There’s never a bad time to cook brisket on the BBQ; even if the weather is ropey outside, you can always cook it undercover in the smoker and enjoy succulent brisket meat throughout the week for lunches and dinners. Here is what you need to know about cooking your brisket beef.
What is Brisket?
Brisket is a cut of meat from the breast of the lower chest of cattle; it is a succulent, tender cut that needs to be slow cooked to break down the connective tissue making it tender and juicy. Brisket beef can be enjoyed any time of the year, but it’s especially popular at summer BBQs.
Brisket beef is known for its succulent beefy flavor; it’s one of the most flavorsome types of beef, even more so than chuck. It’s important to cook beef brisket correctly if you want the best results; it needs to be slowly cooked; around one hour is required for every pound of beef.
Why Make Brisket?
Brisket is a cut of beef from the chest muscles of a large cattle animal; these muscles are used to support the weight of the animal and build its strength. For this reason, brisket beef is extremely tough and needs to be broken down when cooking, but it makes a succulent meal.
Once the connective tissue is suitably dissolved, this cut of beef is one of the most tender and flavorsome cuts you can find. There is another advantage to making brisket beef at a BBQ; it takes all day to cook, so you can spend time drinking and chatting with your friends on the patio.
Brisket Ingredients
Brisket beef is a delicious and unmissable meal for a BBQ, but you need to know how to cook it, or you risk a disaster. First, you need to make sure you have the right ingredients for your meal. Start with the brisket beef; source a cut that’s between 1.5-2 kg from a quality butcher shop.
Other ingredients you need include olive oil, paprika powder, onion powder, garlic powder, cumin powder, mustard powder, and black pepper. For the BBQ sauce, you can buy a ready-made product or make your own using garlic cloves, mustard, ketchup, and brown sugar.
Cooking Brisket
Cooking the brisket is crucial to getting a quality meal for your friends and family; the danger is overcooking or undercooking the brisket, making it unsatisfactory at best and inedible at worst. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to cook the brisket for one hour for every pound of beef on the meat.
Brisket also needs to be slow cooked to ensure that all the tough connective tissue is broken down and tenderized, to achieve this, you need to cook the brisket over a three or four-hour period on a heat of 225 degrees. Be careful not to dry the meat too much, or it loses its flavor.
Slow Cooking Brisket
Brisket needs to be slow-cooked for the best results. Firstly, the meat needs to be tenderized in the oven or BBQ; it takes hours of slow cooking for the heat to break down the tough connective tissue. Not only that, slow cooking allows the meat to absorb the smoke flavors from the BBQ.
It’s possible to cook brisket at a higher temperature, you can sear the outside of the brisket and raise the oven temperature for faster results, but the brisket you get will be tougher and less succulent; it will also be absent of much of the smoky flavor we normally associate with brisket.
Cutting Brisket
Brisket meat has two sides, a lean side and a moist side, each side of the meat has a different grain and needs to be cut in a different direction. The first thing to do is separate the two halves of the meat using a serrated knife. Always use a proper brisket knife for cutting the brisket meat.
Once the brisket is divided into two halves, make inch-sized cuts with the serrated knife; when you’re cutting, use a sawing motion to ensure you get the best results. The moist side of the meat needs to be turned around and cut against the grain. The cuts are used for many meals.
Serving Brisket
Brisket can be served in any number of ways; it can be served on plates with salad or in rolls and sandwiches; it can also be used as a succulent side, although brisket tends to be the main event thanks to the effort it takes to make. Remember that brisket meat shrinks while it cooks.
If you are serving a group of people, aims for 250 grams of brisket meat per head, this shrinks to 200 grams once cooked. Some foods that you can serve with your brisket meal include coleslaw, baked beans, scalloped potatoes, Brussel sprouts, and corn on the cob at a BBQ.
Brisket Nutrition
If you’re serving brisket at your event, you can be sure your guests won’t be hungry at the end of the night. Brisket meat is not only nutritious, it is also high in calories; a typical serving of 260 grams contains around 476 calories. It also has some high values of protein (66g) and fat (14g).
People who eat brisket can enjoy high nutritional value in general; it includes protein, carbohydrates, fats including saturated and polyunsaturated fats, fiber, and vitamins A and C. Brisket is not only delicious and traditional, it is also nutritious and supports and healthy body.
Brisket Favorites
Brisket meat is not normally served as a steak; instead, it is cut into smaller brisket pieces with a serrated knife and used as a filling for sandwiches or meat in salads. That said, there is nothing wrong with serving brisket meat by itself, along with some tasty bread rolls and special sauce.
Brisket favorites tend to be a sandwich that allows you to dress up or dress down the meal depending on your events and tastes. These are firm favorites at BBQ events and house parties. Since you cook a lot of brisket meat at once, it’s also a good idea to save it for later.
Leave a Reply