Lumberland Recipes: Best Made Brisket
Beef is almost always on the menu in some form at Lumberland, and we’re especially proud of our brisket. Brisket can be a tough piece of meat, and we cook it slow and wet. Now, there are any number of ways to cook a brisket, and we’re sure there are some folks from Texas and St Louis that might have some rather strong objections to our method. But this ain’t Texas, or St Louis. This is Lumberland.
Best Made Brisket
(serves 4 hungry folks who have been cutting and chopping wood all day):
What you will need:
A hardwood fire
4-5 lb beef brisket
8 slices of bacon
3 beers (we prefer Sierra Nevada Pale Ale)
1 cup BBQ sauce (we like Bone Suckin’ Sauce)
2 large onions, sliced
6 cloves garlic, diced or mashed
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon each: salt, pepper, seasoning
12” dutch oven
Depending on the size of your brisket, you may need to cut it in half for it to fit comfortably in your dutch oven. Mix together 1/2 cup brown sugar with a tablespoon each of salt, pepper, and whatever other seasoning you’d like (we like cayenne!) Rub all sides of your brisket with this mixture and set aside. Cook up the bacon in the dutch oven, pulling the bacon out before it gets too crispy. With the rendered bacon grease in the bottom, get your dutch nice and hot for searing the meat—but not too hot lest you start a grease fire. Sear the brisket for 3-4 minutes on each side and pull it out.
Now throw in the onions and garlic to soften in the dutch for 5-10 minutes. Place your brisket on top of the onions (stack the two brisket halves if needed), fat side up and place the pre-cooked bacon on top. Pour all the beers (reserving a little for yourself of course) along with the remaining BBQ sauce and brown sugar over the meat and cover the dutch with the lid.
Cook the brisket in the dutch at a low temperature—around 225 F. Clear the center of the fire pit by moving the burning logs and coals to the perimeter of the pit creating a ring of fire. Leave a few coals in the center and place that dutch oven down, down, down, in to that burning ring of fire. Place a few pieces of burning logs or coals on top of the dutch oven to give it heat from all directions. The brisket will need to cook like this for a couple of hours. Tend the fire to keep it slow and low. Resist the urge to build the fire up too high.
Unlike a nice cut of steak, it’s ok, and desirable, to cook brisket all the way through and beyond. Our method for checking for doneness is the same as advocated by the famous Cee Dubs; if it smells done, it probably is done, if it smells burnt, it probably is burnt, and if you don’t smell nothin’ it probably ain’t done yet.
When you, and your nose, have decided the brisket is done, remove the dutch oven from the fire, but do not uncover it yet! Rebuild your fire in the center of the fire ring, get it blazing hot and replace the grill grate. Once the fire is really going, finish the brisket by grilling again over the open fire to give the brisket a nice crisp and flavorful crust.
Remove the brisket from the grill and let it rest for 15 minutes before carving against the grain and serving with a spoonful of the delicious fixings left in the dutch. Kick back with another beer and revel in the silence that comes when everyone’s mouth is too full to talk. 
Happy New Year.
From New York City, to the Twin Cities. To Topanga, to Telluride, and to Toronto. From Disneyland to Lumberland, and to all points in between: happy new year to everyone.
XOX Best Made,
December 31st, 2011
The Beauty in the Details: Crafting the Best Made Edge
“The best way to learn the value of a well crafted tool is to try using a poorly crafted one.” — Unknown
A few weeks ago we took a couple of our restoration axes up to our secret hideout in Lumberland, NY for their first taste of wood. It could have been years, possibly decades since these axes had dined on such a feast: boy were they hungry! In addition to the love and attention we’d given them cleaning free the rust and fitting them with new helves, we spent some quality time giving them blazingly sharp edges. To use such a sharp axe is truly a joy. The efficiency with which they cut is only paralleled by the respect that they demand. You can see for yourself in these pictures: the incisions into the wood demonstrate an immaculate, uncanny — almost scalpel like — precision. Half the energy was expended to cut through 14” of a dead hardwood log that would be required with an axe with a mildly inferior edge. Every last degree of infinitesimal sharpness that was bestowed on these axes meant exponentially greater effectiveness of cutting.
