10 Hours on the Smoker

Last week I did a pork butt. Today I did a brisket.

For 10 hours on the smoker -- then another two hours resting to get everything up to a consistent temperature.

It turned out looking like a charred and blackened log. Of course it was sitting in the smoker all this time. I got it up to a temperature of 201ºF; all of the collagen and fat melted off or rendered. It even shrunk quite a bit.

You'll have to excuse the poor carving technique... going with the grain isn't the way to do it, but I'm still needing to develop a better technique to this.

But look at that smoke ring!

Dinner is served.

I put it on thee smoker at around 4AM, and it finished quicker than I had expected. We had dinner at around 4:30PM, which honestly was a little earlier than I had wanted, but it's a data point for next time: start later. Maybe the smoker is just a little bit more efficient at heat conduction than a regular grill set up to smoke? Don't really know... but it went faster than expected. (The recipe said 12-14 hours assuming you wrap it in aluminum foil when it gets to an internal temperature of 150ºF, I didn't do that so I was expecting even longer)