I am obsessed with the food network and the cooking channel. I watch them all the time and record a ridiculous amount of shows. I love to learn new techniques and get inspired by new foods ideas. One of my favorite shows is Claire Robinson's Five ingredient fix. The premise of the show is that she can make any disk great in five ingredients or less. Pretty great huh? When a recipe contains 10+ ingredients I am immediately turned off. That is to much work and money. One of Claire's shows a couple of weeks ago featured a slow roasted brisket. It looked amazing and I knew it would be in my near future. I have cooked a lot of beef in my day but BBQ....not so much. I have already wanted to try it but was intimidated by it. This recipe is so easy and requires little knowledge about BBQing. The only downfall is that brisket is expensive. I bought a 3 lb slab and it cost me $21!!!!! WHAT! That is insane. I figured I would go ahead and use what she made but next time I may use a less expensive cut of beef such as london broil, flank steak, boneless chuck roast or sirloin tip. There are plenty of other options that would be just as great. Anywho, I only cooked about 1.5 pounds this go around. I am so excited that I have another 1.5 pounds in the freezer to make this recipe all over again soon. The meat was so tender and falling apart when I brought it out of the oven. My mouth was watering the whole time. Oh my you have to try this pronto!! A couple things I did differently. The recipe states to trim the fast, I did not :) The fat bastes the meat while in the oven and in my opinion keeps it moist and adds a ton of flavor. Instead of using 6 lbs, I used 1.5. Which means the cooking time was drastically reduced. I cooked mine for almost 3 hours and it was to long. The meat was still delicious but a tad dry. The internal temperature only needs to reach 185. Next time I will cook for closer to 2 hours. And that's about all I changed. Claire's idea of dipping the rolls in the juice is genius!!!! It almost turns the sandwich into an Italian beef of sorts. So messy but OH SO GOOD!
Braised Beef Brisket
Ingredients
- 1 (6-pound) beef brisket, trimmed of fat
- 1/2 cup BBQ spice blend, be sure and check sodium levels
- 4 cups water (1 cup cold, 3 cups hot)
- 1 tablespoon very finely ground coffee
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
- Freshly cracked black pepper
- 1/4 cup cider vinegar, preferably unfiltered
- 6 potato or dinner rolls, split
Directions
- Rub the brisket generously with spice blend, cover with plastic wrap and let marinate overnight in refrigerator.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Put the roast, fat cap up, in a roasting pan. Add 1 cup water to the pan and roast the brisket uncovered for 1 hour.
- In a medium bowl, combine the coffee, brown sugar, pepper, to taste, 3 cups hot water and cider vinegar.
- Remove the brisket from the oven, pour the coffee mixture over the brisket, cover with foil and braise until brisket reaches an internal temperature of 185 and is fork tender, about 3 hours. Remove to a carving board to let rest.
- Simmer the braising liquid in the roasting pan on the stovetop, skimming fat and allow to reduce just slightly or to desired consistency.
- Thinly slice beef across the grain. Dip the meat slices or the cut sides of the rolls in the reduced sauce. Make sandwiches with the meat and serve. Pour the remaining sauce into a small bowl and serve it with the sandwiches.
I made a simple tomato salad on the side. I received some garden tomatoes from a friends mom this weekend and could not wait to eat them. I think garden tomatoes taste SO much better then store bought tomatoes. They are so juicy and delish. I simply cute them into wedges and then in thirds. I then marinated then in a tad of olive oil, S & P, a touch of vinegar, basil and oregano. I didn't have fresh herbs but you can absolutely use either. I let it sit in the fridge for about an hour and then dinner was ready. I loved this meal and think you will too. Enjoy!
Cheers :)
