Smoked brisket wrapped in butcher paper with smoked wagyu tallow

Trim the brisket as cold as possible, 10 to 15 minutes in the freezer if needed: remove the thin parts of the flat and hard fat, leave a quarter inch of fat on the fat side and clean the bottom to expose meat. Save the trimmings.

Season with a 50-50 mix of salt and pepper by volume. No binder.

Place the brisket as far from the fire as possible, point toward the fire, angled so the fat side faces it.

Cook at about 200 degrees for three or four hours with relatively dirty smoke: visible thin blue smoke, not white and billowing, which tastes bitter, and not invisibly clean.

Scoop the wagyu tallow into a tray and smoke it alongside the brisket until golden amber; take it out about an hour before the wrap so it cools to semi-solid.

After a little over four hours, if the bark is not yet almost black, raise the pit to about 225 to start rendering fat, adding a little of the brisket trimmings to the fire at a time for flavor and color.

Do not spray. Cover any spot drying out with a small piece of foil.

At about six and a half hours, if the top fat is still firm, raise the pit to 250 to render the fat; on a backyard smoker no higher than 250, 275 if necessary.

Wrap at around eight hours when the color looks like a meteorite, the fat lets a finger sink in like jello, the brisket has shrunk and sweated out water and the pocket of fat bubbles out; the internal temperature is last (178 and 176 here).

Lay the brisket fat side down on butcher paper, cover the meat side with the smoked tallow, then fold and roll it tightly, finishing fat side up.

Return it with the flat toward the fire. Cook about three more hours until the point reads about 200 and the flat 205 to 206 and the probe goes in like softened butter.

Rest at least eight hours, ideally 12, slowly cooling in a cooler or a low oven at 145 to 150, kept above 135.

Slice with a long serrated knife and light pressure, starting at the thin end of the flat; where the two muscles stack, turn 90 degrees and keep slicing.

Slice at 135 to 140 degrees.