Smoking Vs Braising Brisket: Which Is Easier?

We've devoted a lot of energy to perfecting our smoked brisket — did you catch the time we covered the best smoker temperature for brisket? — but is it really the easiest way to cook this delicious cut of beef? When it comes to brisket, there are two main approaches: smoking or braising. After all, grilling a fatty, tough brisket could be a grave mistake. Braising brisket has a strong Jewish cultural association and can lead to delicious results that make the meat closer to an indulgent stew with root veggies and gravy. Smoking a brisket, on the other hand, is a move straight from the BBQ world that typically involves almost half a day of cooking. Is one method easier than the other? Without a doubt, braising beats smoking in almost every single way that has to do with convenience.

First of all, smoking brisket requires ... a smoker. Celebrity chef Alton Brown has concocted an easy DIY smoker out of a cardboard box, but even that requires constant supervision, which is impractical for a 12+ hour cook. No, to smoke brisket, you need a dedicated smoker, which not everyone owns or even has room for. To braise brisket, all you need is an oven or even a slow cooker. 

Secondly, braising brisket, while not a quick process, is still heaps faster than smoking — we're talking five or six hours instead of a grueling late-night start to get the meat ready for the next day's cookout. Lastly, smoking brisket is an exercise in skilled technique with many potential pitfalls, while even amateur home chefs can follow the instructions on a recipe and produce a passable braised brisket.

It's true that braising brisket is easier in just about every conceivable way than smoking it, but the hard fact of the matter is that smoked brisket and braised brisket are not the same thing. In other words, the two cooking methods produce very different end results. A Reddit discussion on smoked versus braised brisket brought out vehement opinions, and only one thing was clear: you either prefer the taste of smoked or braised brisket, and many people only appreciate one or the other. "I prefer smoked or in an oven. You lose the bark when you braise it and it become[s] basically a large pot roast," one Redditor avowed. Another commenter retorted that "For my family, brisket is always braised Jewish style, like my Grandmother would have made if she could cook ... It falls apart and tastes like love (and onion gravy)."

For many, braised brisket is more of a comfort food in which the meat is tender, sopped in gravy, and warms both the body and soul. On the other hand, smoked brisket, which takes a great deal more time, is a testament to the accomplished cooking of the pitmaster and puts one in mind of summertime BBQs and the culinary enticements of fire and smoke. Braised brisket is almost certainly easier than smoked brisket, but it's far from a total substitute, nor is the opposite direction true. These are two different cooking methods that produce radically different meals, each with their own draws.