It's Here!: Misen Chef's Knife Edition

My latest Kickstarter acquisition is the Misen Chef's Knife.  The stated goal of this Kickstarter campaign was to produce "An amazing knife at an honest price", they plan on selling the knife directly to consumers via the Misen web site for $65.  So how good is it?

 First off, the packaging is impressive.  Each knife comes in a box custom designed to keep it safe and secure for shipping or transporting.  In the photo to the left I've already removed the inner box from the outer sleeve.  Upon opening the box the first thing you see is a card showing care instructions, on the other side are pictograms of different types of cuts demonstrated on carrots.

Below the card is a plastic insert that snugly holds the knife in place.

 The Misen knife weighs in at 218.9 grams, about 33% lighter than my go-to Mac Professional 9 1/2" French Chef's Knife.

The balance point is just where it should be, right at the bolster where the handle meets the blade.  If a chef's knife isn't balanced properly you end up expending extra energy moving the blade which causes muscle fatigue.  The handle is made of molded thermoplastic and is very comfortable to hold.

 My knives arrived on a Saturday in the afternoon, I wasn't expecting them until Monday so I didn't really have anything planned.  I did have a new formulation of pizza dough in the refrigerator I saw on Chef Steps that I was going to use on Monday or Tuesday so I decided to pull it out early and make some pizza!  The Misen had no trouble cutting extremely thin slices of onion and I was able to quickly chiffonade basil (picked from the AeroGarden) for the top.  So far I'm very pleased with my new knife!

MMMM, pizza!

Brisket flat smoked in the Bradley Original Smoker

Since I bought my Bradley Original Smoker last year I've wanted to take a stab at brisket, but there was no way I could possibly justify buying a whole brisket when it is just two of us doing the eating.  The solution came when a nearby grocery store put brisket flats on sale.  The smallest one I could find was a 3.5 pound untrimmed flat, which was more than enough for me to play with.

It was a dark and stormy day when I originally planned on smoking the brisket, and since rain and electric smokers aren't the best of buddies I had to throw the meat in the freezer and wait for my chance.  That day came the next weekend, when it was dry out but much cooler.

I started out early in the morning, around 5:30 am.  First thing was to set up the smoker and get it warming up.  I had recently bought a resin horizontal shed for my Weber grill and smoker to live in, it works great and keeps everything dry but the tradeoff was that in arranging things so everything looked nice and tidy I made the outlet I usually use for the smoker inaccessible.  No big deal, there's another outlet a few meters away.  Unfortunately that outlet was dead so I had to run an extension cord to the other end of the patio.  Now that the smoker had power I put a foil tray of water in the bottom to catch the fat rendering off the brisket and went to the kitchen to prep the meat.

I made a rub consisting of roughly equal parts kosher salt and ground black pepper, about a tablespoon and a half.  To this was added 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic, cayenne pepper and celery salt.  I didn't really need to trim any of the fat cap off, so I just cut a cross hatch to help the fat render away during cooking.  The rub was sprinkled evenly over all surfaced of the brisket.  I temperature probe was inserted in to the meat from the side until it was roughly in the center.

At 6:15 am we were ready to go.  Once everything was in place the temperature probe wire was threaded up through the smoke vents and attached to the thermometer.  The second wire seen that can be seen in the photo is the thermocouple attached to my PID controller.  I had the controller set to 250°f, but the tray of water I put in to catch falling grease really made it difficult for the smoker to reach temp.  The highest temperature the chamber could reach while the water tray was in place was about 220°f.  The alarm on the meat thermometer was set to 165°f and I went about my day, every few hours I would go out to check on things, add more bisquettes (I was using the Jim Beam smoking bisquettes for the most part) and make sure everything was working properly.  With the tray of water keeping the temperature down it took almost 10 hours for the brisket to reach the target temp of 165°f.  Now it was time to wrap.

I wrapped the brisket flat in parchment paper (for some reason you can't find plain butcher paper anymore, then wrapped everything up in aluminum foil.  Since there was no longer a danger of melting fat dripping down and starting a fire I removed the tray of water at this time as well and emptied the bowl of used bisquettes.  With the extra water out of the picture the smoker quickly reached the controller set point of 250°f and things moved quickly from there.  In less than 2 hours the brisket flat had made it to the final temperature of 195°f, was removed from the smoker and put in a beer cooler to rest.  195°f as the final temperature was pulled from a recipe online, I had seen anywhere from a low of 195°f up to a high of 204°f and decided to go low thinking that carryover would take the temperature up at least a few degrees.  I was wrong, because this was such a small piece of beef compared to a while brisket there wasn't much if any carryover.  To bring it up a few more degrees I ended up putting the wrapped brisket in a 200°f oven while I went down to the patio and got everything broken down and stowed away in the shed.

 Here's the final product, nice bark on the top but a little too salty.  Next time I'll have to go lighter on the rub.  The meat was moist and delicious, not quite as fall-apart tender as I would have liked but very good.  Next time I'll take it to a higher temperature, possibly 200° or  even a few degrees higher.

This turned out good, but I think I can make it great next time with a few minor tweaks.  I prepared the leftovers for freezing by vacuum sealing them and putting them in a 150°f water bath for a few hours with my WiFi Nomiku maintaining the temperature.  The packs were then chilled overnight before being thrown in the freezer.  It'll be much easier reheating brisket from the freezer this winter than freezing my butt off trying smoke another one during a Chicago winter!