilation holes wide open to let the smoke out, but you closely monitor the vent holes on the side of the grill that let the air in.  They exist so that you can regulate temperature and create meat perfection.  Control of these vent holes is paramount; control of air flow into the grill is paramount.  It is the true test, Grill Integrity itself.  It is how you achieve brisket and prove your value as a man and a person breathing the air of this earth.  You can not low-and-slow without tightly controlled ventilation.

But our (sweet, dinky, pithy) grill was made more for burgers and less for next-level smoking

Nailed it again!

adventures.  There are all these holes in the grill that no one has ever noticed before (because who cares) that are screwing up my capacity to control Grill Integrity (IT TURNS OUT I CARE).  I discovered them over the course of the lamb afternoon, and plugged them very professionally with the aluminum foil I didn’t use to build a charcoal chimney. It works, it’s fine.

So I eat ok lamb (yum), learn a few things, I have a drink to get through the realization of the path I have committed to, and I go to bed.  Wake up, Sat morning, Dinner-minus-ten-hours. 

Eight am I dry rub (don’t you effing yell at me, internet, about not dry rubbing earlier.  Brisket is supposed to be delicious all by itself and an hour is rumored to be fine for dry rubbing.  I’m tired, I also

I refer you to my above picture.

made all the sides and stuff in the midst of trying to smoke lamb yesterday, I cleaned the bathroom so my guests would be happy, I hid the shame of our pile of junk mail, and I dry rubbed at eight am.  If you’re mad, die mad about it). Fire starts at 9 am.  Meat slabs, that I (size-wise) have eyeballed and strategized over how I make it work on our tiny grill without just stacking them, goes on at 10.  My chimney is perfect and I challenge you to say something against it. 

Then begins the all day wrestling match with trying to keep the temperature where it is supposed to be.  This is the part of the struggle that real people who smoke meat can relate to.  Because it is a struggle.  I mean….over 220 is bad, under 200 is also bad.  That is a very specific window.  Then a piece of charcoal or a wood chip flares up, and you don’t know it’s life, you don’t know it’s goals, you don’t (I don’t) know what it’s trying to do, but everything gets hotter in a way that makes you think “the fire is still going” but then actually means “HA HA SCREW YOU I do what I want and then I DIE!!!”.  Then you put more charcoal in cuz the temp is too low …and then it gets way high.  And then you notice the grill leaks smoke (not from the vent holes, from the lid) so you bring a 10 lb barbell out to put on the lid to weigh it down because…Idk, that seems right.  Then you notice there are more tiny holes you didn’t plug because who the hell even puts that many tiny holes in the side of a grill, nothing should be screwed in there, what is happening?  Then there is no smoke because all your plugging put the fire out…so you add your carefully chimneyed charcoal in, but then you realize the charcoal and wood already there wasn’t done it was just sleeping and now everything is at a super high temp so you pour some water on it…and Jesus God are there more tiny holes you didn’t even notice yet?! (There are.)

This went on for a while.

I just...need...to rest.

Then people came over, I decided we were as there as we were going to be, and I wrapped the meat up and put it in the microwave to “rest”.

Resting is this mythic thing that is apparently as necessary as bees to life on earth when it comes to smoking brisket.  It involves keeping the cooked brisket at an almost-but-not cooking temperature for like…no kidding two hours.  But it is different, somehow, from just keeping it cooking for two more hours at the same or slightly lesser temperature.  Why?  Because “rest”.  It is the brisket’s self-care moment, and people who know way more than me say to definitely do it, and it sounds super dumb to me but, sure, fine, whatever.  You were right about the chimney.  I’ll try it.

We ate the brisket.  A brisket I smoked, in my crappy grill, for like one hundred hours.  It was…delicious.  It was not, Reader, a brisket that a True Meat Smoking Apostle would have loved—it was tougher than it should have been.  But not too tough…and the flavor was delicious.  I even had bark (google it, non-smokers). It tasted great, the dry rub was great, the mix of dry rub and vinegar and brown beer I swabbed on it whenever I opened the grill was great.  It was lovely, everyone ate it all and had seconds, and I absolutely leveled up.  I am a wizard and a sage.  A worthy adversary.  A national treasure.  A…novice smoker, who defeated a dragon and knows (just a little bit) more than nothing and now I get to sit at the big kids table and I have Become a Man.  BOOM.

We have so many leftover field peas.

I MADE A BRISKET!!!!