Brisket. Overcooking. Anger.

Posted On 9 July 2022

So this is back in June 2020. I think this was my fourth, maybe fifth brisket since April.

Looking back at the rub I’d used, I’m not sure what it was. It might have just been a few spices that I had in the cupboard. But… I knew when I went to cook this brisket, it still didn’t look right… and there definitely didn’t look like there was enough fat on it. But I’d asked the butcher for a brisket, and that’s what he had.

Does that mean I should have taken it?

It’s easy to fall in to the trap, as I’ve mentioned before, that just because someone’s willing to sell you something, doesn’t mean it’s the best something nor does it mean it’s right for what you want. Nothing is more true than when it comes to meat, and specifically a brisket. I’ve learnt a lot over the last two years, and I can tell you now that if I my current butcher tried to give me that as a piece of brisket for smoking… well… he wouldn’t. But if he did try, I’d say that’s not right, thanks. It’s far too trimmed and would be good for rolling and chucking in a hot pot or something. Smoking? No.

So after marinating for the evening, it went into the oven at 10pm ish. I’m trying really hard to remember, whether I ended up putting this on the BBQ or not, I probably did but as I didn’t get photos in between I can’t say for sure. Either way, by 2pm the next day it looked like this:

Yikes.

That piece o’ meat be dead.

I get a dry mouth just looking at that meat.

So what went wrong?

1. Clearly, the cut of meat wasn’t cut out for what I wanted to be doing here. There wasn’t enough fat, and it was trimmed all wrong.
   
2. In whatever environment I cooked it, it was either not covered or left uncovered cooking for too long. If I did put it on the BBQ, again I just made things worse but putting in what was probably an overcooked/dried out piece of brisket on to smoke.

I remember very specifically how frustrated I was that time around. I knew what I’d done wrong, but the trouble is – once you get to a certain stage, there’s no real going back. So it was ruined. We still would have eaten it and had a good dinner out of it (probably made use of a lot of ketchup).

But did I mention, brisket makes an awesome Chilli? The benefit of this situation is – it can now sit in a massive pan filled with all the juicy goodness of tomatoes, beef stock, a little bit of coffee, and a load of other spices/chilli mix to make this:

I have, in the last year, often cooked a brisket with the main aim of having a Chilli from it after; I love the brisket, but oh wow, the Chilli? It’s awesome.