All in all, it turned out pretty good, better than I could have hoped for for my first attempt. It cooked from 8:30 to 5:45, not including resting time. There was a panic around lunchtime, when I wasn’t completely convinced the grill was getting hot enough in smoke mode (showing only 135 degrees on an oven thermometer), so I turned it up to medium for a while, until the grill built up some heat, then turned it back to smoke. At about 3pm, I wrapped the meat in foil, with some sauce and some pre-cooked onions, to keep it moist, and then put it back into the grill on medium until it hit the right temperature.
For the unitiated, the pink you can see around the outside of the meat is the smoke ring, where the smoke has penetrated the meat. Not bad at all, if I might say so.
The only minor gotcha is that my rub (which was store bought) is somewhat hot to taste. Not awfully so, but hotter than I would normally wish. Still, one learns, which is what this session was all about.
Looks tasty!
It is. Regarding my comment about it being a bit too spicy, due to my using the wrong rub. Quite often you can mitigate a problem like this with what you eat with it. I find that something creamy or something sweet helps kill spiciness.
In Tescos today, I bought two table sauces to try. The first was a cheap “sweet hamburger relish”. More of a smooth sauce than a relish, it was nonetheless quite nice, and lightened the spice a little.
The second was a sweet onion relish – a real relish this time with chunks of onion in. This blended with the beef really nicely in a roll, and brought the spicyness down to “mild”.
I’m going to my game session tomorrow, with a couple of foil packets of sliced brisket, some rolls and the bottle of relish!
Well, that was successful. Turned up at the games session with 2 foil parcels of sliced brisket, a dozen sliced roll and some onion relish. Came home with 2 leftover rolls and the relish bottle.