Had a couple small chuck roasts in the freezer for a little while and decided this weekend was a good time to get them cooking. While searching around for a good recipe, I stumbled upon a number of “Poor Man’s Burnt Ends” recipes. Some called for a pre-cubed process, some just smoke it as is..

I love a brisket burnt end. Truthfully, I haven’t perfected it, so it’s appropriate I go with the “poor mans” recipe. Since the traditional style is removing the point afterwards, not cubing it pre-cook – that’s what I did with these. Let’s go!

Recipe

The Prep Table

The ingredients – Meat, Sauce, Rub and Sugar.

As you’d expect, this will be a pretty straight forward smoke. The chuck roast was previously frozen, and let thaw in the fridge for a bit. The beef rub is my blend of primarily salt and pepper, with a touch of onion powder and garlic powder. I know, not your traditional Texas style – but my style.

I would normally go for a thicker BBQ sauce, but I’m curious on how the homemade thin BBQ sauce would work, so that’s what we’re doing. I’m thinking it blended with the brown sugar would result in that sticky melty burnt end we’re all used to. If not, I know for next time.

The Process

A coating of that “Meaty Bits Beef Rub”, as the wife titled it.

Once the meat got to room temperature, I put a nice dusting of that beef rub on there. I usually coat the meat, then get the pellet smoker to temp. The beauty of that RecTeq is it gets to a temperature quick – and it stays there. It rarely moves, and if it does – it’s because I opened the lid to take a picture for y’all.

As soon as the temp got to 275, threw another small dust on top as the original coat settled into the beef nicely. We’re looking for a temp of 165 before we wrap, so it’s in a ‘set it and forget it’ mode until then. Regarding the wood – I heated up the rest of that pecan wood I had in there, and threw some of my favorite Char-Hickory pellets on there.

I went out after an hour and threw a probe in there.. so I can just monitor from my phone.

Regarding the auto probes – Trust but verify. I’ve unfortunately gotten a lot of readings almost exactly 10 degrees off using the RecTeq controller board, so always have a handy ThermaPen ready to verify what your reading is. Santa delivered the new ThermaPen IR this year, and it was getting its first workout today. The two temp readings matched today, oddly enough, except the left meat was cooking quicker than the right one (~10 degree difference). If you’re looking, you ain’t cooking – so let it be.

If you haven’t seen what the RecTeq app looks like – easy peasy.

Bonus points if you know why I named my RecTeq “Bull” pellet smoker “Takin Care of Business”. Getting close to wrap!

So you can see the meat pulled in that gorgeous color, even got some grill marks in there. It was time for a wrap. The one of the right was cooking much slower, so it took another hour before I wrapped it. I use the peach butcher paper for wrapping my cow.

Wrapped, and looking for that 195-ish internal temperature.

As soon as these hit the optimal temperature, these things looked awesome. It also got to be late at night, so I lose some picture quality – but I hope you can enjoy what has been created here.

Pulled it off at 197 and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Loving that ThermaPen!

Great crust and color
Lighter picture to get that detail

Once that rested a bit, the goal was to slice these up into cubes and start the burnt ends process. The next picture is one of my favorites, so I’m going to end “The Process” portion of this post and get right into “The Result”. It’s not complete yet, but let’s see what that smoke did.

The Result

Could I make this cut even better by going “Burnt Ends” with them? This was a pretty great moment, cause I just wanted to eat it as is. Had a perfect smoke ring, had a good crust, was moist. And I was damn hungry.. but I am also committed. Let’s leave this behind and get with the saucing.

I didn’t portion out how much brown sugar, nor BBQ sauce on here – I just kinda sprinkled and sauced until I thought it was ready. I’d say maybe a quarter-cup of brown sugar, and maybe the same or more of BBQ sauce? You want that sticky, flavorful exterior – so do it how you want.

Normally, I’d go with a thicker BBQ sauce for the result I just described.. but after that sliced picture, I dragged out that homemade BBQ sauce. If you recall from my previous post about Making Cooks your Own and sauces, I wanted to see what the thin BBQ sauce – homemade – did to enhance this.

Sprinkle, sauce and stir. Coat each piece and get it back on the smoker.

If you’re wondering about that other piece of meat that was taking awhile – it continued to take awhile. I had one roast completely done before the other one hit that 195-ish temperature. Such is life sometimes. It did create a different mindset when having these Burnt Ends on the smoker.. I let them go longer than I thought I needed to, because I wasn’t constrained on any kind of timetable. If I screwed this one up, I had the second to scale back the time. I left them in that BBQ/Sugar glaze for probably 2 hours.

Same temp – 275 – until YOU want to eat them. Is Burnt Burnt Ends a thing?

So there’s your Poor Man’s Burnt Ends. Chuck Roast smoked at 275 until about 160, wrapped in butcher paper until about 195, cubed, sauced and sugared and back on the smoker until it’s the way you want it.

These were great, and even great re-heated. Put them in the microwave at work, and like moths to a flame – co-workers were all like “what you got there?”. Was it as good as a brisket burnt end? Well – I suppose not, but this also wasn’t a brisket. This turned out to be one of my favorite smokes. I hope you try it and enjoy it as well.

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Thanks, see you at the next one!

The Recipe