British BBQ Society Forums

Hello All:

Given the weekend coming up and the night drawing in I have decided to climb the mountain of BBQ fame that is brisket. I have my syringe, and I have some beef stock I made out of pressure cooking oxtails but…

Do you inject the night before and bag it in the fridge, or do you inject an hour or so before it goes in? I have conflicting advice from the web so I thought I would ask the experts.

Cheers
Drew

That's one long winded way of making a stock, I'll stick to the old ways, but an interesting question and we are looking forward to the answer as well

The reason you have conflicting answers is because different cooks prefer different ways. You may get many answers on here too. Personally I prefer to leave overnight after injecting but at least 4 hours. Others like to inject and throw it straight on the pit.

esselle wrote:Others like to inject and throw it straight on the pit.

I'm one of these, but it's normally because i'm not prepared enough to get everything done ahead of time

We followed the recipe for Wicked Good pulled pork by Chris Hart and that calls for injecting, wrapping tightly in cling film and leaving over night. We tried this and it worked well. So if you have time, give it a go.

I guess you need to understand why you are injecting the meat. From what I've read you are trying to do one of three main things:

1 - adding moisture to the meat;

2 - tenderising the meat by getting salt included in the injection into the meat to help break down the fibres & also retain moisture;

3 - adding to the flavour of the meat & outer rubs / glaze.


I guess '1' doesn't require much resting time after injection.

'2' - this takes some time for the salt to do its thing - so if you're trying to do this, then it makes sense to rest the meat a while.

'3' - the longer you leave the stronger the added flavours will become part of the meat.

Is there anything else / any other reasons to do it?