Ok folks, here's the verdict. That brisket wasn't my best. I don't have any pictures unless my wife took some with her phone. I honestly don't know if she did or not. This was a big experiment that wasn't cheap and it failed on every level, lol. I didn't get the results I was hoping for but again I am my toughest critic. My guests ate it and liked it so they said. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't very brisket like, more like a roast instead of BBQ.
The good? It was moist.
The bad? The texture was off and it was bland! It needed salt something fierce.
How did it come to this? The reason was brining. It made it juicy and that was nice. What it also did was change the texture and it lost some of its needed firmness. That alone wasn't the culprit though. The butcher paper had a hand in it too. The meat still had that "steamed" effect that you get with foiling things. The butcher paper is supposed to still keep bark intact but when used in conjunction with brining, it made a mushy, no bark having roast. It should be good for chili at least, lol.
Injecting had little to no effect either. It was lost in the brine. I see absolutely no need to brine and inject. A waste of my Butcher's Prime injection. I didn't pick up ANY of the flavor notes that I am used to tasting when I use it. Not ONE hint of it.
The brine I used was Tony's butt brine (lol!) and I think I needed more pink salt in it. There was no faux smoke ring either. My guests are used to seeing that and you know people WANT to see it. It has ZERO to do with taste but they want to see it. In reality, WE WANT TO SEE IT TOO! That's why we try and cheat it with pink salt
My wife even was looking for it, she asked me where it was and I told her it was MIA. Oh well.
What did I learn from this $140.00 experiment? If you brine, don't inject. If you brine, don't wrap in butcher paper. If you brine and use dalmation rub and wrap, be prepared for a lot of your rub to end up sitting in the pool of juices and not staying on your meat and doing its job in flavoring the meat! Also, use more salt if planning on this. Actually, more salt in the brine may help with the flavor but say bye bye to a firm bark.
So, in conclusion my advice would be :
1) If you brine, use more salt and pink salt if doing a packer (a flat may be fine with the normal recipe)
2) If you brine, don't waste time injecting. You're not going to notice it. The brine has already taken up residence and is throughout the meat. The cells in the meat have no more room to take in more moisture and you're going to end up with it just being assimilated into the brine and diluted, no noticeable difference in flavor.
3) If you do brine, don't wrap in butcher paper, let it ride as is to form that bark. An absolute must! Brining adds so much moisture that it will jack up your final product if you wrap.
4) Use butcher paper only if you don't brine. I think injecting and using butcher paper would be fine as the injection is adding for flavor more than moisture and the meat will not be a water logged nerf football in a smoker.
5) Brining, injecting, wrapping and a flavorful bark are not obtainable in an electric smoker. This may be obtainable in a wood/charcoal fired smoker but not in our cookers. Even then, I personally wouldn't try it after this debacle.
For me, I think
MY "Final Way" would be to use a little curing salt on the surface of the meat to dry brine to get that smoke ring everyone wants, still use dalmation rub, wrap in BP around 150°-160° until 190°-200° and let it rest for an hour in the butcher paper, on a table, not in a cooler, and then slice it up and enjoy. Injecting may make it's way into the fold too depending on if I want that flavor or not. The lesson learned is sometimes simpler IS better. The old saying KISS comes to mind. Keep It Simple Stupid! LOL
