Beef Brisket

Beef Brisket is one of the primal cuts of beef. It’s the breast section located beneath the first five ribs. Brisket is one of the tougher cuts of beef and, typical of tough cuts, it’s loaded with great beef flavor.

Beef Brisket Cuts
First of all there are three brisket cuts that you are likely to see in your grocery. It’s always boneless and usually fairly inexpensive.

Whole brisket is the entire primal cut just as it comes to the butcher from the meat packers. It’s usually in cry-o-vac wrap and weighs anywhere from 8 to 15 pounds.

Whole brisket is the favorite of Texas style barbecue. You don’t normally find whole brisket in groceries (Not at mine anyway.) except on special occasions.

The whole brisket is also divided into two smaller cuts for retail. The flat cut and the point cut.

The point cut has much more fat than the flat cut and is the ideal cut if you’re going to cook it for shredded beef. Because of the high fat content it tends to fall apart after cooking and doesn’t slice very well.

The flat cut is ideal for slicing. It works great with home cooking methods and has great flavor. It can also be shredded if cooked to the proper degree.

Flat cut brisket is also the cut most often used for commercial corned beef. I’m talking about the uncooked corned beef you find in the butcher display case and not the delicatessen section of your grocery. The cooked Deli corned beef is usually top round.

I’m really glad that I’ve discovered fresh brisket on my quest for beef cooking knowledge. It has truly been rewarding.

With a little care in the selection, cooking and carving you too will be rewarded with brisket. Brisket that has great beef flavor along with tenderness that you wouldn’t expect from this beef cut.

How To Cook Beef Brisket
If you can cook low and slow then you know How To Cook Beef Brisket. Regardless of whether it’s braised, smoked, barbecued or whatever. The cooking temp should be low and the cooking time slow.

Cooking a great tasting and tender brisket begins with brisket selection.

Now that you know how to select your brisket we can get down to how to cook beef brisket.

Most cooking authorities advocate moist heat cooking methods for tough cuts of beef like brisket.

In a tough beef cut there is a pattern of connective tissues that makes the meat tough if it is not cooked with a method that melts these tissues.

There is a way to cook brisket or other tough cuts with dry heat methods. I’ve done it! I’ll get to that method shortly but first let’s go over braised brisket.

How To Cook Beef Brisket-Moist Heat
If I’m cooking fresh brisket with a moist heat method I prefer braising. Boiling and stewing just don’t seem to apply to brisket. Even though it might be good. I’ve just never tried it.

Braising is a cooking method by which the brisket is first browned in fat and then simmered, tightly covered, in a small amount of liquid at low heat for a lengthy period of time.

The long, slow cooking develops the flavor of the brisket and tenderizes it by gently breaking down its fibers.

The internal temperature of the meat reaches a level that is sufficiently high to melt the connective tissues and the fat.

The moisture in the pan prevents the outer portions of the meat from drying out until the internal temperature is reached.

Braising can be done on top of the range or in the oven. A tight-fitting lid is very important to prevent the liquid from evaporating.

A crock-pot is the ideal braising tool for braising brisket.

How To Cook Brisket-Dry Heat
Smoke cooking or barbecuing is a dry heat cooking method. There is no liquid surrounding the brisket.

The temperature of the cooker should be maintained at, or at least close to, 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking times depend of the size of the brisket but can be upwards of 10 hours for a whole brisket.

This is the favorite cooking method for barbecued brisket in Texas. It does have fans all over the U.S. and even the whole world.

The method does require a smoke cooker. They come in several types but the one I own is a water smoker. A water smoker has three sections, which are a firebox, a water pan and a cooking area.

The water pan is located between the firebox and the cooking area, which shields the cooking area from direct heat and also adds moisture to the air to help keep the brisket from drying out.

Another popular type of smoke cooker is the offset. This type has a firebox on the side of a cooking chamber. It doesn’t have a water pan because the cooking chamber is not in a direct line with the firebox.

Even though most cooking instructions will tell you that a brisket, or any tough beef cut, cannot be oven baked the fact is that it can!

The key here is low and slow.

And the best way to be sure you are, in fact, low and slow is with the use of thermometers. You need one for the oven and one for the brisket.

The oven thermometer is to be sure that you are at 225 degrees and the brisket thermometer is to tell when the brisket is properly cooked.

For slicing baked brisket I like to cook it to an internal temperature of around 185 to 190 degrees.

The low cooking temperature allows the interior of the brisket to reach that degree of doneness without overcooking the outside.

When cooked to this temperature the fat and the connective tissue of the brisket have broken down leaving it moist and tender.

The only way to know this is with a thermometer.

There is one last step to tender brisket that really doesn’t have anything to do with how to cook beef brisket. That step is carving.

Always carve brisket across the grain. All beef should be carved this way but especially brisket.

The muscle fibers in brisket are long and stringy. If you cut with the grain those fibers are almost impossible to chew.

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