Wagyu Brisket Burnt Ends: Critical Temps for High-end Meat

Do you know what’s better than brisket? American Wagyu brisket! As if the beefy fattiness of brisket weren’t enough, wagyu beef brisket goes ahead and shoots that marbling even more throughout the cut. Yum!

With a piece of meat this good—and expensive!— you want to make sure it is cooked to absolute perfection. Now, we’re no slouches at brisket cookery over here at ThermoWorks. But we all know that cooking a brisket can be a little unpredictable. Will the flat still be good by the time the point is cooked through? Will the point render correctly? When it comes to high-stakes meat cooking like this, we think it’s a good idea to take a cue from actual BBQ champions and separate the point from the flat. You get better control over each piece.

But once we’ve cut the point and flat apart (you know how to cook the brisket flat already, right?), we may as well turn the point into luscious cubes of fatty-sweet glory. Yes, I’m talking about the very height of extravagance, wagyu brisket burnt ends. Getting these right is a matter of taste—season them how you like—but it’s also a matter of temperature and time! Read on for the tips and temps you need for amazing wagyu beef brisket burnt ends.

Burnt ends methodology

There are two basic ways of going about cooking brisket burnt ends. You can be super traditional and trim the whole packer nearly apart and cook the whole thing, then cut the point into pieces, re-season, sauce recook, etc. Or you can start with the point alone, cube it raw, season it, and smoke then braise. We opt for the second method in this case.

Why pre-cube instead of doing the full cook method? Two reasons: control and time. As we said in the intro, a piece of beef like this demands exactitude, and there are so many variables that can come into play when cooking a whole brisket. By cubing the point raw and cooking it as burnt ends from the beginning, we exercise more control over the outcome. But we also gain a tremendous time advantage. You can cook burnt ends (plus the flat, if you have room in your smoker for both) in half the time it takes to cook a whole-packer brisket. So if we’re trying to rule the tailgate—or just have dinner on by 6:00—using the thermal advantages of smaller pieces is a great way to go.

The meat—brisket point

There are dozens of recipes out there for “wagyu burnt ends” that are made of wagyu chuck, and that’s fantastic. In fact, we might do a chuck burnt ends post someday! But if we’re going all out for wagyu, we think we might as well cook the actual brisket. After all, every cut and muscle of beef has its own distinct flavor and texture. And while chuck is delicious, it’s just not the same as brisket.

For this cook, we used a Snake River Farms American Wagyu brisket, and it was delicious. Obviously, the techniques here will carry over to non-wagyu beef, but with the outlay for this beef, it’s particularly important to hit everything right on the head.

Wagyu brisket burnt end internal temperatures and doneness

Being brisket, the point is chock-full of collagen, even when it’s wagyu. We need to break that collagen—and all that extra intramuscular fat—down. This takes temperature, and it takes time. When you put your seasoned beef cubes on the smoker, stick a probe (the optional 2.5″ Pro-Series® High Temp Needle Probe is excellent for this) in one of the larger pieces and set the high-temp alarm for 165°F (74°C). Getting up to that temperature should take about an hour and a half or two hours, just the right amount of time to absorb the smoke. It should also be enough time for those little pieces to develop some nice bark.

Once the high-temp alarm on your Smoke X2™ sounds and you see that the bark is set, it’s time to move on to the braise. Braising is a great way to both imbue flavor into your burnt ends and to speed the cooking. Right about at this temperature, brisket will usually hit the stall—the meat’s temperature plateaus due to evaporative cooling. By partially submerging the meat in liquid and covering it, we create a high-humidity environment that prevents evaporative cooling in the meat itself. No evaporative cooling, no stall.

Toss the meat in a little BBQ sauce and put it in a foil pan, then add liquid to come about a third to halfway up the meat. Re-insert the thermometer probe in one of your largest chunks, and cover the lot with foil.

Temperature and tenderness

You will find that the temperature of your burnt ends jumps rather quickly once the braising liquid is hot. In fact, you may get up to, say, 203°F (95°C) in very little time. And when it does, you may look at your Smoke X2 receiver, jump up, and run to the smoker. You’ll tear off the foil, fish out a piece of flaming hot meat and burn your mouth trying to eat it. But if you do that, you’ll find that it is still very chewy.

You see, collagen melt is a function of temperature and time. Yes, the collagen starts rendering into gelatin at about 175°F (79°C), and in a full packer brisket is usually well rendered by 203°F (95°C), but a full packer is slow, and these cubes are fast. They will have sped right through the collagen melt zone, and will not be ready yet. It’s best to let these cook up to 207, or even 210°F (97 or 99°C). Then, also be sure to check the texture with the probe of your Thermapen^® ONE.

When you check the meat for temp and tenderness, you may find that the meat needs more time to tenderize. That’s fine. But what is interesting is that the venting of the steam will cool the pieces in your braise, so you’ll probably see a sharp decline in temperature on your Smoke X2. No probelm. when the meat re-climbs to 205°F (96°C) check it again! Finding the right balance of time and temperature can vary from brisket to brisket, but having the thermometers to monitor the situation makes the process that much easier and more accurate.

The fire—cooking temps for wagyu burnt ends

Whatever cooker you use, managing your heat is important. We want the cubes to absorb a good amount of smoke (all that surface area for smoke absorption is another advantage of the raw-cube method), so we’ll start our seasoned meat pieces at 250°F (121°C). Use an air probe attached to a leave-in probe thermometer like Smoke X2 to keep an eye on pit temps. (Whether you’re running Billows™ BBQ Control Fan or just making sure your pellet cooker doesn’t run out of fuel, that air probe is very important.)

During the second stage, the braise, we can turn that heat up to 300°F (149°C). The meat will be covered during this time, so smoke production for flavor won’t matter as much, and the higher heat will get food on the plate sooner.

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Sometimes you need a splurge, and sometimes that splurge might come in the form of a super-marbled American wagyu brisket. If your splurge ever happens in that direction, you need to make sure that it’s cooked right, and that means watching for critical temperatures and being aware of how collagen melts in your food. Get the temps right, check for tenderness, and boom. Fantastic wagyu beef burnt ends. Of course, the process works just as well for non-wagyu beef, so next time you get a brisket, consider giving this a try. Happy cooking!

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