Smoked Brisket and Roasted Summer Vegetable Soup

It’s Labor Day, so we should all act like Americans and smoke a brisket, am I right?

Well, this is my first brisket (or firsket, for short) and it was stunningly delicious. But first, the soup.

Yellow Tomato Soup

We are not canning or otherwise preserving any of our garden vegetables this year so I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with them as my neighbors are starting to treat me like Jehovah’s Witnesses when I arrive on their doorsteps with tomatoes. And since I like to start off every Thanksgiving with a homemade soup, I thought it would be fun to make soup from my garden now and freeze it. So I conglomerated ideas from the interweb and came up with a (mainly) yellow tomato soup. Halved tomatoes with some random sweet peppers were brushed with avacado oil and roasted in the oven for about 30 minutes until nice and soft and the tomato skins peeled right off.

Meanwhile, I cooked some bacon then added butter and sauteed diced onions until soft before adding a little flour so the soup would thicken for me if needed. Once the roasted veggies were finished they went into the blender with the onions and everything was pureed. We liked the texture but some might have preferred it smoother….up to you. It all went back into a pot to heat up and then was thinned out with a little stock until we hit the flavor point. I added a little cream at the end for smoothness and then served with gouda and bacon bits. I like the idea that every batch of soup will be a little different based on what sweet/spicy peppers you add (I have banana peppers, sweet pepper carmen, and jalapenos in my garden, so you could get a lot of different flavor blends). The only change I would make is to throw in some fresh herbs towards the end for an additional flavor layer. That’s right, I know about flavor layers.

Brisket

Ok, I made you read all the vegetable stuff so now you shall be rewarded with brisket pictures. I used my pit boss pellet smoker for a brisket that was about 12 pounds before I trimmed it. One (minor) mistake I made was in not trimming the fat down enough. Even though it cooked nicely and never got rubbery, the thickness in some parts prevented the smoke from penetrating the meat as deep as I would like. Other than that, it came out great. I rubbed it down with some seasoning (Lone Star Brisket Rub if you’re curious) and then threw it on the smoker at 225 at 10PM.

The next morning by 8 I was up to 155, which meant that I didn’t get hit hard by the dreaded “stall”. Unfortunately, the day went sideways on me and I thought I would be around to tend the brisket and instead I got called away to an appointment. So I dropped the temp to 200 and when I got home the brisket was around 175-180. Concerned that it would be on the smoker too long and the flat would get tough, I wrapped it in butcher paper and put it back on at 225 for 2 hours before wrapping it and putting it in a cooler. At 4, I took it out and voila! Brisket. In my opinion, the best brisket in town is from City Butcher and Barbecue, so I was pretty happy when mine turned out to be close to as good as theirs. Again, better trimming would have helped but texture and flavor were both up there. I was also happy that the brisket fit on the smoker as I have the combo (with pellet and gas) so I was worried that a brisket wouldn’t fit. That concern was unfounded and so you will not find my smoker on Facebook Market Today. So there…go be American and smoke a brisket.