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TIMING

Prep: 5 minutes (plus 20 minutes for rub, marinade, and sauce)

Rest before grilling: 9 to 24 hours

Soak wood chips: 1 hour

Grill: 6 to 7 hours

GRILL TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT

• 4 cups wood chunks or chips (hickory or oak)

• Smoker box or foil packet, if using a gas grill (see page 39)

• Long-handled tongs

• Large disposable aluminum foil pan

Texas Barbecued Brisket

Brisket is a tough slab of meat cut from the well-worked chest muscles of the steer. When cooked with low heat that’s delivered slowly and steadily, tough brisket transforms into a tender, juicy slice of heaven. If you were to cook the same cut of meat quickly over high heat, you’d end up with chewy, dense shoe leather. It’s all in the method. What you want to do is heat the meat very slowly to gradually dissolve the tough connective tissue (collagen) that surrounds the muscle fibers. Brisket has a high proportion of connective tissue to muscle fiber, so there’s lots of dissolving to be done. And that takes time. Cooking slowly by the indirect heat of smoldering wood not only gives the collagen time to dissolve, it also infuses the meat with wonderful smoky aromas. This is the perfect recipe for days when you’ll be outside all day anyway. Check on the meat every hour or so, drizzling it with beer and adding wood chips to the fire, and by the end of the day, you’ll have enough deliriously good meat to please you and ten of your friends.

THE GRILL

Gas:

Indirect heat, low (225°F)

3- or 4-burner grill-middle burner(s) off

2-burner grill—1 side off

Clean, oiled grate

Charcoal:

Indirect heat, thick ash

Split charcoal bed (about 2 dozen coals per side) 60 replacement coals

Heavy-duty drip pan set between banks of charcoal Clean, oiled grate on medium setting

Wood:

Indirect heat, thick ash

12-by-12-inch bed, 1 inch deep

Additional wood for replacement

Clean, oiled grate set 6 inches above the fire

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TIPS

• If using charcoal, keep the heat low by closing all the vents about three-fourths of the way immediately after adding fresh, hot coals each hour or so.

• If you use your own barbecue sauce, don’t make it overly sweet, as a Kansas City sauce would be. It should be leaner and hotter, with more cider vinegar and chile pepper. You could doctor up your favorite bottled barbecue sauce by stirring in extra cider vinegar and Tabasco.

GETTING CREATIVE

• For Cajun Blackened Brisket, replace the Fragrant Chile Rub with Cajun Blackening Rub (page 373). Omit the barbecue sauce and serve only with the pan juices.

SMOKE RINGS

Brisket and other smoked meats often appear reddish-pink on the surface. When you slice into the meat, you’ll see a pink ring on the surface contrasted by the familiar cooked color of the meat inside. These “smoke rings” are created by your heat source, which, in the case of barbecued brisket, is the smoldering wood and coals. According to food scientist Harold McGee, burning any organic fuel (wood, charcoal, or gas) will generate enough nitrogen dioxide (NO2) to create pink smoke rings. The NO2 first breaks down into nitrous acid (HNO2) at the surface of the meat; it then transforms into nitric oxide (NO) as it penetrates the meat. When nitric oxide comes into contact with the raw meat’s natural red pigment (myoglobin), it forms a pink molecule that remains pink throughout the cooking. But the nitric oxide penetrates only about 1/4 inch into the meat. That’s why the very interior of the muscle tissue on barbecued brisket has the familiar gray color of well-done meat, but the surface reveals an attractive pink smoke ring.

PIT SMOKERS

Traditionally, Texas brisket is barbecued in a pit smoker where the heat is in one chamber (an offset firebox) and the meat is in another. The meat is far enough away from the heat that it cooks not by the radiant heat of the coals, but by the relatively cool heat of the smoke. The temperature in the cooking chamber should remain a low 200° to 225°F throughout the entire cooking