Brisket Burnt Ends Recipe - Smoked Beef Burnt Ends

Start by submerging your wood chips in water or beer 1-2 hours before you want to put your brisket on the smoker. (Soaking these wood chips will ensure they smoke instead of burn.)

Light your charcoal smoker approximately 30 to 35 minutes in advance of putting your brisket on. (You'll know that your charcoal is ready when all of the coals turn from black to a glowing white ash color.)

Next, cut small slits about an inch apart in the white fat on the top of the brisket. This is called "scoring" the brisket, which allows the rub to penetrate the inside of the meat.

Next, rub your mustard all over the outside of the beef brisket. Be sure to fully coat the meat and get inside some of the cracks that you cut during the scoring process.

Then sprinkle your barbecue seasoning or rub all over the outside of the meat. Make sure the brisket is fully coated all the way around with seasoning!

Place your brisket in your smoker with the white fatty part of the brisket face up. This allows the fat to melt down into the meat (as opposed to just melting under the grill grate and not helping to tenderize the meat).

Baste the smoked beef brisket with the mop sauce ingredients (consisting of beer, cider vinegar, and Worcestershire) every hour starting two hours into the smoking process to help maintain moisture in the meat. You ideally want to use a BBQ mop that looks like an actual miniature mop and not a brush to apply the mop sauce. If you use a brush it will tend to wipe the seasoning off the top of the meat instead of gently applying the sauce on top of the seasoning.

Your brisket will take about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes per pound to cook on the smoker. Remember: You are looking for an internal temperature of about 185 degreesFahrenheit before you can take it off the smoker. With certain smokers it may be hard to reach this internal temperature because your heat source is far away from the brisket. If this is the case, you can always wrap your brisket in aluminum foil or finish your brisket for the 45 minutes to an hour in the oven at 250 degrees.

Never cut into any meat straight off the grill or off the oven while it is still hot. You want to let your beef brisket sit for 30 minutes wrapped with a tent of aluminum foil.

The brisket will continue to cook and eventually cool down before you ever take a blade to the meat. This is important because the juices will redistribute throughout the entire brisket during this time, but if you cut into it too early it will stop this process and make the meat tough.

Always slice your beef brisket against the grain of the meat. If you slice it in the same direction as the grain, the meat will not be as tender. You can tell what the grain is by looking at the lines that all go in one direction across your brisket.

Next, cut the point off the brisket and cut the point, against the grain, into small squares that are about a ¼ of an inch in size. Put your cubed brisket point into a foil pan and coat with your favorite BBQ sauce recipe.

Throw the aluminum foil pan back on the smoker for another couple hours so the bits of brisket become charred or burnt on the ends.

Let the burnt ends sit for 15 minutes before serving with some additional BBQ sauce.