BFG Another Big Brisket Cook on the RT-2500

[rhouser]

Same ground rules as my 1st Big Brisket cook. Same issues out there. This missive will focus on the fixes I implemented this cook and what worked.

About 170 lbs of Briskets. Again, I went 4/3/3. Because I still don't want to cut down the brisket height on the points of these restaurant quality commercial briskets I was addressing the Trapped Brisket problem. When you put a grate into it's slider you can't lift the grate to go over a large point deckle. I beat the "trapped brisket" issue by stacking the racks ON TOP of their slides not in them as designed. It worked. I had NO trapped Briskets.

I ran this cook at 250 degrees the whole time. (Previously tried 225 and the cook to wrap ran way too long for my timing needs).

250 knocked the run to wrap time down to a little under 9 hours and from wrap till the last one was off (205 +/-) at 4.5 more hours. This makes a total time including actually doing the wraps at a bit less than 14 hours. I can work with this timing. I put them on at 5:50 PM and was pulling finished briskets as early as 7 am. These are "commercial" choice packers by the case lot so I have weights that run all over the place. Finish time is going to vary by which brisket decides it is done.

No rain, but was prepared.

The tallow buckets can become an issue. For me, I may need to find bigger buckets. 180 pounds of brisket makes a LOT of tallow. Interestingly, my BFG seems to fill the right bucket faster than the left. It has to be that I am stacking more meat on the right side. I DID need to do a bucket change (empty the buckets) before I was done.

Last note:
When I finished the briskets, I scraped one of the grates with a bit of foil, put it back into the BFG in the mid position and ran about 35 pounds of Chorizo Sausages at the same 250 degrees used for the brisket. About an hour to finishe They looked pretty good. Good color.

My lessons for me:
Don't need to use the sliders for the grates. Place each grate on top of it's slider at the height you want, then load the meat.
250 in the BFG seems to be a nice temp for the brisket to be brisket.
Watch your tallow buckets. They will need to be emptied.
250 degrees is pretty good for "fresh" sausages.

Happy New Years to all.
v/r r

 

[SmokeZilla]

Same ground rules as my 1st Big Brisket cook. Same issues out there. This missive will focus on the fixes I implemented this cook and what worked.

About 170 lbs of Briskets. Again, I went 4/3/3. Because I still don't want to cut down the brisket height on the points of these restaurant quality commercial briskets I was addressing the Trapped Brisket problem. When you put a grate into it's slider you can't lift the grate to go over a large point deckle. I beat the "trapped brisket" issue by stacking the racks ON TOP of their slides not in them as designed. It worked. I had NO trapped Briskets.

I ran this cook at 250 degrees the whole time. (Previously tried 225 and the cook to wrap ran way too long for my timing needs).

250 knocked the run to wrap time down to a little under 9 hours and from wrap till the last one was off (205 +/-) at 4.5 more hours. This makes a total time including actually doing the wraps at a bit less than 14 hours. I can work with this timing. I put them on at 5:50 PM and was pulling finished briskets as early as 7 am. These are "commercial" choice packers by the case lot so I have weights that run all over the place. Finish time is going to vary by which brisket decides it is done.

No rain, but was prepared.

The tallow buckets can become an issue. For me, I may need to find bigger buckets. 180 pounds of brisket makes a LOT of tallow. Interestingly, my BFG seems to fill the right bucket faster than the left. It has to be that I am stacking more meat on the right side. I DID need to do a bucket change (empty the buckets) before I was done.

Last note:
When I finished the briskets, I scraped one of the grates with a bit of foil, put it back into the BFG in the mid position and ran about 35 pounds of Chorizo Sausages at the same 250 degrees used for the brisket. About an hour to finishe They looked pretty good. Good color.

My lessons for me:
Don't need to use the sliders for the grates. Place each grate on top of it's slider at the height you want, then load the meat.
250 in the BFG seems to be a nice temp for the brisket to be brisket.
Watch your tallow buckets. They will need to be emptied.
250 degrees is pretty good for "fresh" sausages.

