smoking a corned beef brisket

I had planned on cooking a brisket tomorrow, this will be the first time so I want to do it right because we've got company coming over.

The wife went to the store and came home with "corned beef" brisket thinking that she was buying the right thing. I know that this beef has been salted and cured, what the heck will I get if I put this on the smoker?

Do I need to go out and find the right stuff?

You can still cook the Corned Beef Brisket if you want but of course it will taste different than a Brisket, even though they're both Briskets.

Here's something that I have done before:

• Soak the Corned Beef in water for 3 hours changing the water every hour
• Rub some seasonings/spices as desired
• Cook at 250º, fat cap up using Oak or Hickory
• Pull when Internal Temperature reaches at least 175º
• Foil tent and rest for 20 minutes
• Slice against the grain

It will taste between Corned Beef and Pastrami since it was Corned Beef. Here's one a did a few months ago.

If it was me and I had company coming over for dinner, I'd go out and get the real thing. Save what your wife bought you to use as an experiment some other time. I never experiment on company.

at least not in the kitchen....bada boom

scooter said:

If it was me and I had company coming over for dinner, I'd go out and get the real thing. Save what your wife bought you to use as an experiment some other time. I never experiment on company.

Click to expand...

Yep, that's what we did...regular brisket is a bit more difficult to find right now in this part of NC. She brought home the exact thing that Smoker Pete showed above. At any rate, it went back and the real deal was found and that's good but the size is small. She bought the only two in the store, each weighs less then 3 lbs. about 2-2.5 lbs each.

How would you guys approach cooking a lil brisket on a smoker, anything special?

I was going to joke about overcoming some significant difficulties of cooking this meal but it would be pretty self centered if I did. Parts NC got hit with some terrible weather the other day, several very bad tornadoes spun out of a series of thunderstorms that rolled through the state. Loss of life wasn't real bad, I think that 22 people died but the damage was very bad in several locations.

Prayers are out to all those who lost family and friends, and those who lost their homes. I hope that other NC members here made it though OK.