How Long To Smoke A Brisket At 200 °F? Art Of Low And Slow BBQ

How to smoke a brisket at 200?

As per our experience in the meat smoking field, 200 °F is acceptable for smoking a brisket. So, let’s come out of the debate and see how to smoke a perfect brisket with this temperature.

Buying brisket

The quality of your meat is as essential as any other step in the cooking process. You must find a brisket with significant marbling and even thickness all around. 

Our suggestion here is to buy and smoke a 10 lb brisket because it is an average weight and offers more authentic taste.

Also, there are four prominent brisket grades, select, prime, choice, and wagyu. We usually go with prime and choice grades as they are not fully loaded with fat and allow the smoke to penetrate the meat quickly.

Seasoning Brisket

After you have trimmed all the unnecessary fat from your brisket, it is now time to season it with quality and simple rub, and you can also try out your favorite BBQ sauce on it. 

We recommend mixing kosher salt, brown sugar, and black pepper with onion, garlic, and mustard powder. It is a great recipe to smoke brisket, and many pitmasters and chefs admire it.

Lastly, many people immediately start smoking their seasoned brisket, which we don’t suggest. Instead, you should rest your seasoned brisket for a few hours to achieve a delicious taste. 

You can also keep it inside the refrigerator overnight, and the outcome would be even better.

Setting Up and preheating the smoker

There are several types of ideal and best smokers available in the market. Some offer convenience, while other promises mouthwatering taste and genuine smoky flavors. Whatever smoker you use, here’s how you can prepare it for brisket smoking.

Begin the process by cleaning your smoker and ensuring there is no dust or debris from the previous cooking session, as it can mix up the taste of your meat with other foods.

In our opinion, seasoning the smoker racks with oil is beneficial in preventing the food from sticking. So, you can follow this technique before placing your brisket inside the smoker.

Lastly, set the temperature to 200 degrees Fahrenheit and let it preheat. The preheating duration can depend on type to type, but generally, it takes around 40 minutes to get ready for smoking.

Placing the brisket inside the smoker

The next step is the beginning of smoking, in which you simply need to place your brisket inside the preheated smoker. 

Here comes another famous debate, should you smoke your brisket fat side up or down?

Hundreds of thousands of people cook brisket, so they don’t have the same preferences. Therefore, some like to place their seasoned brisket in the fat side up position while others set it fat side down. 

Here’s our point of view. We would like to place brisket fat side down because, during smoking, the fat cap will melt down without washing the seasoning you applied over it. 

As a result, the drippings will fall on the coals and allow them to produce unique smoky flavors. 

Of course, this is achievable through an offset or charcoal smoker because they use charcoal as the fuel source. So, we can conclude that if you cook beef brisket on a charcoal smoker, place it in the fat side down position. 

Are you wondering when to smoke brisket fat side up? Well, it is also doable with any smoker that does not provide heat from beneath. In this case, the offset smoker is the most suitable choice again, which provides heat from the side or above. 

Regardless of the smoker and the heat direction, fat side up may compromise the overall look of your smoked brisket, but the taste would be great. So, if you don’t care how your brisket looks, fat side up suits your smoking requirements.

Whatever side you choose to smoke, ensure to probe the brisket with a meat thermometer to monitor its internal cooking temperature while smoking. You can use both wired and simple thermometers.

Wrap Up the brisket and Smoke Again

During the first smoking round, when your meat reaches a temperature between 160 to 165 °F, we recommend you remove it from the smoker and wrap it inside butcher paper or aluminum foil.

A popular smoking method named Texas Style is helpful in different ways. It helps you trap the heat and smoke inside the paper and makes your brisket moist and tender. 

As mentioned above, wrapping also decreases the chances of Brisket Stall and can also help accelerate the smoking process.

Once you have wrapped the meat tightly, place it inside the smoker and cook it again. This time the smoking process will continue until the internal temperature of your brisket is between 180 and 210 degrees. 

Many Pitmasters come with a biased opinion that 195 to 205 °F is the ideal internal temperature of a smoked brisket. But in our opinion, this isn’t set in stone, and you can cook it with your desired doneness level.

Let your smoked brisket rest

Resting the smoked brisket is an essential step that you can’t overlook if you want it to provide the maximum tenderness and smoky flavors. First, let’s understand the resting mechanism and why it is so important.

Those who cut their brisket right after the cooking process compromises all the juices that took hours to develop. The reason is that after smoking, all the moisture and juices move toward the central part of your meat, and the other parts remain dry.

Therefore, when you allow your brisket to rest for the required time, all of its juices redistribute all over the meat, making it juicy from the bottom to the center.

This is why you must allow your brisket to rest if you want to serve something special to your guests.

But how to rest a smoked brisket?

There are several ways to rest a beef brisket, such as a countertop, cooler, faux cambro, and steam cabinet. We usually go with the cooler technique because it offers satisfying and desired results. 

Firstly, the resting period of your brisket depends on multiple factors, with the brisket’s weight being the most crucial one. Generally, 1 to 2 hours of resting is acceptable, and accomplish the task nicely. Here are the steps you need to follow.

Wrap your cooked brisket again in butcher paper or aluminum foil tightly and then place it inside a clean towel, cover it firmly too, and set it inside a regular cooler. 

Ensure that your cooler has a lid (helpful in providing a good insulation environment) and enough space to keep your brisket. 

Let the meat rest inside for an hour or two if you are in a hurry. Otherwise, a brisket can rest in a cooler for around 4 hours without compromising the quality and taste.

The resting process is also helpful in resolving the issue of undercooked brisket because the wrapping and cooler’s insulation help it cook further.