Smoked Corned Beef Brisket (pastrami)

Happy St. Patricks Day everyone! There are a lot of Irish dishes out there, but when I think of St Pattys day, all I want is corned beef. Here we corn a brisket flat, and then smoke it until cooked perfectly. Amazing on its own, but it also leaves leftovers for one of my favorite dishes - corned beef hash! Stop buying some garbage grocery store pre-corned beef, and do your own! Super easy, and well worth the effort! I'm smoking this on my pellet smoker, but the recipe will work on really any style of smoking. Sound good? Well lets get started....

YouTube Instructional: https://youtu.be/1fhCjnR7nlc

Ingredients:
~5 lb Brisket Flat
Coarse Black Pepper
Garlic Powder
4 Cups Water
1 Cup Kosher Salt
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
3 Tsp Pink Salt no. 1
4 Smashed Garlic Cloves

Pickling Mix:
2 Tbsp Mustard Seeds
1 Tbsp Peppercorns
1/2 Tsp Corriander
1 Tsp Allspice Berries
5 Bay Leaves
1 Tsp Crushed Red Pepper
5 Whole Cloves
1 Tsp Dry Ginger

Step 1: Put together your pickling mix

Mix together your pickling mix and set aside

Step 2: Brine the Brisket

Mix together your pickling mix, water, kosher salt, brown sugar, pink salt, and garlic cloves

Put your brisket into a deep enough dish, and completely cover in your brining solution

Cover

Brine for 5-10 days (I did 7)

As it is curing, make sure to keep rotating the brisket to make sure all sides get fully brined.

Step 3: Rinse, Trim, and Rub

At the end of our brine you want to rinse your brisket. Rinse, rinse, and rinse again. We definitely want to get some of the salt off of this thing.

Once its been rinsed and patted dry, trim off any excess fat or ultra thin sides of the meat. Our goal is appx 1/8-1/4 inch fat cap.

Put a layer of black pepper and garlic powder on the trimmed brisket (this will get us our bark)

Step 4: Smoke the meat

Smoke at 180 for appx 3 hours until the bark has set

Once it sets, bump the temp to 225 and begin spritzing if it looks to be drying out (or every 30-45 min)

Step 5: Wrap

Somewhere between 155 and 175 the meat will slow and almost stop increasing in temp. This is called the stall. At this point we will wrap the meat and help push it through.

Put the meat on some peach paper with a little bit of tallow and tightly wrap it up

Return to the smoker at 250-275 and cook until probe tender (195-235 ish)

Step 5: Rest and Slice

Once you pull the meat, put it into a warm toaster oven or a prewarmed cooler. We want to let the brisket rest 4-12 hours.

Then slice against the grain!

Enjoy!