Why do brisket recipes move to the oven to finish?
In the Cooks Illustrated BBQ brisket recipe and many others I've seen, they call for moving the brisket from the grill where they are being smoked to the oven to finish. I'm wondering why the recipes call for this step rather than finishing in the grill.
Best Answer
Convenience: It's more convenient and easier to monitor the temperature inside the home. The oven has a thermostat, where the grill temperature needs to be monitored and adjusted manually.
No smoke left: Is could be assumed that the smoke has been exhausted.
Too much smoke: The smoke flavor could become too strong if finished on the grill.
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Should I finish my brisket in the oven?
There are many circumstances when smoking a brisket and finishing it in the oven is a good idea. The most common reason is to save time. Smoking a brisket for the whole cooking time is an all day affair. If you finish it in the oven, you get the same smoky flavor in much less time.Can you start a brisket in the oven and finish it on the grill?
You can have all the tenderness of BBQ restaurant brisket at home by roasting in your oven with none of the tedious smoker-tending. If you still want smoke, it can be quick smoked on your grill after a brief rest.How do you finish a BBQ brisket in the oven?
Trim excess fat, leaving a 1/8\u2033 \u2013 1/4\u2033 fat cap, and apply a favorite rub. Barbecue at 225-250\xb0F to 170\xb0F internal temperature. Wrap in foil and cook in a 300\xb0F cooker or oven to 205\xb0F internal temperature. Let the meat rest for at least 30 minutes before serving, or hold in an empty cooler for 2-4 hours.At what temperature does brisket fall apart?
These meats have a lot of connective tissue and it needs to break down before they're edible. When the temperature hits 190 degrees, the fibers begin to break down and become tender, but the magic really happens between 200 and 210 degrees.Prime Beef Brisket...Smoked then finished in the oven! \
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Answer 2
There's really no reason to move the brisket into the oven aside from convenience and ease of temperature control, with the contrasting point also being true that there's no rule that says you have to leave your meat on the grill for the entire cook. After a few hours, the brisket will have taken on about as much smoke as it can/should. So if it makes sense to finish cooking it in the oven, there is nothing keeping you from doing so. Also bear in mind that a gas grill is not the most efficient means of cooking with indirect heat. You will use a lot of propane to maintain even relatively low roasting temperatures, while an oven requires far less energy to achieve the same effect.
If it were me, I would be inclined to keep the brisket in the cooker if I were using a charcoal grill, or a smoker, where the cooking chamber is more suitable for retaining ambient heat. I would be less inclined to keep it on a gas grill the entire time, as it's not worth blowing through the bulk of a propane tank for no discernible benefit.
Answer 3
All of your postulations are valid. A couple more below. These would my main concerns:
A normal grill has a tendency to be wilder in control and cooking to the centre properly might become unpredictable. Though I have seen full grill recipes with the Big Green Egg. This you can mitigate using an insertion probe thermometer.
Purpose of the grill is deliver flavor to the outer layer of the meat. It doesn't do much for the center and it tends to dry out the meat in long term since the humidity escapes. In the oven it reaches a saturation point and prevents turning the outside into leather as the center is being cooked. This you can't easily mitigate on the grill. If you look carefully at their picture, you can see a break in color and texture at about 1/2" depth where it goes from gray-ish brown to moist pinkish color. They are trying to prevent that break line to get too deep in the meat.
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