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How long to let brisket sit before smoking
If you’re wondering how long you should be letting your brisket sit before smoking, you’ve come to the right place!
Let your brisket sit out before smoking for no more than 2 hours.
That is so the meat has plenty of time to reach an optimal internal temperature that will allow it to get smoking quicker than if you simply just threw a cold brisket on the smoker.
Should brisket be room temperature before smoking
A lot of people may be wondering whether or not they should in fact be letting their brisket’s come up to room temperature by letting them sit on the counter before throwing them on the smoker.
It’s not that brisket’s should be left out beforehand, but more so that it may make it a little bit easier for it to ‘hit the ground running’ in a sense.
By letting the brisket just sit on the counter while you are prepping your smoker can be a great way to make use of time and essentially multi-task with hardly any effort.
Why would you want to leave it out before smoking?
Brisket being left on the counter before smoking simply just lets it come up to temp quicker than it otherwise would as a cold piece of meat fresh out of the refrigerator.
By letting it come up to room temperature, you’re able to be as efficient as possible with your cooks.
Being more efficient means that you’ll reap the benefit of possibly more time spent on other activities that you enjoy outside of seasoning and smoking sticky your barbecue.
As with anything brisket though, just make sure that when you do throw it on the smoker and decide to pull it at the tail end, you’ll definitely want to ensure that it’s probe tender and temping out at around 200 degrees in internal readings!
Final Thoughts
If you’re in the market for letting your briskets sit out before you pop them on the smoker, then consider letting them sit out for roughly 2 hours.
This is plenty of time to let the internal temperature come up to around the same level as the ambient temperature in the room.
Robert is a certified Pitmaster, with over a decade of experience in smoking the best meats you’ll ever feast upon. He also has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at San Antonio. When he’s not researching technical topics, he’s most likely barbecuing in his backyard.