>>I love smoked brisket and I really love it with a Cabernet Franc.

Cabernet Franc really has that flavor of green pepper and just a real richness about it that goes so well with a brisket.

So today we're gonna make a brisket that has both a wet and a dry rub.

So I'm gonna start off by making some barbecue sauce.

I've already got my gloves on 'cause I wanna be ready.

So we've got a cup and a half of barbecue sauce and this can be any brand that you like, just right in the bowl.

And then I'm gonna add to that about a quarter cup of maple syrup.

And then I want between a half and three quarters cup apple cider vinegar.

Now I like a little more vinegar in mine because I really tend to go toward that North Carolina barbecue flavor.

And then I want to add about a quarter cup Dijon mustard.

(gentle music) Just get that all in there and then let's give it a nice whisk.

You just wanna mix it up really, really well.

Now this is going to be the barbecue sauce that will accompany your brisket.

The great thing is you can make this cold, use a little bit on your brisket before you smoke it and then as soon as you're ready to serve it, you can just warm it up.

Now let's take a couple tablespoons of the barbecue sauce and place on the brisket.

Now, I've already trimmed up this brisket.

What you're looking for is really hard spots where the fat just doesn't give in your fingers.

So you wanna trim those off.

But as long as you've got all of those relatively trimmed, everything's going to be fine.

The fatter side is going to go up on your brisket.

So I wanna start with the bottom first.

So let's just flip this over and what I wanna do is take a couple of tablespoons of this sauce and just rub all over.

Now, in my bowl here, I have some salt, I have pepper, I have garlic powder and onion powder.

What I wanna do is you can mix it or you can just do them individually.

And I kind of like to do them individually so that I get a feel for how much I'm putting on my barbecue brisket.

So here I just want to sprinkle a good sprinkling all over and I'm doing that with my dry hand.

Just sprinkle all over.

I have about a third cup of salt in my bowl and you kind of eyeball it.

You don't need probably the full third cup but use at least a quarter of a cup because you want a lot of flavor on your brisket.

Now I've got about three tablespoons of black pepper and again, about a tablespoon of black pepper on one side.

And then we're gonna just see if we need to go with a little more.

And this is a nice big brisket.

This is about nine pounds.

And then a little garlic powder and some onion powder.

And this a little less.

So I've got about a teaspoon in each cup.

I wanna definitely use all of that.

And then we're gonna turn over that brisket and do the very same thing on the fat cap side.

Now the reason that you put the fat up is because as that fat renders, it goes down into the meat and it just makes it amazingly moist.

Now let's flip that over.

A couple more tablespoons of our great barbecue sauce and let's just give it a rub.

Really try to coat all the sides.

Make sure you get down in all those crevices.

Mm.

Okay.

Now I'm just gonna take off my gloves to finish up putting on that rub.

And if you want, you can get in with your hands and really give it a massage.

I don't find that particularly necessary with this cut of meat but sometimes when I'm making a pork roast in the smoker, I really wanna get in and massage all of that flavoring in there so that I'm sure that I'm also breaking up the fat pockets.

Now Cab Franc is a wonderful wine.

It's very versatile.

You can use it with a lot of different foods and it goes so well with barbecue.

It also is really good with tomato dishes and so the fact that we have a little bit of tomato in the barbecue sauce that we bought at the store is just a bonus.

All right, now I've got that ready.

I'm gonna slide it onto a rack and stick it in my smoker and we're gonna let this smoke for about 12 hours.

This brisket looks amazing.

So what I do is cook this until it's about 200, 205 degrees and then I know it's cooked all the way through.

We've got a really good smoke ring on it.

Oh my goodness, this is, oh, this is gonna be great.

I'm just gonna pull off that first piece.

Got a little bit of that fat cap still on there.

That's okay.

Oh, wow.

Look at that brisket.

Gorgeous.

Just gorgeous.

Now I like to serve mine with a little bit of potato salad, maybe some baked beans.

And a lot of times when I do the baked beans, I throw some of that great barbecue sauce right in it.

So let's just put some of this brisket on my plate.

Ah, beautiful.

And let's drizzle it with a little bit of our barbecue sauce.

Mm.

It looks so good, I think I could eat it.

Now let's give this a try.

Mm.

It's so tender, it's just cutting with a fork.

It's beautiful.

Wow.

Look at that.

Mm.

And with that vinegar, it really, I think, it's going to work with the wine even better than if it was a sweet sauce.

(gentle music) Oh yeah.

This pairing is wonderful.

That little bit of creaminess with the potato salad, the wonderful vinegar taste, that North Carolina barbecue taste that you get with the vinegar in the sauce.

So it's just great.

I hope you'll love this recipe as much as I do.

(gentle music)