That’s rough. I can get a whole packer briskets for $25, prime for $50, and wagyu brisket for less than $90 here in Dallas. I’m not sure I agree with you on the “not really all that tasty” bit but having grown up with it as a weekly treat, smoked brisket is a comfort food for me so obviously there is a lot of bias going on at this end. One thing I can say for sure, I’ve never had truly good Texas brisket from a restaurant. When you crank out 5-10 briskets a day, you don’t really have the time or indeed the equipment to produce a truly fine brisket. Opening up your pit to spritz or check the meat gives you inconsistent heat and the wood is usually a single type or maybe a mix of two with constant smoke applied. I think what Byers does at Smoke is the closest I’ve found to what a good backyard smoker produces.
The best briskets I’ve found all came from a back yard or from a ranch cook.
maybe in that bracket. but Carolina will never get past Memphis.
I’ve had pretty good brisket at BBQ joints, but my personal experience is that it’s usually not worth the cost. The ones that i found to be good were really good, but getting dry, not very flavorful brisket really bums me out and kills it for me.
Meant to reply to this before, but yeah i’m familiar with her reputation as being a legendary pit master. She’s still going strong and i would love to hit up her joint next year as i have not had the pleasure yet. Someone that had gone before told me they’ll serve you beer while you’re in line waiting, i sure hope that’s true 
I live in the Pacific Northwest and make barbecue all year, rain or shine (or snow). It’s well suited to it, actually. Constant fussing is the enemy of good barbecue. Set it up right and let it go for hours.
How do you taunt the other teams? “Less QQ, more cue cue”? 
I mean that as a cut in general. Brisket tends to be short of beer flavor, and on the tinny metalic end like some other cuts. Even a bit livery some times. The point ups the beefyness by having more fat. But the type of muscle it’s made of just sits with round and some portions of the sirloin in the “less beefy” part of the cow. Now matter what you do with it. It’s best for curing. Corned beef, pastrami etc. And it’s awesome as a component of a burger blend or when mixed with fat for sausage. Where it’s flavor can round out even blander cuts used for bulk. Or can tone down really rich cuts like short rib.
Try out a chuck roast (or five they’re much smaller than brisket) and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Cook quicker and easier to handle. You can treat them almost exactly as you would a brisket and get a really similar end result. That’s just richer and better tasting. With a better texture.
Whole Angus choice briskets from the Restaurant Depot (the only place I can consistently find them) come out to $70 something here. I’ve paid $125 for whole prime and didn’t see the expense being worth it. If I saw your prices that’d be a different story. I can regularly find prime chuck for less than I pay for choice or even select brisket.
I make serious brisket when I need to. And my pink rings are real. So I know what good brisket can be. Its just I also know I can have something better than brisket at the same quality.
I think the issue with the restaurant brisket is that it was the competition BBQ trend that popularized it in a lot of places. And pushed Texas BBQ to the forefront. Competition treates brisket as the be all end all of BBQ, because it’s hard. And the thing about competition food is it’s not about making the best food possible. It’s about following the rules set, in a fixed time frame, and catering to the judges.
So whatever one person does that wins, everyone else quickly adopts. A lot of tricks are used to compensate for restrictions, they’re better in competition. But not better if you have free reign. So competition BBQ is very samey, and often compromised quality wise. And a lot of people out there in restaurants are essentially serving competition style BBQ or taking tricks from it.
Big fan of that channel 
I use a Masterbuilt Electric Smoker. It’s the size of a minifridge 30" high, and I use their external cold smoke generator with my own fruitwood. Because it’s not heating with the wood, it makes far less smoke than the barrel smokers. Sadly due to keeping a kosher kitchen, pork is out, and kosher brisket is insanely expensive and I’ve yet to try it. It’s on my list, along with cured and smoked ‘beef bacon’.
