Texas-Style Smoked Brisket
SETTLE IN AND get comfortable. Like drinking 18-year-old single-malt Scotch, smoking a whole brisket is a task best taken slow. But if you’re willing to invest a bit of time, attention, and patience—and take a bold leap of faith—truly sublime eating is well within reach.
As any Texan worth their spurs will tell you, a properly smoked brisket holds irresistible appeal—ultrabeefy, tender, and juicy inside, with a dark, peppery, smoky crust (or “bark”). Legendary Texas barbecue joints don’t even offer sauce; instead they season the meat sparely and confidently with salt, pepper, and smoke.
Why cook a whole brisket? Most home cooks use just half a brisket, either the lean flat cut or the fattier point cut, because whole briskets are so large and take so long to cook. But a whole brisket feeds a crowd, looks and tastes incredible, and, for those who love a grilling challenge, is the crowning achievement of backyard barbecue mastery.
Texas brisket is traditionally smoked in commercial smokers that can handle hundreds of pounds of meat at once. Brisket is just about the least tender cut on the steer; it’s laden with tough collagen and needs long, low, moist cooking to break down that collagen and become tender. Commercial smokers have fireboxes set away from the smoking chamber
