What I learned in this cook was that no matter what, you have to be patient and wait for the brisket to be probe tender.
This Brisket reached 204 degrees internal but wasn’t probe tender, enetered a stall, temps retreated even with steady 250 degree pit temps all the way from 204 back down to 189. It wasn’t probe tender until it came back up to 195F.
Patience and understanding the stall paid off. 
In the past I’ve struggled to get those nice even clean cuts when slicing large cuts of meat. When watching lots of youtube and instagram videos there was one constant with what the pros were using- a dimpled slicing knife.
Didn’t know it could make such a difference but now that I’ve had one for a couple of months I can say that for $24.99 its probably the best BBQ accesory money I’ve spent all year long.
Here’s the link to the one I got –
These cuts are about 3/16 inch thick and sliced perfectly and effortlessly.
Here’s a video from when I cut the last corned beef brisket I made last week into a little thicker slices-
With corned beef on sale and how easy it is to smoke, I’m all in on these at least once a week.
Smoking the corned beef is as simple as taking it out of the package, trimming any hard fat off, rinsing it off, patting it down with paper towels, covering it with coarse black pepper and smoking offset the coals with a pit temp between 225-275 until the internal temp reaches 160. Once reaching 160 internal double wrap in foil and place back on the pit until the internal temp hits 190. Save the juices in the bottom of the foil to use in the hash.
Then let it sit for an hour or so before you slice.
Finished smoking-
If you don’t have a good slicing knife with a dimpled blade I’ll say it’s a game changer for large cuts of meat. You get really nice even cuts, very thin, very easily.
I purchased this one for $19.99 and it’s been a great purchase to cut brisket.
Here it is in action-
Once your have your smoked corned beef brisket, slice up some onions, put some peanut or canola oil in a pan and sweat down your onions over medium heat til they just start to turn translucent.
While your onions are sweating down get a couple of potatoes, poke some holes in them and put them in the microwave for 4 minutes to soften them. Once softened use a rag to protect your hand or oven mitts and cut up the potatos into small flat pieces.
Once the onions are softened, put them in a bowl off to the side, add a little more oil to the pan and then put your potatos in. Season with onion powder and garlic powder. Cook, turning them over every so often to start to brown them. When they start to brown, add the onions back in with the potatos.
Next add your sliced up corned beef brisket along with a decent pour of the fat renderings from the foil pack when you smoked the corned beef brisket (not necessary but trust me it’s liquid gold).
Brown up the corned beef and you’re done-
My buddy Eric Lorden got me a full packer brisket for Christmas. As there doesn’t look like there’s any end in sight to these frigid temps here in the northeast it was getting time to put up or shut up. So I trimmed this beautiful Angus Brisket which had a considerable about of fat to remove.
You can see how much fat was trimmed away in this pic. I left a quarter inch or so on the fat cap side which was cooked fave down on the Kettle.
After trimming away the unwanted fat it was time to season. Coarse salt, crushed black pepper, John Henry’s Brisket Rub and a little Montreal Steak Seasoning. Fat cap side up in this picture. She was wrapped in cello and refrigerated overnight.
Got a late start at 8AM but set up the kettle for the snake method, placed a large aluminum pan on the charcoal grate and lit ten briquettes in the chimney. Cherry wood for smoke. Once the coals in the chimney were glowing orange I dumped them on the start of the snake. It took til 9AM to get the pit up to 200 degrees with the extreme cold temps outside. 6 degrees. Brrrrr.
Once the kettle got up to 200 degrees I placed the brisket on the cooking grate and it barely fit across. It was definitely poking out over the coals from the 10:30-1:30 O’Clock position on the Kettle. I start my snakes at 7 O’Clock so I knew I’d have to check and rotate the cooking grate once the fuse of the snake were going to have lit coals under the meat. I got about three and a half hours in when I needed to rotate it.
You can see in the next photo how I just kept rotating it. I placed a piece of foil to protect the meat from the coals you can see. Because of the extreme cold I needed to add charcoal twice. Here she is 5 hours in.
She hit the stall at 180 degrees and stayed right around there for over an hour. At 196 degrees I wrapped it in foil and put it in the oven at 275 til the Brisket hit 203 and was probe tender. The point was probe tender a full two hours before the flat. I wasn’t pulling it out to rest based on the internal temp, I was looking for the probe to slide in easily without any resistance.
Here’s the final result-
Delicious!
Northeast BBQ 