Smoker FYI

When I got home from fishing this weekend, empty handed, there was a present from The Mother of the Bride. A 9 pound brisket. Not 9 pounds of cooked brisket, but a big ol' slab of meat looking for a place to be cooked.


Since I eat about 10 pounds of brisket a month, I have been wanting to try my hand at cooking one myself, so I guess this was a sign from God and my mother in law that I should do it. I have been looking at barbecue smokers for a while now.

I was heading over to the sporting goods store to pick one up when I remembered a Christmas gift card from Home Depot in my wallet. So I brought home a box style Charcoal smoker. My neighbor has one like it and he is the master of pork ribs.


Took me a while to get it all unpacked and assembled. But it was fairly straight forward. Heck I managed not to break anything and I hadn't had any Dr Pepper in about 10 hours. Half an hour and I was trying to decide whether I would smoke the brisket in the backyard, by the new comfy chairs or in the morning shade of the front yard.

The backyard and comfortable chairs won out!
Besides, it will be shady again out there in about 4 hours.

While the smoker was heating up, I had a sudden realization that the meat wasn't marinaded or prepped for the smoker. Since it would take a day to marinade the meat, I went with a dry rub of paprika, brown sugar, onion and garlic powders and some dried, homegrown oregano.

I left the brisket to sit in the rub for an hour or so.

My dinner meat met it's fate at 12:19 pm.

Smokin'!

Come over tonight about 7 and either eat some dinner or laugh at my brisket folly. The good news is I decided to only smoke half of the brisket. So if this is a waste of $15 of barbecue, I still have 4 pounds of beef for a second try, when I think I'll try this marinade.

After the brisket had an hour in the smoker, I seasoned some chicken and put it on the top rack. No matter how good the beef turns out, the kiddies probably won't like it. Might as well cook up some chicken for them, too.