Happy New Years to all.
v/r r

rhouser,

Glad your cook came out well. Thanks for the update. I also typically do lower quality meats at a higher temperature (235-260F) to help reduce the overall cooking time and assist with the breakdown of the muscle and fibers versus a prime grade or American Angus/Wagyu that can render very well at ~225F as the latter group’s fat marbling breaks down at lower temps. I don’t have the BFG but my offset has done 20 large full packers with no problem. One of my lessons learned was to cut aluminum half pans down low enough to catch the brisket drippings under the meat and you won’t have to watch the bucket as often if ever. You can add a little water to each pan to keep the chamber’s humidity higher resulting in better control of the temperatures during the cook. The moisture acts as a thermal blanket to cushion loss of temps when the chamber opens. It also seems to keep the lower quality cuts a little more moist before wrapping (in my opinion). The bonus from my method is that I will not need to buy tallow for a long time, haha. I use the rendered-clarified tallow drippings for frying (e.g., french fries, cracklins, broccoli, eggs. etc.) and also use it as fuel for starting camp fires to add the ambience of cooking meat, lol). The tallow’s shelf life is also incredible.

Enjoy your hard work and I am sure the recipients of your cooking will be delighted.
Happy New Year!!!

 

[Motodad1776]

Is your son also smoking meat we assume, and if so what is he using for that?

 

[PRC]

There are bunches of studies out there on the content of brisket fat and why it is among the healthiest out there. A couple of these are pretty interesting:
https://www.livestrong.com/article/514682-8-oz-lean-brisket-nutrition/

Read the above study, I thought they would have broken the numbers down by looking at the flat and the point separately. There is a lot more fat in the point vs the flat.

 

[SmokeZilla]

SZ, I have been pulled into supporting my Son and Daughter in Law's 2 truck food service. I am not a paid employee, I am a 73 y/o Grandpa who can smoke some meat.

This started with 2 briskets to see if it would sell. Now they want 10 and it sells out in one day. They are only offering it as a "special feature" meal so I guess people are waiting for it. I am not much on the social media stuff, but that is how they communicate with their customer base.

I did the stick burners years ago. First with baffled drums, then my first off set. These are a lot of work but as you imply, they offer scalability up to the really big cookers (1000 gal plus). The downside of the stick burners is fire management and real estate, If you manage your fires wrong, everything will go bad quickly.

These pellet grills are allowing me to bypass the fire management. The trick for me was to find a grill that would give me the "smaller than commercial capacity" but larger than the normal backyard cooker so I could meet the capacity to support a couple of trucks and only be running one smoker.

I really wanted to go with the dual firepot beast version but the 10K starting bid is beyond what I can do. I talked to the recteq folks and they assured me that this BFG could and would perform as advertised. So far, it really has.

I think one purpose of my posts here is to document what is working and what is proving to be a problem. I am finding some things that are working way better than they should. I am convinced that the two sided shorter run drip trays are providing heat distribution advantages by virtue of NOT being parallel to the cooking grates. Just an observation.

I have gotten help from many of the folks on this forum with the care, feeding, and cleaning of the recteq grills in general and on the rt-2500 specifically. This is making my transition to this cooker much easier.

Thanks to all.
v/r r

rhouser,

You are bringing a lot to the table (literally and figuratively). What a blessing that your family has you at the helm of the Smoked Meat Express. I am hopeful the business can continue to grow and that success finds you all. If you don’t mind sharing, let us know where the FT is located. Maybe this forum can give you more business than you can handle and give you as many options as you think may need. Also, have you been able to find a consistent source for your briskets? I use Restaurant Depot and Costco depending on the grade I need but I am always open to new sources.

 

[SmokeOCD]

@rhouser - I wish your son great success; have him look into how to do what you're doing legally. I'm not here to piss in anyone's cheerios - used to be a food vendor though. If you're in a small town or he knows the inspector he can probably get away with it. I'm sure your cleanliness standards are better than most vendors/restaurants/bars - but that's probably not going to fly with inspectors and maybe the insurance companies too. If he gets shutdown, he'll need a plan on how to quickly pass inspection and start up again. Could be as simple as strapping the smoker to the back of the truck(somehow) and smoking from there.

