Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef

Brisket is a tough meat to master for many competition and backyard cooks. You may or may not have noticed that brisket can have different grades from the USDA.  Below are the grades you may run into and a quick course in the differences.

Select Grade: This is the second lowest grade of brisket I have seen available. There are lower grades such as standard, cutter, etc.  These cuts contain the least amount of fat and will be firmer. Do not use these in competitions if you can avoid it. These are usually seen in grocery stores.

Choice Grade: This is the most common grade you will see and the most used grade in competition. Sam’s, Costco, and many butchers will carry these.  They will have more marbling than select and standard.  It is very important use the basic factors such as size, thickness, marbling and feel to find the correct choice brisket. They all may be labeled Choice, but some are clearly better.

Prime:  This is actually a choice brisket that has received the highest mark of the choice cuts. Typically they will have a little more marbling and will have a softer feel to them.  If you keep your eyes peeled, they are often mixed in with the Choice grades  at Sam’s and Costco. Look fat side of the packaging and you will see a USDA Prime stamp. You can talk to the butcher and the above resources and they can order prime for you.

Wagyu- Referred to as the American Kobe beef.  The USDA does not grade Wagyu.  It’s actually a different breed of cow originating from Japan and uses a different grading system. The Kobe breed of cattle used in these cuts produce a well-marbled brisket. The biggest deterrent is price. They can be up to 5x the price of the above briskets, and often you have to pay a hefty shipping cost as they need to ship refrigerated. We cooked a few of these and they produce a slightly different taste and seem to cook faster. If you can cook them correctly, they are just fine. However, reports of low scores using Wagyu are common, due to unfamiliarity of the judges and the difficulty to cook.

CAB Certified Briskets:  Beef branded as Certified Angus Beef® has a higher amount of marbling and an exceptionally tender, juicy flavor. Only some USDA Prime beef and top grades of USDA Choice beef are sold under this brand name.

Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef

Pulled chicken is one of the most delicious smoked meats you’re going to get your taste buds on. It’s also one of the healthiest. It is far superior to grilling chicken. It requires more patience as it takes on average 3-4 hours to do, not counting prep time. The end product is the most juicy, succulent, and tasty chicken you will ever eat. It is well worth the wait. Today, I am going to demonstrate just how easy it is to make pulled chicken from a whole chicken (using techniques bestowed upon me by the Chicken King of the Midwest, pitmaster Matt Frampton, a fellow author on this site.

The first thing you need to do is butterfly the chicken. For this, go to Matt’s Post entitled “how to butterfly a chicken.” You will be doing yourself a disservice not to start here:

http://www.bbqrevolution.com/how-to-butterfly-a-chicken/

 Rig: The Weber Silver One Touch Kettle Grill.

Ingredients:

-1 whole chicken

-1 cup apple juice

-4 tbsp salted butter

-Spray bottle

-Your favorite chicken rub

First, you’ll need to set the kettle grill to operate in smoke mode. To do this, use charcoal separates to hold charcoal one a small portion of 1 side of the grill. Add a small bed of coals ant then add a few chunks of your favorite wood on top (apple and/or hickory are good choices). Use a charcoal starter to get a few coals lit and place them un top off the unlit coals. Now we’re smoking!

use a charcoal separater, add only a few chuncks of smoke wood

Note: chicken can be smoked at a wide range of temperatures (225 to 350). For this cook, I will cook around 250-275.

Step 1: Butterfly the chicken.

Step 2. Melt the 4 tbsp of butter and combine with the 1 cup of apple juice. This will be our injection. Pump the bird full if this injection. Just get the needle under the skin, you will see the bird swell up as the skin holds in the inject.

Step 3: Add your rub to the chicken. Season both sides of chicken. For this cook, I am using garlic salt and McCormick’s Smoke house pepper seasoning. Cover the skin in the rub.

Kettle is set up, birds are seasoned, let's BBQ!

Step 4: Add your bird to the smoker. Do not place any part of the bird directly over the coals. If you do, you are not going to smoke your chicken, you’re going to be grilling it.

Step 5. Every hour into the cook spray the bird with apple juice. This will help retain moisture as well as add some sweetener to flavor.

spray with apple juice every hour for moisture and for a natural sweetener

Step 6. Once the bird is cooked to 175 (in the breast area), remove the bird and let it rest for 15 minutes. You can also take the temp in the drum/leg area, where the meat is also thick.

step 7. Carefully remove the skin. Use can use a knife and cut out the skin.  Try to keep the skin in as few pieces as possibe. This chunks of skin will become your “dirty rags” in step 9.

Step 8. Grab the legs and pull off the body. Repeat on the wings. Pull the meat off the chicken bones  into bite size chucks. You can separate the dark meat (leg area) and white meat (breast area) if desired. The picture in step 9 shows the dark meat on the left and white on the right.

step 9.  Time to use the dirty rag technique. Remember the skin that you seasoned at the beginning of the cook and subsequently removed in step 7?  That’s your “dirty rag.” Our chicken expert Matt coined this soon to be buzz word on the BBQ circuit. Take the skin you removed, mix it and the chicken together repeatedly . You will see that the chicken meat now looks freckled with the seasoning from the skin. Continue this until you have ragged all the meat. Make sure to remove the rags(skin) from the pulled chicken.

Mix the pulled chicken with the rags and you will be left with seasoned pulled chicken!

Step 10: Enjoy the feast!!! 

Construction overview:

The first thing to do is buy 2 “food grade” drums. Be careful not to buy drums that were used for toxic materials or trash.  You need to burn these barrels for 6 hours minimum to sanitize them. I used all smoke wood when doing this. My neighbor had a ton of apple wood that worked quite well. You will also need to remove all the paint of the drum.

