Isolated Brisket Burnt Ends

For this BBQ recipe I'm going to show you how I do burnt ends. Now burnt ends are from the point of the brisket, and they get that name from pit masters, who would slice up the burnt point of the brisket into cubes and serve them out to customers while they were waiting on their brisket order.

A brisket is usually sold as a packer cut. Meaning, the point and the flat are not separated. Some times you can find the flat part sold at a store but on a rare occasion. So what I did was asked my butcher, if I bought a whole brisket would they separate the point from the flat. they did.

This is the brisket point. My butcher cut a lot of the fat off it just to clean it up and left just enough fat so it will keep the brisket juicy. Now all that is left, is to add seasoning. You can use whatever seasoning you like. I use two types of seasonings from Kosmos Q. Dirty bird and killer honey bee.

Now when you set your smoker up, get the temperature between 250 and 275 degrees F.

Make sure you have the fat side up. You can cut away as much fat as you want but, leave some fat on the fat cap of the brisket. When it cooks, the fat will render down and keep the meat moist. If you are using a smoke box, have the point aimed at the fire. Most of the fat is on the point, and you can see from the photo above why they call them burnt ends.

So a brisket will take many hours to cook. So you will need to add charcoal to your fire when you start to see the temp drop down. I added some hickory wood chunks to get a nice mild smoke flavor on the brisket.

About 4 to 5 hours into the cook, check the internal temp of the brisket. If the temperate is at 165 or above, then begin the next step.

Now, take the point and place it in a pan. Poor in some beef broth, just enough so it touches the brisket. Cover it in aluminum foil and place it back on your smoker. For the next 3 hours just keep and eye on the temp.

After 3 hours, now you take the brisket out and slice it up into cubes. We are not done yet. Keep that pan with the brisket juice and beef broth because we need that for the final step. Find some BBQ sauce, anyone will do. Then poor some of it into the pan and mix it all together. Then take every piece of brisket and roll it into the juice and leave it. Now drizzle some BBQ sauce over the pieces of meat and brush it over the top. This will give it a sticky moist taste to every bite. Now, put the pan uncovered back on the smoker for 15 to 20 minutes.

Now the burnt ends are done. So just a recap. We seasoned up a brisket point and let it smoke for 4 hours. Then we wrapped it up in a pan of beef broth and cooked it for another 3 hours. We cut it up, and rolled every piece in the pan with a mix of BBQ sauce with a glaze on top for 15 to 20 minutes.

Stay safe out there everyone. I know how annoying it is to be told every 5 minutes to wash your hands and to keep a social distance, and being forced to stay at home. But we'll get through this. I will post up more BBQ blogs soon.