Canadian · Main
Montreal Smoked Meat
- Advanced
- 60 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, aromatics blooming from the first bite, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 3 kg beef brisket, point end, fat cap trimmed to 8 mm
- 90 g coarse pickling salt
- 7.5 g curing salt, 6.25 percent sodium nitrite
- 15 g sugar
- 40 g cracked black pepper
- 40 g cracked coriander seed
- 10 g yellow mustard seed
- 6 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 bay leaves, crumbled
- 1 tbsp dried summer savory
- maple or oak wood for smoking
Equipment
Thermometer · Smoker
The skills inside
Low & slow smokingBrining & curingSteaming: basket, leaf and lidResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the pickling salt, curing salt, sugar, savory, bay, garlic, mustard seed and half the pepper and coriander; rub it into every surface and into the seam between the muscles, then pack the brisket in a non-reactive tub, weight it and refrigerate 8 to 10 days, turning it daily, until a cut into the thickest part shows the same even pink right through.
- Rinse hard under cold water and soak 2 hours in fresh cold water, changing it once; fry a coin-sized slice and taste it, and soak longer if it sends you to the tap. 120 min
- Pat dry, press on the remaining pepper and coriander in a thick even crust, and leave the meat uncovered on a rack in the fridge overnight until the surface is dry and tacky to the finger.
- Smoke at 105 to 110C (220 to 230F) over maple until the internal temperature reaches 74C (165F), about 6 hours; the crust will be near black and that is right. 360 min
- Steam the whole piece over rolling water for about 3 hours, until a skewer slides into the point with no resistance at all and the fat between the muscles has gone translucent; slice by hand across the grain at 5 mm. 180 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Low & slow smoking 12 recipes
- The smoke coming off is thin and blue, not white and rolling. White smoke is unburnt fuel and it deposits soot and acrid phenols; a fire drawing enough air to burn its own smoke is what perfumes rather than tars.
- The chamber held its temperature within a narrow band for the whole cook, adjusted with the air intake rather than by adding fuel in armfuls. A pit swinging fifty degrees cooks the outside twice and the middle once.
- The stall was expected and waited out or wrapped through deliberately, not chased with heat. A brisket that sits at 70C (158F) for three hours is losing exactly as much water as it needs to; the cook who turns the fire up renders it dry.
- Doneness was judged by feel and by probe, never by the clock: the probe slides in with no resistance anywhere, and the number that matters is the one where the collagen has gone, not a time per kilo.
- It rested long and warm, an hour or more, wrapped and out of any draught. Cut straight off the pit and the juice runs onto the board instead of staying in the slice.
Where it goes wrong The fire was fed for temperature rather than for combustion, so it smouldered: white smoke, a bitter deposit on the surface, and a swing in the chamber every time more fuel went on. Then the stall was read as a stall in progress rather than evaporation doing its work, the heat went up, and the meat finished dry with a hard grey band under the bark.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Zinfandel (old-vine)
- Also Right
- Shiraz or Malbec
- From the Taps
- Smoked porter
- Zero-Proof
- Cherry cola, honestly
Barbecue’s sweet-smoke wants jammy fruit that shakes hands with the sauce; dry austere reds argue with sugar and lose.
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