Next, we cut out the door and vents on the bottom. We hinged the door and used electrical box cover with locking washers for the vents.

Barrel is ready to paint.

The next step was paint. Use a high temp engine enamel, black is probably the way to go. However, being from husker country, I just had to have 1 of them be a husker smoker. Here, we apply the first coats of paint.

First coat of red paint is on. Looks like a Longhorn Burnt orange, but don't worry, it will dry to a more powerful Husker Red.

Still drying, but looking better.

After the paint dried, the fun began. I’ll spare you the step by step instructions, but in a nut shell, we added the casters, lined the inside of the barrel with fire brick (for insulation, efficiency) using bbq mortar, added the grates, the diffusion plate (a round piece of stainless steel with lots of holes. This sits right above the coals and prevents the flames from hitting the meat), added a stack, and finally a thermometer.

The last step would making the charcoal basket. My father in law Dan whipped up some awesome baskets.

Now that's a charcoal Basket!

 Here is a look at the smokers first action, cooking up some whole chickens.

The Husker N is added.

The bird is the word, in this case.

Barrel Smoker complete

 The pros of this smoker are the ease of use and most importantly, the efficiency. The fire bricks really make this thing very fuel friendly. It is a very similar to the big green egg in that regard.  It also responds very fast to adjustments to the vents, allowing for easy control of temperature. It cooks up some great chicken and ribs. We  brought it to a competition and turned in the ribs we made on it.  It can cook brisket and pork, but with only 1 shelf, that takes up all the space.

The cons are more abundant. The cost, when we finished, reach about $200 in materials. There were lots of little expenses like furnace gaskets, brackets, metal for the stack, diffusion plate, etc. The time was also a drawback. It just took too long to make a barrel smoker. These should be able to be constructed in a matter of a few hours, not a few days. It also requires welding, cutting, and fabrication, which can be frustrating. The other drawbacks are portability and space. It fits less than the Weber Smokey Mountain 18″ model. The fire brick and mortar make it close to 200 lbs when it is done. The casters help, but getting it to competitions or even through grassy areas is difficult.

Final thoughts: With a search you can find this plan on the internet. While the barrel does cook decent, I would gravitate toward a simpler, more portable design. After making this smoker, I can truly say I beleive I can build a more efficient, better cooking, more portable, and cheaper smoker from a drum.  In fact, I may do this in the fall and post the step by step instructions and results on here!

Ingredients:

- (1) 12 lb Brisket
- 1 12 oz can of Coca-Cola
- 1 cup of Apple Juice
- Your favorite  Brisket rub seasoning (lots available, to see the ones we win with go here http://www.bbqrevolution.com/ )

Get your Rig of Choice fired up: For this cook, I will utilize the Weber Smokey Mountain (bullet smoker).

The WSM is a fine choice. Grab some hickory chunks and let's get started!!

Step 1. Unwrap and trim brisket.

You can tap the fat areas and if it feels solid, it needs to be trimmed. you will notice 2 major areas of the brisket where you need to trim every time. The are located in the point. One is on top and the other is in the thickest side of the point. These are large fat “wedges” that need to be removed. Some folks trim off the fat cap, I am not a big fan of that. The cap will provide the brisket with moisture and taste as the fat renders and is absorbed into the meat. I also trim of meat on the sides that appears brown.

Inject sites are 1 inch apart. Note: Puddling can be seen in this pic

Step 3. Apply a thin coat of mustard over the brisket. This will act as a binding agent to hold the rub on the brisket throughout the cook.

Step 4. Apply a generous amount of rub on the brisket. It is of this Pitmasters opinion you cannot over-season a brisket. That said, don’t get in a contest to see how much seasoning you can get on your brisket. Use you common sense.

Logan’s note: Some of you pros will appreciate this one: It is not necessary to season the fat cap of the brisket yet… since you will cook the brisket Fat side up, you can season the fat cap after putting the brisket on your rig.

Step 5: Place the brisket on the smoker fat side up and season the fat cap if you have not yet. You will notice you can really get a good amount of seasoning on with this method. As the fat cap renders, this seasoning will absorb into the brisket with the rendered fat.

Pitmaster tip: Wait to season the fat cap until it's on smoker, if you can. You will hold more seasoning.

Step 6. Cook the brisket until internal temp reaches 160 degrees.

Step 7. Re-season and wrap the brisket in heavy duty foil. Many briskets, and pork butts for that matter, seem to hit a wall at this temperature and cook slowly, jeopardizing your turn in time. This will also seal all the juices inside the foil, making for a nice, juicy brisket nearly every time.

Re-season the Brisket

use heavy duty foil

Step 8. Cook brisket to 195 degrees.

Step 9. Keep in foil and let brisket sit for 1/2 hour to 3 hours. A brisket will stay tender for that long, maybe longer. Ideally, for a competition, try to keep this time as close to an hour as possible. The brisket absorbs a portion of the juices in foil. Take it out right away and you will have a dry brisket.

Step 10. Slice against the grain and enjoy!!!!!

Pics of the final product are all posted here!

Hot Grill on Grill Action Facebook Page!

The idea is to ensure we don’t lose or forget anything we try…..I think….and along the way – perhaps we’ll give someone an idea to try on their own or inspire someone to take what we have tried and share it here.

Ultimately – I want to see loads of content and I have no intention of withholding any information I have regarding home cooking or competition BBQ….even if I stumble upon an award winning recipe – you’ll find it here.  You’ll also find stuff that wasn’t so good – and I’ll be sure we’re clear about that!!!

Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies and I love trying different things.  I love spicy foods, so you’ll probably see an unbalanced list of pepper laced recipes from me…..but that’s why there’s 4 of us on here!

Enjoy the content and please contact us with any questions…..heck - if you have the right ideas and want to – we could even make you an author.

Peace,

Matt