Barbecue brisket takes patience

I cooked a brisket last Sunday. I've never cooked one before so it was quite an experiment for me. I don't usually cook read meat, and I don't smoke things. When it comes to steaks and brisket, I'd rather leave it up to a good restaurant. But I came across the brisket on a trip to Nob Hill (recipes available on the Nob Hill Web site.) It came complete with a recipe for homemade barbecue sauce and for smoking the meat so I bought it on a whim.

The only thing I've ever smoked before was a 10-lb. turkey for Thanksgiving one year. It was smoked with rosemary, not wood chips, and a coworker cooked one at work for an article in the paper so I watched first hand. The recipe was well detailed.

I had no plans on Sunday so it seemed a perfect time to soak some wood chips and cook a piece of meat on the grill for two-to-four hours. And there's the rub. The recipe came with instructions to smoke the meat over indirect heat for one to two hours - with no instructions on temperature. I settled on smoking the meat for one and a half hours, turning the meat twice and adding extra hickory wood chips every half hour.

Then the instructions called for moving the meat to a metal roasting pan, with a cup of beer, covered tightly in foil and then cooked for another one to two hours. With the inexact instructions, I wasn't sure how long to cook the meat. We put it on the grill around 1:30 p.m. and pulled it off about 5 p.m. The meat rested for a while and when I cut into it, it had a perfect pink smoke line but was a little overcooked. The meat still tasted delicious with a homemade barbecue sauce and a simple rub of pepper, paprika, salt and sugar.