The Smoked Trisket is unlike anything you’ve tasted before. But what is the trisket? Find out how to make this tri-tip brisket hybrid with our easy recipe and meat prep guide.
Trisket is a confusing term. A cursory search of the internet and you’ll come across Triscuit, a brand of crackers, as well as quite colorfully in the Urban Dictionary.
No wonder not many people are familiar with cutting meat.
What exactly is it you?
What is Trisket?
Part of the confusion here WILL NOT be solved by the fact that we won’t find it in any butcher or supermarket counter.
The reason for this is very simple. Trisket is actually a piece of meat cooked in a different way.
It’s tri-ip that’s in the style of smoked grilled breast. This makes it a three-pronged bri-sket. Tri… Sket… Do you understand?
Okay, puns obviously weren’t the strong point of whoever came up with this, but the recipe itself is delicious.
And although Tri-Tip and Brisket are very different , the combination works perfectly.
When I’ve written Tri-Tip recipes in the past, I always recommend aiming for a temperature near 115-125°F, which is a good guideline for rare-medium rares.
However, since we’re going to be treating this more like a chest piece, we need to aim for something higher.
For smoked brisket, we tend to aim for 190°F.
As with the chest piece, we also want to wrap the tri-tip in the middle.
In the case of the Tri-Tip, we want to smoke it up to around 140°F and then wrap it. This keeps the meat tender while we’re still cooking it.
How to cook triskets
Luckily, if you’ve brewed triskets before, there’s not much new stuff here.
Simply prepare the trike as you would a regular tri tip. If you haven’t already done dying, there are a few important steps you need to take.
Dry brine
Curing is a grossly underestimated step in meat preparation that helps us retain moisture in smoked meats. This is especially important during prolonged cooking and will help keep the meat juicy and tender.
Traditional curing involves immersing meat in a saltwater mixture(often referred to as wet brine). We’re going to do something different here and make a dry brine. Instead of submerging the meat in liquid, we use coarse salt to lightly coat the surface of the meat.
The salt then draws moisture from the meat before it can be calculated again. This will help block it and prevent it from evaporating while the meat cooks.
Use a good massage
I love a good BBQ seasoning. They can take your flavor to another level, and in the case of smoked meats, they can help form a nice crust on top.
When making your own homemade BBQ seasoning, I recommend using ingredients like paprika, cayenne, and chili powder. If you prefer to buy your own, check out my guide to store-bought barbecue breast seasoning.
Cut against the grain
This is more of a point, because after you’ve grilled, the tri-tip comes to serve. It is best to serve and cut against the grain.
This is more effective with tri-tip than brisket, mainly due to the fact that the grain of the meat MUST extend from one corner of the meat and go in opposite directions. Thanks, Thermoworks has a guide here.
How to grill Triskets
If you’ve smoked brisket before, then you should be familiar with the process here.
After the tri-ip has been sliced and dried in brine, apply a thin coat of olive oil and a generous amount of your favorite barbecue steak to the meat.
If you haven’t given it a barbecue marinade before, try a store-bought brisket marinade first .
Transfer it to your fridge and move on to the fun part – light your smoker!
We will be aiming for our standard burning temperature of 225°F, which should take 30-40 minutes to reach if you are using good quality charcoal.
In our choice of driftwood, I tend to go with what works with chest pieces. In my opinion this is hickory or oak, but YOU can have your own preference. If you want to expand further, take a look at my guide to the best woods to pair with chestpieces for inspiration.
Once we’re all set up and ready, we pull our tri-tip out of the fridge and pop it into the smoker. We will cook until the internal temperature of the meat reaches around 140°F, which usually takes a couple of hours.
Next, we remove the triple tip from the smoker and wrap it in aluminum foil. This will help keep the meat moist and prevent it from drying out.
Then we turn up the heat to about 300°F and cook the wrapped tri-tip until it reaches an internal temperature of about 190°F.
Then we take it out, let it rest a little and then cut it into slices according to the instructions above.
And voila, that’s your trisket.
Writer & content creator. BBQ fanatic!