Dry rubbed & smoked chicken (the neck is the best! I’ve smoked packages of turkey necks)
Brined and smoked Bluefish
He’s doing the Flying Noodly Lord’s work
Apparently not something that’s available too easily where the cousins are at. Again this is a guy who when to Germany to get a big green egg. From what they tell me simple charcoal smokers and grills are common enough now. Especially Webers. But Its not like the US where I go to Lowes and there is an aisle of dedicated smokers from recognizable brands.
Those electric smokers are mostly derived from units originally designed to smoke fish. They got some issues with higher temps. But apparently they are easy to hack and customize so I see a lot more people grabbing them up for as cheap as they are. But I don’t think my cousin would be getting a 250lb hog in one.
I can recommend lamb as a smoking option. Shanks work awesome. As do lamb ribs/breast if you can find it. Both styles of beef ribs work well, but short ribs are the only kind with much meat on them. And like I said chuck is a big improvement on brisket, often at significant savings. That’s right in the ballpark of the same sort of muscle/prep.
Beef bacon mostly seems to made from cheeks. But I recently had some made from navel that was damn near indistinguishable from pork. But both cuts are going to be tricky to source. Cheeks will be pricey, they’re kind of a chefy cut these days. Navel is what they make pastrami out of, I don’t even know where the shit you’d get it from but it would be cheap. Still a garbage cut. Brisket might really be the best option there since its easier to find than navel but less expensive than cheek.
Unless you get a head and cut it up. All of that’s gonna be complicated by certified kosher, but a good kosher butcher might be able to get navel.
Bacon is meant to be cold smoked. Which you can’t really do in the sorts of smokers we’re talking about. But I haven’t had an issue with it in my little electric fish smoker. Thing only hits 160f and its only setting is “on”. Bacon that comes out of it is great.
You’re making us hungry out here in the digital aether. I’m afraid you’re going to have to ship us some barbecue or cease and desist.
While beef bacon can be made from navel (plate), I’ve seen recipes that call for all sorts of cuts including brisket. And I though pastrami was usually brisket too. Problem is for civilians the cuts in a kosher market are very limited, I’ve never seen plate. Apparently kosher cooks are not noted for their creativity, and exotic cuts get ground or sold to the goyim. I have a friend who runs a kosher smokehouse and he can get stuff in the wholesale market. Also, like I said, I have a ‘cold smoke’ generator for my MES, so I can totally cold smoke bacon or fish. Fish would need to be frozen first, safety always!
I can honestly say there are a handful of those on BBS that would actually have an open invite to eat at my house (see my instagram for evidence of said culinary delights).
You are amongst them my friend. So I shall not desist.
Pastrami and corned beef can be made from anything, and used to be. And today pastrami gets made from both Brisket and Navel. But if you ask the hardcore, old school people in places like NY and Montreal (where its known as “Smoked Meat”) they all say navel is better and brisket is for corned beef. Almost any place you run into that’s famous for its Pastrami, its navel. And they will tell you at length, repeatedly, and whenever the opportunity comes up.
So ask the smoke house buddy, maybe he can get you some navel.
See. MODS. Though most people seem to be tweaking them to get more reliable high temps out of them. I hear the propane ones can do it out of the box.
I think if I was going to stop fucking around with charcoal I’d go pellet though. Prices are coming down a lot on them too, I’ve seen sales on some well reviewed budget models hit $200 bucks. Going back to Europe the Irish tell me pellet smokers are relatively popular and available there. But what’s not is the pellets with most people using hard wood home heating pellets, since you can’t get the single wood style ones meant for smoking.
Have you ever smoked mushrooms? A friend smoked some in a little homemade (clay flowerpot) smoker, and raved—said they tasted like bacon but better (lots of umami, I guess). I think maybe they were shiitake mushrooms.
I have but that was sort of “hey lets toss some mushrooms in the smoker see how they turn out”. And I wasn’t a fan, bad texture very little browning. But I’ve been meaning to try this for a bit:
You can do it with shiitakes as well.
That looks great!–and seems even easier than building yourself a little smoker.
