Don’t know where to start when smoking a Beef Brisket?

Smoked beef brisket is a delicious way to use your barbecue or braai for larger cuts of meats. Using our method, you’ll cook a juicy, flavoursome, smokey beef brisket using six easy steps. Follow this simple cooking guide for a sure-fire way to steal the show when you next smoke a beef brisket on the braai or barbecue.

As with any piece of meat you’re cooking, the goal is to get a perfectly relaxed, seasoned and coloured cook. What does this mean?

A relaxed piece of meat: the quality of the cut of meat you buy from your trusted butcher, how you thaw and rest before and after cooking.

A seasoned piece of meat: when and what you season with before, during and after cooking.

A coloured piece of meat: how long, what temperature, and methods to cook the meat.

How To Cook Beef Brisket

Step 1

Follow these steps to cook a 1.8kg-2.0kg cut of beef brisket in your barbecue or braai at home. Place your brisket in the fridge overnight, allowing it to thaw and relax slowly. Approximately 60 mins before cooking, remove from the refrigerator and take out the packaging before you trim and season the meat.

Step 2

Fat will naturally render when cooked and give great flavour to your brisket, but nobody likes a mouthful of fat, so trim off any excess fat areas. Our butchered and rolled brisket is ready to season and roast in the oven; however, the butcher’s string can break on the fire, or you may also prefer to colour and control the whole primal.

Step 3

Season with Smoked Cajun Meat Rub from our Braai Spice Pack made with Himalayan salt, sugar, black peppercorns, garlic flakes, onion powder, smoked paprika, thyme, oregano, cumin and chilli. This rub will impart smokiness from the smoked paprika should you not have wood chips.

Step 4

Approximately 30 minutes before cooking, you’ll want to light the fire on your braai or BBQ. For most home barbecues such as a Weber Kettle, you will want to use the snake method for your charcoal and wood chips to allow an even and consistent temperature over the 4hr + cooking time. A temperature of around 120-130 Celsius (250F-270F) is ideal over this time frame.

Step 5

Sometimes foil or untreated butcher paper is used once the meat is suitably charred or speed up the cooking process. Using foil or butcher paper while cooking your brisket is a matter of preference and requires some feel, depending on how quickly the “bark” layer forms on the crust.

Step 6

Take your brisket off the fire at ~88 Celsius (190F), and again you may wish to wrap it in untreated butcher paper, which has a good balance of wrapping in juices and heat while allowing the meat to breathe and relax. You’re looking for an internal temperature that should continue to rise to 93 Celsius (200F) before serving. You can control this rise in temperature using an icebox (without the ice) and resting for at least 30mins before slicing thinly against the grain.

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