Being a member of the WoW BBQ team means that if you weren't already a Weber BBQ nut before joining, then you soon will be! Few days go by where someone is not bbq'ing breakfasts or lunches on one of the many Weber BBQs that we have in our demonstration area.
With BBQ being a huge part of our lives at WoW, we all strive for perfection and despite being accomplished grillers, a disaster BBQ can still be around the corner! It doesn't matter how good you are, sometimes if you are trying to do too many things at once, you end up getting the comment from one of your friends and family to say, "it tastes alright to me." That comment doesn't cut it to an avid BBQ'er - we want more than that and the slightest overcooked steak is something that you lose sleep over!
Beef Brisket is one of the most challenging cuts of meat to BBQ - it can all too often be dry or tough. Despite BBQ'ing for years, it is one of those things where I think, "is it worth the hassle?" Call me disorganised or easily distracted but I have managed to mess brisket up an awful lot! Where I used to go wrong with brisket was not keeping an eye on what's going on - it is vital to to ensure your Smoker or Grill is running at the right temperature throughout the cook.
Welcome to my life, The Weber Pulse BBQ - so convenient and easy. Simply plug it into mains electricity and within 5 to 10 minutes you are ready to start BBQ'ing.
The latest Weber Electric BBQ described by many (tried by few) as Weber's answer to the George Foreman but for much more money. Oh how wrong they are. Since it's inception earlier this summer, we have used this grill at least 40 times and it'ss capabilities are simply incredible. The previous electric BBQ from Weber; the Q1400 was good, but the Pulse takes Electric BBQ'ing to another level.
Emphasis on the term BBQ'ing - this truly brilliant Weber BBQ produces authentic tasting BBQ food that I could only dream of achieving at university, with my beloved George Foreman Grill. This BBQ will take a while to be accepted by the BBQ purists, but give it a chance and I promise that you will be converted. This dish is the only evidence you need.
The Weber Pulse BBQ is easy - plug it in, set it to your desired temperature and it will stay constant until you tell it otherwise, the fuel supply is constant and the results are spectacular. So far on the Weber Pulse 2000 we have tried all kinds of regular BBQ food, such as Sausages, Burgers, Steaks and Chops. This time we decided to take it to another level after recently doing a slab of pork ribs and some single Beef Ribs - both results were delicious. So, to business; it was time to try beef brisket.
For this cook, we needed some good quality meat for the occasion, so we went to Mark Burley at Bob's Family Butchers based in Hertfordshire, 45 minutes north of WoW BBQ Headquarters in London. Mark supplies various UK BBQ Teams with their meat, delivers nationwide and is a fine BBQ'er in his own right. He also gave us some great advice on prep, rubbing (Angus and Oink, Dirty Cow Rub) and injecting (Beef Stock) this USDA brisket. Thanks Mark!
I inserted the Weber iGrill probes and closed the lid. At about 6.30pm I left HQ to the sweet smell of smoke.
The Weber Pulse has an Weber iGrill fully integrated, however its range is only around 50 feet, meaning I was unable to track the brisket's progress from home. However I did feel comforted to know that I could trust that the Pulse would remain very close to 200F without me being there. After a good nights sleep, I arrived back to work at around 7am to an incredible smell!
I checked my iGrill app and the internal temp was 157F at the Point End and 148F at the flat end - still some way off. I had expected the Point End, which is the thicker part of the brisket and holds more fat to actually be at a lower temp than the flat end. I tightened this up by changing which heating element was on, so rather than the point end control knob being on the first notch, the flat end side control knob was on the first notch, while the other remained off.
The temperature plateaued at about 175F and it seemed to take forever for it to start rising again. This is fairly normal when BBQ'ing brisket and to conquer this, people tend to wrap the brisket in foil to help get the temperature going up. At this point some people sauce the brisket also, I just decided to leave it as it was, get on with some boring work and be patient. I wanted to get involved as little as possible and just let the Pulse do it's thing.
Time went on and at 3pm on Wednesday, over 23 hours since putting the meat on, the iGrill app beeped to say that the time had come to take the meat off and rest it. After an hour we were ready to carve. We unwrapped this thing of beauty and cut thin slices of the flat and cubed the point which was to go back on to the Pulse for Burnt Ends. These delicious cubes from the point were heavily sauced with Pig's Swill Barbecue Sauce and left in the Pulse for another hour - boy they were a treat!
The results were outstanding and it was so easy to achieve, thanks to the Weber Pulse I barely needed to get my hands dirty.
How could I improve it? There was some smoke early in the cook, but we suspect rather than this being from the apple chips, it was from fats burning off from previous cooks that lay in the BBQ Cook Box (the bottom part). This old fat was combusting and creating smoke, but for those looking for a really smokey flavour, this might not have been enough.
Next time we would try smoking dust or removing some of the Roasting Shield to allow fats to hit the heating element and smoke. All in all, this was a great success, so much so that I'm getting one for my own garden!