Sous Vide Brisket

The most tender brisket you can imagine.

Beef Brisket is considered the acid test of a BBQers skill.  This cut of meat needs special treatment in order to be tender and smoky.  Most folks will smoke a brisket for a day.  Many will inject and brine before that. Mine is "dry brined" for two days. and sous vided for 54 hours.

I tried making a "smoky" brisket when I first got my sous vide rig, but it turned out weird.  Not smoky, but tender. Kind of like a braised brisket. This last weekend I think I really nailed it. Just in time for super bowl!

By luck I went on the Monday before super bowl to the local Costco and saw a vacuum packed whole prime brisket for $2.99/pound.  The largest that they had was 15.5 lbs.  I got it home and started trimming off the copious amounts of fat.  4.5 lbs of it.  Leaving just a small fat "cap" and a stripe of fat on the point end of the flat.

I then cut it into 3 more manageable pieces.

A wash of equal parts liquid smoke, molasses, and liquid aminos was brushed on to the meat.
Smoked salt was then generously sprinkled over the meat and it was loosely vacuum bagged for a 2 day rest in the fridge.

After the "brine", the bags were cut open and the meat gently patted down.  Then they were more seriously vacuum bagged for the long cook.

145F for at least 48 hours (mine went 54) will break down the connective tissues.

While these were cooking I had to make some more rub.  I modified the recipe that I used for my ribs by omitting everything but the salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and smoked paprika.

After the bath the pieces were unbagged, dried and brushed again with the rest of the wash.  Then I applied a liberal coating of the modified rub that I made.

The brisket pieces went into a 250F oven for just over an hour to set the bark.

The point end was shredded and mixed with half a bottle of Sweet Baby Ray's for the best BBQ beef that I have ever made.

The small and med flat pieces were sliced and consumed quickly.

I served them on some torta bread that I bought at the Costco.  Many people added BBQ sauce, or mayo, or salsa, or pickles, or jalapenos, or some combination of the above.

I just slapped pieces into my food hole. Nom nom nom...

In the future I will cut the brisket the way that the competition BBQers do it by separating the two muscles horizontally.  I will also make some burnt ends.

I still feel like trying to simulate a smoker with sous vide is probably harder than just setting up a smoker (particularly the pellet type).  I guess that means that my outdoor kitchen will feature a Traeger pellet grill/smoker, a griddle or flat top, two burners and my sous vide rig.