Sharpness is a science at Best Made, and has definitely been on our minds lately, and you can expect more details on how to obtain an edge like this on your own axe in the near future. Keep your eyes peeled here. In the meantime: Stay Sharp.
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: The Characters
It’s high time to reveal some of the characters behind our North woods circus school in Lumberland, New York: (l-r): Ben Lavely, Peter Buchanan-Smith, Hunter Craighill, and don’t forget the two Best Made axes — Royal Standard & Hushabye Baby — and the mother of them all, the Disston crosscut saw.
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: Slacking Off
This past Saturday we awoke in a frosty Lumberland and, with the help of our two-ton come along hand winch, and a few big pines, we got the adrenaline flowing and my cousin Angus’s slack line tighter than a banjo.
It’s not that we need more things to do up at Lumberland, but the slack line is a wonderful distraction, a great way to hone our coordination and core strength, all while having a few good laughs. — Peter Buchanan-Smith
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: Sharpening the Axe
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Abraham Lincoln
An axe requires care and delicacy, not power and speed, and that’s why the sharper the axe, the better and the safer the axe. A sharp axe not only insures for much greater efficiency but also more control. A dull axe requires more effort and energy, it has a greater tendency to glance off its intended target, and is therefore unpredictable and dangerous. A little practice is required in order to become proficient at sharpening your axe, and it should be done before every use. Do not be fooled: wood will dull and or damage steel—knots in wood can be hard as rock, and certain grain patterns in the “root swell” area of the trunk can wreak havoc on an axe bit.
Above: Ben puts the edge back on his Hudson Bay at the Lumberland out-camp. Photograph by Nate Bressler
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: Good Boots
At Lumberland — as at all worthy base camps — much starts and ends with your boots. Whether you embark to gather kindling or climb Everest, the right boots can make all the difference. Pictured above is me at Lumberland in my Danner Mountain Light Overtons (maybe one of the best pair of boots I have ever owned). Being outside is the art of being comfortable. Always invest in the best boots, the best equipment, the best tools because above all these are investments in you. The hard earned time and money you spend on your next adventure need not be spent worrying about shitty boots. - Peter Buchanan-Smith
Photograph by Nate Bressler
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: Building the Oven
“One of life’s quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.” - Norman Maclean
We added raw pizza dough to our grocery list on Friday and next thing I knew we were hauling large slates of blue stone around the camp to build a wood burning oven to cook it. The first Lumberland pizza came out looking great, but soon enough we had to quickly acquire a fond taste for raw pizza dough (which I can vouch is way better than raw cookie dough). Then for dinner in the oven it was potatoes gratin: those babies were chased down with a grilled leg of lamb, and a bottle of Pinot Noir. After a few remaining minor adjustments to be made we expect the oven will be ready for Best Made Food Guide Laura Silverman’s official inspection.
And a big tip of the hat to Meagan Bennet for keeping us fueled all weekend with her chocolate bourbon balls. With a hot oven and Meggs Benny’s contributions it was without a doubt the best Lumberland food weekend to date. Stay tuned this week as Nate Bressler lets us in on his Cajun recipe for seasoning cast iron.
Lumberland Diaries, Fall 2011: Breakfast
Lumberland NY: There’s nothing like a crisp Fall morning and the smell of bacon, coffee, and campfire smoke wafting through the fort. With the amount of work we’re about to do today, no one has any remorse as to what they eat (or how they eat it). And always remember: a good Lumberland man runs on bacon fat.
Although cast-iron is a bitch to pack in, our Lodge fry pan and dutch oven are never far from reach; they cook evenly, never burn, and are a cinch to clean up; not to mention they are one of the few inexpensive quality American made products available these days, and we expect Best Made staff will be cooking off these well-seasoned pans for nigh on a century.
Bless all the formulae to seasoning a cast iron skillet! Stay tuned for the next installment of the Lumberland Diaries, and the Best Made method to seasoning your cast-iron, which is over a campfire, the Cajun way. Huzzah!
Photographs by Nate Bressler.
