Yeah, I'll be enjoying my stir-fried tofu and organic vegetables all sum....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Not in this lifetime:
1 beef brisket, untrimmed, 7-10Lbs
Quarter cup or so of kosher salt
Half cup or so of home-made chili powder (it's easy, buy some dried chilies of various "heat," cut the stem end, shake out the seeds, snip the chilies into 1/4" strips, run them through a coffee grinder or like device until powdery. Wear gloves while doing this).
1Tbl freshly toasted and ground cumin
Say a couple of teaspoons each fresh ground white and black pepper
2 Tbl dark smoked Hungarian paprika
1/4 cup light or dark brown sugar.
Plus you can add garlic powder, onion powder, Chinese 5-spice powder (be careful! This will overpower everything else! 1 or 2 tsp. at most should do it) lemon zest, etc. Play around.
Mix with a fork and rub very liberally on the entire hunk o' meat. Really rub it in. Put the brisket in a plastic garbage bag and place in the fridge over night or at least 8 hours.
Next day, take the brisket out of the fridge and hour ahead then smoke it FAT SIDE UP at 225F with apple, oak, or hickory chips for 8 hours-ish or until tender enough to cut with a dull spoon. If you really want to do it up and can control the temp accurately (put an oven thermometer in the rack where the meat sits, that is the the air you want to measure; the built-in thermometer up top will not tell you what you want to know) start it 18 hours before you want it done and raise the temp thusly:
1st 6 hours: 160F
Next 3 hours: 175F
Next 3 hours 190F
Next 3 hours: 210F
Last 3 hours: 220F
Remove from rack and lightly tent in tinfoil for 15 minutes. Slice and serve.
A note on smoking: When using an electric, charcoal, or gas smoker or BBQ and adding the chips or chunks of wood, you only need to do this for the first couple of hours. If you keep throwing chips on the entire time you can get a very unpleasant buildup of chemicals on the meat that will ruin it (essentially creosote). Plus, the smoke will only penetrate so far in the first place. When using a purpose-built hardwood "smoker" you don't actually want a lot of smoke, since visible smoke has a lot of moisture and deposits the crud on the meat. That's why we burn the wood to coal in a fire pit then toss it into the fire box. I do burn a log or 2 in the firebox at the beginning though.
