How To Get A Good Bark On Brisket In Electric Smoker?

Whenever an amateur cook like you wants to explore the new taste of BBQ meats, s/he falls into a trap because of not knowing the exact way of that amazing smoking process. 

Getting a good bark is that kind of a BBQ cooking fantasy. So, I think you’ll love to know how to get bark on a brisket in an electric smoker.

BBQ lovers never want to compromise the taste of their BBQ brisket. But, getting a perfect bark on a brisket is a little bit hard. 

Keep reading to know the secret of getting good bark on your brisket. I also describe what bark is, the meat barking ingredients, warnings, and the process of smoking. 

So let’s dive now.

How To Get A Good Bark On Brisket – 5 Simple Steps To Follow

The smoky flavor of the smoked meats enhances your appetite 100 times. You can wait 10 hours to smoke the meat until the smoky flavor comes to your nose. 

But when the smoky flavor starts to produce, then it’s challenging to wait for the next 2-4 hours to taste the meat. 

So let’s know the step-by-step process for getting a good bark on your next smoked brisket.  

Prepare The Ingredients: The first and foremost thing is to get good bark on the brisket ingredients. Prepare the ingredients for seasoning the meat. For 15 pounds of brisket, you can use 

• Kosher salt – 2 tablespoon
• Garlic powder – 1 tablespoon
• Mustard paste – 5 tablespoon 
• Onion powder – 1 tablespoon
• Ground coriander – 2 teaspoon
• Smoked paprika – 1 tablespoon
• Cayenne – 1 tablespoon (if you like spice) 
• Course ground black pepper – 2 tablespoon
• Brown sugar – 1 tablespoon (if you like sweet)

Mix all the ingredients except mustard paste in a bowl and make ready for rubbing the brisket.

Prepare The Brisket: First, wear your hand gloves and keep the 15 pounds weighted brisket in an ample clean space. Trim the brisket properly then pour the mustard paste evenly on both of the sides of the brisket. 

After that, sprinkle the prepared ingredients on the upper side of the brisket. Now rub it gently with your hands to perfectly attach the ingredients to the brisket. While rubbing, don’t miss the edges of the brisket. 

Next, flip the brisket and do the same thing for the second side of the brisket. 

Ignite The Smoker: Before placing the brisket, you have to ignite your brisket smoker first. Here, you should use Hickory wood chips to get the best smoky flavor.

There are different types of woods available for smoking meat. The oak, hickory, pecan, and mesquite wood chips are great to use in the smoker, and they offer you excellent smoky flavor in your meat. This time maintain the smoker temperature between 225°f to 250°f.

Place The Brisket: In this step, place the brisket in your smoker. Keep it directly on the grates without using any pan or anything. 

While placing, keep the fat side down. Cook the brisket for 5-6 hours at the same temperature. Then check the meat’s inner temperature with a meat thermometer to avoid high or low-temperature mistakes. 

In that case, I prefer to use a Meater digital meat thermometer because they offer excellent temperature accuracy and perfection to cook any kind of meat. 

After that, remove the brisket from the smoker and wrap it with quality butcher paper. When wrapping, ensure there is no gap to enter oxygen. Now cook until the juice and red meat of the brisket comes out. 

Remove The Brisket: When the brisket is cooked, remove it from the smoker and open the wrapper. 

Then slice it into small pieces to serve in front of the hungry stomach. At last, your brisket is ready to eat. I usually love non sweet bbq sauce because it enhances flavor and takes the taste to another level that everyone must love. 

If you don’t like any of them, you can go for some of the most popular bbq sauce for the burnt end of your brisket. 

Hey, mates, simply following these easy and simple steps, you will get the exact bark you want on your brisket.  

When you follow the steps of barking the brisket, you must keep in mind some warnings not to make a mishap. These are – 

• Don’t hurry to get an excellent barking texture on your meat. It’s a longer cooking process, so keep patience.
• You should take the ingredients proportion of the brisket weight. If you use over or under the number of ingredients, you won’t get your expected bark.
• Rub the brisket gently from every edge of it. If you rub one edge and miss other edges to rub, you will get an uneven bark texture in the brisket. 
• Don’t touch the smoker inside’s brisket without wearing heat-protected hand gloves. If you touch, you may burn your fingers.
• You should not use foil paper while wrapping the half-done brisket. Because foil paper is not too thick, as a result, it will melt and mix up with the meat. 
• Never keep your ignited smoker without supervision. If you do it, for your unconsciousness, the smoke will spread all the cooking space, which creates a health threat.

Also Read: How Long To Let Brisket Rest In Cooler (Answered)

Why Is There No Bark On My Brisket

Yes, there are some reasons for unwilling mistakes. So let’s find out the most probable causes why there is no bark on your brisket.

Wrong Ingredients

Perfect bark mostly depends on the right amount of ingredients you use because the bark is a chemical reaction. And most of us make this mistake and don’t get good bark on their desired brisket. 

Over Rubbing

You may think that if you rub your brisket too much, you will get a good bark. But it is totally a misconception. Over rubbing decreases the chance of getting a good bark. 

No Smoke

Maintaining good smoke is very important here. The longer time you smoke the brisket, the better you get the bark. 

The longer times help to create smoke particles to stick the glaze that you previously prepared for smoking. But if you fail to give smoke to your brisket, there is no bark on it. 

