When it’s time to fire up the grill and prepare a barbecue feast, brisket is a must-have for most meat eaters. Preparing a smoked brisket recipe requires time, patience, and a thoughtful plan to add more flavor. Between dry rubs, marinades, mopping, basting, and more, there’s a lot to consider. Surprisingly, one of the simplest methods for giving your brisket both the best taste and texture lies within a quick spritz. Load up a small spray bottle with apple cider vinegar and use it to spritz your next brisket for the richest, crunchiest, and most satisfying exterior bark.
Apple cider vinegar works wonderfully as a spritz largely due to its acidic content, which interacts with the spices on the outside of your meat to create a delicious crisp texture in the smoking process. This technique is especially useful for South Carolina-style barbecue, which specializes in low and slow cooking with tangy notes of mustard and vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is known for its pungency and would definitely complement the flavors consistent with a Carolina-inspired smoking style. Using it as a spritz won’t overpower your meat, though. It will simply leave behind a mouthwatering coating for your brisket.
How and when to spritz a brisket
One of the biggest mistakes you need to avoid with brisket is letting it dry out on the smoker. If you want to keep the bark nice and crisp without making the meat too moist, apple cider vinegar is an ideal choice of liquid. You should endeavor to spritz only if and when necessary, starting around the two-to-three-hour mark and keeping an eye on the meat as it continues to cook. Keep your spritzes light and limited to dry spots around the brisket to maintain the integrity of the exterior bark.
Be sure to start with a clean, unused spray bottle to house your apple cider vinegar. Perform a couple of practice spritzes away from the meat first so that you have a good idea of the coverage and volume in each spray. Brisket can be finicky, and you definitely don’t want to risk overspraying it and losing the crispy consistency of the outer crust created by the Maillard reaction during the cooking process. With a thoughtfully prepared dry rub in place and a couple of gentle spritzes over a lengthy smoking process, your brisket should shine both with a tender, flavorful inside and an outer bark to match its bite.
