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Has anyone smoked up a beef roast and made burnt ends out of it? Could you let me know how it turned out and how you made em? We’ve got a roast sitting in the freezer just waiting for me to try this.
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I don't know anyone who has ever used a perfectly good beef roast, to make burnt ends. Burnt ends are the byproduct of smoking a beef brisket. The ends lose their moisture and dry out in the cooking process, yet retain all of the flavor of the meat and seasoning, with a little added texture.
I haven't purchased my own smoker, yet. However, there are a few resident meat smoking experts on here that would likely be happy to explain how to properly smoke a brisket, and harvest the burnt ends.
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You could do it if you had enough fat to render in the roast. Good burnt ends shouldn't be dry at all, which is why they're made from the point (the fatty part of the brisket) and not the flat (the lean part). People make them from the flat sometimes or other cuts of beef, but they get very dry and aren't particularly pleasant to eat. I've also had an unfortunate number of burnt ends where people took the name literally. Other times they were just pieces of meat drowning in sauce. Finding really good burnt ends is shockingly hard. To me, that's because people are trying to shortcut it and use cheaper meat or find a way to use meat they screwed up while cooking.
I have smoked roasts a couple of times. Very similar flavor-wise to a brisket, but they're always more dry than I'd prefer, because most roasts I've gotten just don't have the same levels of marbled fat as some other cuts.
If you do this, I'd be very curious to hear how it turns out, what cut of roast you used, fat content, etc. Always looking for new ideas and love hearing about experiments!
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Yeah, it’s a brisket thing. Put the brisket in the smoker so that the point is closest to the heat source.
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Burnt ends are simply cubes cut out of the point of a brisket, as MileHigh said, the fatty part. When the brisket is done, the point is separated and cubed, the cubes are sauced, and they go back in the smoker to set the sauce. Should never be dry. The fat content is what makes them so tender and flavorful.