Brining Brisket Before Smoking – Pro Methods

Smoking your meat over a fire is a great way to bring out the flavors in the meat. You can do this with all types of meat, which includes brisket.

However, a process called brining will help bring out even more flavor in the meat. By brining your brisket before smoking it, you will get an amazing amount of flavor.

In this article, we are going to go into just what brisket and brining are and how you can brine. By the end, you will have all the information you will need to get your brine on!

What Is a Brisket?

When you see something referring to a brisket cut, it is talking about a certain part of the cow.

The brisket comes from the cow’s lower chest area or pectoral muscles if you want to get technical about it.

Given that it comes from that particular area, you can probably figure out there is a lot of muscle on that cut of meat.

This type of meat is usually on the large side so expect that you will be cooking it for a decent amount of time. The larger the meat, the longer it is going to have to cook.

What Is Brining?

By brining something, you are using salt or a saltwater solution to soak the meat in. Using water along with the salt depends on whether you are doing a dry or wet brine, but this is something we will touch on later.

People tend to brine meat because they want meat that is moist and tender. Of course, the salt is going to add flavor to it as well.

However, the biggest reason to brine meat is that you want it to be on the soft and tender side rather than rough.

Is It Worth Brining Brisket?

So, you know what brining is, and at this point, you may wonder if brining is even worth it. To tell you the truth, it does depend on the type of meat you are going to be cooking.

For brisket, we can say with utmost certainty that it is very important for you to brine the meat.

The reason for this is that brisket is meat that comes from the cow’s chest area, which is full of muscles.

Muscles are very tough, so imagine biting into them if it has not been tenderized. It would be quite difficult to eat!

If you are someone who loves tough meat, then you can always skip the brining process. The choice is, as always, up to you in the end.

How Can You Brine Brisket?

Now we reach the part of the article where you learn just how you can brine. Not only can you dry brine, but you can also wet dry.

Both come with their benefits, which we are going to go into below.

How To Dry Brine Brisket

One of the ways you can brine brisket is to do a dry brine, which is admittedly much easier than a wet brine.

This is not to say a wet brine is difficult. It just has a few more steps than dry brining does.

People choose to dry brine instead for many reasons. It is quicker, you do not have to find something to submerge the entire brisket in, and there is no boiling of water involved. To brine, you need to take the following steps:

• Grab your salt. It is best to use half a teaspoon of salt per pound of brisket.
• Use some dry paper towels and then pat the meat dry. Once you are sure it is dry, start rubbing the salt all over the meat.
• Place the brined meat on a rack or whatever else you are using to hold the meat. Keep it in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours. The larger it is, the longer it should be kept inside the fridge to brine.

And there you have it! The next steps are to start smoking the meat, but by bringing it first, you are making sure your meat is going to be at its tastiest.

How To Wet Brine Brisket

The other way to brine brisket is by using a wet brine. When you are doing a wet brine rather than a dry brine, you are using a salt and liquid solution.

It does take longer than a dry brine because of the added process involved. To wet brine, you need to take the following steps:

• Get some salt and water. The amount you are going to need varies, but the rule of thumb is that the brine should be enough that it covers the entire thing of meat.
• Boil the water. About 2 cups of water for each cup of salt. It varies depending on the size of the meat, so always make sure you keep this in mind.
• Once the water is boiled, throw in the salt. After the salt has dissolved, put the mixture into the fridge until it has chilled.
• After it is cold, put the brisket in the brine. Let it sit for a minimum of 2 hours. The bigger it is, the longer it needs to sit in the brine.

And that is it! What you do next is to finally smoke the meat. By brining it first, you made sure your meat is going to taste delightful.

Final Thoughts

Well, now we are at the end of this article for all you barbeque lovers out there. First, we explained what brisket and brine are and whether it is even worth it to brine a brisket or if you should just leave it.

The next things we touched on were obviously how you can brine brisket. You can use either a wet or dry brine to tenderize the meat.

It does not really matter which one you go with because both will bring a certain amount of tenderness to your meat.

William Thomas

I have been smoking and grilling meat from an early age and enjoy sharing my knowledge and expertise through the hundreds of articles I have written about BBQ. I hope to make everyone’s BBQ journey that little bit easier.