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A guy at a competition told me to stop basting my brisket every 30 minutes
I used to open my smoker every half hour to spritz with apple juice, thinking it was keeping things moist. He said I was just dropping the temp and wrecking the bark, and after I stopped doing it for my last cook, the crust came out way better. Anyone else have a common practice they had to unlearn to get better results?
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violar351mo ago
Wait, but what about the moisture staying locked in from spritzing versus just letting it dry out entirely? I feel like @kelly385 is right that patience matters but sometimes a little steam helps keep the flat from turning into shoe leather before the point is rendered.
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That guy was onto something for sure. Read somewhere that opening the smoker every 30 minutes is like a mini explosion of heat loss and the moisture just sits on the surface and steams the bark instead of letting it set. Dropped my spritzing down to once every 2 hours after that and the difference on the outside was night and day. Another mistake I had to unlearn was wrapping in foil too early, that really hurt the bark as well. Took a few bad briskets to figure out patience is the real secret.
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kelly3851mo ago
Patience is everything with brisket. Took me way too long to learn that rushing things just makes it worse. Letting the meat do its thing without us messing with it is the real trick.
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