It’s everywhere in Texas. Everywhere. You can walk around downtown Austin and breathe in its sinful aroma. You’ll see flashing neon signs in the tiniest of towns calling to you – making you want to sit your plump behind down and eat until your fat-pants no longer have any stretch to them. You’ll want to lose your dignity to it by wearing an over-sized baby bib to protect your clothing from the juiciness that is…BARBEQUE. Oh yes, my friends, it’s my first post and it’s about the good stuff – meat!
I love meat, I really do but if you’ve ever eaten out with me, you’d think I was a fish fanatic or that I like to commune with those vegetable eating rabbits. Why? Because I do that Halal/Zabihah/plus Kosher meat thing and in Austin, the choices are limited. When you’re sick of eating biryani, mensaf, or lamb tagine and want a BBQ fix (although, if you have a mensaf recipe, holla at me because I haven’t eaten it in like, 10 years) what do you do? Well, make it yourself!
What follows are 5 (wordy) Steps to making a moist and flavorful beef brisket in the oven. Making brisket doesn’t have a lot of ‘hands-on time’ because the fridge and oven do most of the work. It does take a little planning to get into that hungry belly, but it’s truly worth it.
5 Step Program
Step 1: Choose and Trim
Step 2: Marinate in Coke (Yes, Coke)
Step 3: Cover in Dry Rub of Choice
Step 4: Wrap it Up and Bake, Bake, Bake.
Step 5: EAT
You’ll need:
Hunk of brisket
Can of coke
Ziplock bag or non-reactive dish.
Dry Rub (recipe to follow or store-bought)
Beef broth
BBQ sauce
Woodchips, soaked (mesquite or pecan etc)
Baking Tray
Roasting pan with roasting rack
Aluminum Foil
Thermometer
Step 1: Choose and Trim
This may sound stupid, but you need to find a halal butcher that actually sells brisket. The first time I wanted to make it was for an iftar – and I needed 24lbs of the stuff. Crazy? Yes. I knew my lovely local butchers though, and I came prepared. I brought a labeled picture of a cow with me. True story. After a lot of explaining and un-offensive hand gestures, they finally figured out what I wanted. I waited a week to pick it up, only to discover that they’d really butchered it; it still turned out well enough that I wanted to try it again.
Now I know better- we have a dealer, supplier, friend who lives in Houston. We work on a bartering system. We provide shelter for him and his family and they provide halal, organic, antibiotic-free, trimmed brisket from Phoenicia (awesome place). Pretty good trade-off, right?
Generally speaking, you’ll want ½lb of uncooked brisket per person. That sounds like a lot, but over the course of the cooking, your brisket, unfortunately, will shrink considerably and that ½lb will become ¼lb.
If you’re lucky enough to have a butcher who knows what they’re doing, ask them to trim your brisket for you, otherwise you can do it yourself. You’re looking to end up with about ¼ inch layer of fat to cover it. This fat cap will slowly melt as the brisket is being cooked and leave you with juicy brisket goodness. There may also be a fat pocket in the middle of the brisket – get rid of this too. Trimming the brisket isn’t difficult but it may take a bit of time because some cuts have way too much fat – after that done, it’s all pretty simple.
Step 2: Marinate in Coke (Yes, Coke)
Take your trimmed brisket and score the top and bottom of your brisket with a knife – through the fat cap and lightly into the meat. Then place your meat in a non-reactive dish (no metal dishes please, as they can react with the coke/marinade and kill you dead …or something). Depending on the size of the brisket, a ziplock bag can work well for this. Pour in a can of coke and stick it in the fridge. Why Coke? Well, it can be Bepsi but basically you just need something that has some acidity to help tenderize this tough cut of meat.
If you’re doing a small cut of meat, a few hours will do. I usually do this overnight (because I may as well make a huge chunk of meat if I’m going through all this trouble) and flip the bag over once or twice to make sure it’s evenly marinated.
Step 3: Cover in Dry Rub of Choice
Once your brisket has floated around in the Coke for awhile, take it out of the ziplock bag or dish and discard the remaining Coke. It’s then time to thickly coat your brisket in a dry rub. This is basically a combination of several spices which gives the brisket a wonderful taste. You can buy a ready-made rub or throw some spices together yourself. Again, if it’s a small cut of meat, 3 or 4 hours marinating will do but I marinate mine overnight. Here’s an example of the Paula Deen rub I use:
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tsp paprika
1 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 bay leaf, crushed
1-2 tablespoons of worchestershire sauce
2 tablespoons of liquid smoke
Step 4: Wrap it Up and Bake, Bake, Bake
Your meat is ready to go into the oven! I’ve read literally dozens of blogs and recipes on how to oven-cook a brisket and this part, I think, is what really makes a difference. If you place the brisket in an oven proof dish with a little liquid, what you’ll end up with is something tasty but more akin to a pot roast as it ends up boiling in the liquid instead of steaming/smoking. So don’t! Set up your brisket like this:
Soak woodchips thoroughly in water for at least 30 minutes. Transfer them to a baking tray. Add a little water. There should only be enough water so that they won’t completely dry out over the course of cooking. Fill a roasting pan with about ¼ – ½ inch of beef broth and place the roasting pan on top of your woodchips (I elevated my pan off of the woodchips by using a small grill underneath it). Place a roasting rack into the roasting pan and then top it off with the brisket, FAT SIDE UP. Did you see I already had the foil underneath everything?
The use of liquid smoke will help get some of that smoky flavor into your brisket.You should find woodchips and liquid smoke in your grocery store – at least in Texas you do. Once that’s done, wrap everything up tightly using several sheets of foil folded to create one humongous sheet. It’ll look like this big foil bullet:
Set your oven to 275F. For every pound of meat, you’ll need to cook it for one hour. For example, if you have 3lbs of meat, you’ll cook it for 3 hours. If you have 12lbs, you’ll cook it for 12 hours. If it’s heavier than that, check to see if your oven has an automatic shut off after 12 hours (mine does, I found that out the hard way).
You will really, really, really be tempted to peek and open up that big foil bullet but don’t! Just let it do its thing and ‘cook low and slow’ until the last hour. When 1 hour remains, open the foil and slather on some of your favorite BBQ sauce and then cover it again. We use Salt Lick BBQ sauce – it’s a local joint.
In the last 10 minutes, open it up once more and turn on the broiler so that you’ll get a nice dark ‘bark’ on top without letting it dry out. Once time is up, check the temperature of the meat – it should be right around 195F and fork tender.
Let the meat rest for 10 minutes or so before cutting it or else all the juice will run straight out. Cut across the grain of the meat in thin slices of about ¼ inch. (An electric knife helps here.)
Step 5: EAT
Yes, your long journey has ended. It’s time to inhale that sinful aroma AND chow down on the meaty goodness that is brisket.
The dark outer-layer is called ‘bark’ – it’s not burned, it’s just BBQ heaven. You can see that most of the fat has melted down, leaving you with moist, tender meat. This gives you an idea of how thinly it should be sliced.
Pingback: January Wrap Up - Haute Muslimah