I did brisket by sous-vide for tenderness, allow to cool, put in the fridge uncovered, and then on the day I wanted to serve it I smoke it back up to temperature.
It was tasty. It was pretty good, but there were trade-offs. Also some mistakes on my part.
Sous-vide does not render fat like higher temperatures doThere are different kinds of fats, with different chain lengths in the molecules. The ratios of these chain length dictate the flavour profile of the fat. It's why cooking anything in bacon fat makes it taste nearly entirely of bacon. The shorter the molecule length, the lower the temperature that it melts and renders off. Since sous-vide doesn't get hot enough to melt the medium and longer chains, a lot more fat stays in the meat.
Letting the meat air-dry overnight in the fridge was a mistakeSmoke sticks to cold things and wet things better than hot things and dry things. I should have let it sit in the bag with the juices, and I should have spritzed it repeatedly, to get more smoke to stick.
I can have a chunk of brisket ready 2.5 hours after I get home from work.I cooked it sous-vide for 8 hours the day before, and put it in the fridge. On the day I got home from work, turned on the smoker, let it get to 275 and then put the chunk of brisket on for 2 hours to get up to temperature again. Since there's no chemical changes that need to happen (cooking of meat from raw to rare to medium to well done, or turning of collagen into gelatin) the heat gets absorbed quickly, and it gets up to the serving temperature of 160ish in about 2 hours.
As a method of not screwing up a brisket, it's pretty good. It makes tasty meat, and it removes some of the risks of brisket - not knowing when it'll be ready and not getting it wrong. But the texture is not the same a smoked brisket, and you don't get the good bark. The texture is wrong because the fat is wrong, and there's too much of it left. The bark is wrong because there's nearly none of it.
So, is there a case for doing it? Absolutely. It's a tool for the toolbox. Is it something I do regularly? No.
If you want to read more about it, hop over to
AmazingRibs.com.