Temperature and Time

Temperature is another critical thing for any cooking process. BBQ is always fun, but you have to cook the brisket with patience. BBQ takes 12-15 hours, and you have to maintain the exact temperature this time. 

So it’s not an easy task to check this 12 – 15 hour inside temperature. If your smoker temperature goes low, the brisket won’t cook evenly, and if the temperature is too high, the brisket will burn, dry, or char. 225°f to 250°f is the right temperature. 

Using Pan 

Using a pan to place the brisket in and the smoker hinders the heat and smoke from reaching the brisket. As a result of inadequate heat and smoke, the brisket won’t get good bark. 

Keep Fat Side Up

If you keep the fat side up of your smoker while placing it in the smoker, that decreases the chance of getting bark. Because when the fat side is up, it won’t get direct heat. 

Wrong Wood Chips

Wood chips are another factor not to get good bark or no bark of your brisket. When you BBQ brisket in the smoker and wish to get bark, you have to use proper wood chips to make the wood smoke combination with brisket smoke. 

These two combinations of smoke give you the bark to your brisket. Choosing the wrong wood chips results in no bark. 

Wrapping The Brisket

If you wrap the brisket with foil paper, then there is a high chance not to get the bark on your brisket. But sometimes, many of the BBQ lovers wrap the brisket without knowing that it prevents good bark. 

A Few More Other things You Should Keep In Mind

Every meat lover likes to taste the most delicious smoky flavored meat. But, as you don’t arrange BBQ parties all the time, that’s why it’s natural to miss any crucial part of smoking meat. 

Here are a few more things you have to keep in mind, especially to get excellent bark on your meat.

• Smoker

You have to use the right smoker by which you can quickly check the inside temperature. That means a lid monitor system smoker is the best option in this case. 

• Wood

You should choose the proper wood chips or wood chunks to get your desired smoky flavor and bark. Here, you can consider nut wood or fruitwood.

It absolutely depends on your wish. You also have to choose how you use your woods, soak or dry wood. Because soak woods give you some kinds of flavor and dry wood gives you another kind of flavor. 

• Ingredients

You can select ingredients according to your taste. There is no hard and fast rule to use ingredients for your smoking meat. 

But you have to ensure the exact amount unless you will fail to get the taste that you want in your brisket. 

Does Wrapping Brisket Ruins Bark On Brisket

The answer to this question is both yes and no. Do you puzzle by reading this line? Please wait for a second; I will solve the puzzle. 

The first thing is if you use foil paper to wrap the brisket, then it will increase the smoker’s temperature. As a result, the cooking process will speed up. So you will get a tender end of brisket and ruin the bark of it. 

Conversely, if you use butcher paper to wrap the brisket, it prevents direct heat from reaching the brisket. So the brisket will get indirect heat and slowly cook and offer you the incredible texture of the bark on your brisket. 

I hope now you have no confusion about wrapping your brisket when you expect to get a good bark. 

What Is Good Bark On Brisket

Don’t get me wrong; understanding bark is the sound that dogs make. And this bark is not also the thick outer side of the oldest tree in your backyard. 

This bark is not those barks. It’s a chemical reaction. In simple words, the bark is a combination of many little tasks to give you a heavenly taste to your brisket. 

When you season your brisket with proper ingredients, rub, water vapor, smoke,  temperature, and correct hours of heat, the brisket leaves juice from the inside of it with a great smoky flavor. And the outside of the meat contains a dark texture which is bark. 

The word bark got popular after Aaron Franklin used this term. Basically, in the BBQ world, Aaron Franklin is the pioneer of all the BBQ cooking processes. 

Even most of the BBQ enthusiasts and pit-masters live for tasting this good barking flavor to their brisket. 

The Science Behind Getting Good Bark On Meat

A scientific formula works behind the process of getting bark. In short, it’s a two-chemical Maillard reaction. 

You use salt and sugar when rubbing the brisket, and when you start heating the brisket, water comes out from salt and sugar. 

And the water evaporates and dissolves the ingredients of water-soluble. This also happens when fat dissolves. Both of them create a bubble on the brisket surface. 

And if you cook the brisket at low temperature, it makes a crust and dark texture on the brisket. Because of moisture evaporation, the outer surface of the brisket turns into the exact bark that you want. 

How long does it take to get the bark on a brisket?

Maintaining exact time is very crucial to get your expected bark in your BBQ brisket. Most of the time, the excellent texture of bark depends on the brisket’s thickness. 

Still, we can say that 10 pounds of briskets take 12-15 hours to offer you a tasty and juicy and good bark in your brisket.

Is bark good for smoking meat?

Absolutely, yes, there is no harm in using bark for smoking meats. When you use bark to your smoking meats, it creates an excellent flavor and mixes with the solid wood smoking flavor. 

As a result, when both of the flavors combine, you get a unique flavor to your BBQ meats, which enhances the taste of the meat and juiciness. 

Can you put too much rub on a brisket?

Too much or too low, whatever it is that is not good for anything. So you should not put too much rub on your brisket to get good bark. 

Instead, you have to ensure to use proper ingredients and exact time and way of rubbing. When you over rub the brisket, the flavor will stand out. 

That is why you should use your free hand, an adequate amount of ingredients, and rub the brisket gently from every edge of it.

Can any wood be used for smoking?

In general, selecting wood for smoking entirely depends on you. Basically, what smoke do you like the best? You can use that wood to get the smoky flavor in your BBQ. So you can use any woods for smoking.