Meat Sweats With Jordie: Is It Time To Ditch The Butcher Paper And Strictly Wrap Your Briskets In A Foil Boat?
Some folks toss a brisket in the smoker and don't even bother checking it until 12 hours later when it's ready to come out. Some people wrap their brisket fully in tinfoil (AKA the "Texas Crutch") so that it speeds up the process and gets that brisket extra tender extra fast. Some people, and typically I fall into this category, wrap their briskets in butcher paper because that's what Aaron Franklin started to do and that's the brisket we're chasing down.
Moral of the story is there are a whole bunch of ways to do the same exact thing, which is to hopefully make a brisket so delicious that you would be perfectly content with having that be the last bite of food you'll have in your life. So how you get there doesn't necessarily matter. So should you ditch the butcher paper and start foil boating all of your briskets? Yes, if you want to. No, if you don't want to. Just depends on your preference. But if you're someone who likes your bark to rival Captain Crunch while also having some super juicy brisket underneath, then I'd at least give the foil boat a try if you haven't already.
And if you're interested in hearing more about the foil boat, here are my guys Evan LeRoy from LeRoy & Lewis, and Mighty Joe Yim talking about the origin of the boat.
Two guys who have forgotten more about BBQ than I'll ever know, so definitely check both of those guys out.
But yeah. This was the first time I've ever done the foil boat method before. I was pretty happy with the result. I probably could have used a few more minutes to get the lean exactly where I wanted it to be. It was just a little drier than I would have preferred, but credit to me for being the only person who will cook something on video and tell you that it's not perfect. That's a little thing I like to call honor and integrity. So the flat wasn't perfect, but I couldn't argue with the results in the point. Those turned out to be some unreal slices.
And if you haven't seen Part 1 of my full brisket tutorial video series on how to trim and season your brisket, here's the link to that.