 

[rhouser]

I am posting on this forum to obtain insight and provide insight (lessons learned) on the operations, best practices, tricks and tips for using the BFG grill. I wanted a single smoker that could handle a hundred pounds plus of meat at a time and was maintainable and sustainable.

The BFG appears to be about exactly what I needed.

For the record, my son is operating his own state inspected and licensed commissary and kitchen as part of the business.

His kitchen, commissary, and vehicles are registered, licensed, inspected. He complies with all state and local health, food sales and service regulations. His business licenses are all current.

My BFG is located at his facility. All the prep, pre and post, is done in his commissary kitchen by his food handlers. I show up and run the smoker and the cook. Then I hand off the product and am done.

I also do cooks in support of local VFW functions, church gatherings, and local service organizations. I do this as community service when asked. My son and daughter in law donate the use of their kitchen and commissary to support my "not for profit" efforts within these communities.

v/r r

 

[Jim6820]

I am posting on this forum to obtain insight and provide insight (lessons learned) on the operations, best practices, tricks and tips for using the BFG grill. I wanted a single smoker that could handle a hundred pounds plus of meat at a time and was maintainable and sustainable.

The BFG appears to be about exactly what I needed.

SmokeOCD: for the record, my son is operating his own state inspected and licensed commissary and kitchen as part of the business.

His business, kitchen, commissary, and vehicles are registered, licensed, inspected businesses. He complies with all state and local health, food sales and service regulations. His business licenses are all current.

My BFG is located at his facility. All the prep, pre and post, is done in his commissary kitchen by his food handlers. I show up and run the smoker and the cook. Then I hand off the product and am done.

I also cook to support local VFW functions, church gatherings, and local service organizations. I do this as community service when asked.

v/r r

Thanks for that clarification, @rhouser. I’m sure it answers the question @SmokeOCD was getting at. I had some similar concerns early on. Sometimes, good intentions get ahead of good practices. In your case, it is obvious that all the i’s have been dotted and t’s crossed. Well done. I would have expected that from a “retired E-9.”

 

[rhouser]

Jim thanks. My interests here on this forum really do center around the equipment I am using and the results I am able to achieve with the equipment.

Who doesn't love the idea of a hot summer day and being able to provide BBQ chicken quarters and potato salad in support of a community group.

I am beginning to believe the BFG is going to be the tool that will best allow me to do it. I am now beginning to look at utility trailers. Did you note that recteq already furnishes the tie down points.

My son provides me with the use of his commissary, his legal framework, and all needed food safety support. This gives me credibility as a volunteer provider. I provide my son and daughter in law some "menu expanders" (briskets, pork butts, smoked chorizo) for their customers. Kind of win win for me.

Now back to the rt-2500 and more findings.

v/r r

 

[cutplug]

Without pictures it never happened!
I slow roasted a unicorn for New Years with a nice figgy pudding.
Delicious!

 

[rhouser]

Cutplug, per your request...

 

[cutplug]

That is a lot of BFG Brisket. Thanks for posting.
I have no pics of the unicorn!

 

[Jim6820]

I have no pics of the unicorn!

Really?

 

[Jim6820]

Jim thanks. My interests here on this forum really do center around the equipment I am using and the results I am able to achieve with the equipment.

Who doesn't love the idea of a hot summer day and being able to provide BBQ chicken quarters and potato salad for 150 vets and their families. The communities are out there.

I am beginning to believe the BFG is going to be the tool that will best allow me to do it. I am now beginning to look at utility trailers. Did you note that recteq already furnishes the tie down points.

My son provides me with the use of his commissary, his legal framework, and all needed food safety support. This gives me credibility as a volunteer provider. I provide my son and daughter in law some "menu expanders" (briskets, pork butts, smoked chorizo) for their customers. Kind of win win for me.

Now back to the rt-2500 and more findings.

v/r r

As an Army vet myself, I appreciate any efforts to recognize the service of our veterans and their families. Bravo Zulu…well done!