Slow Cooked Beer Brisket

I purchased half of a plain beef brisket (the point end) at Falvo’s Meat Market a while back, and I’ve had it in the freezer with no real plan for it for a couple of weeks now.

I was just gonna roast it slowly in the oven for a few several hours (like 11 hours at 250 °F) after rubbing with spices, but I decided that was boring and tried a trip to the twitters to see if any of the people who follow me had any ideas.

I have to say that everybody dropped the ball with the exception of Trina, who actually sent me a handful of pretty awesome looking recipes that she found on allrecipes.com. I ultimately selected this recipe and wanted to document how it went.

I pretty much followed the recipe to the T, so refer to the recipe in order to follow along. The beer I used was a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale.

11 hours later…

I sliced the brisket (after, of course, removing the layer of fat that has given its all for the sake of the product of this meal. Your efforts were appreciated, but you had to go.). I took a cup or so of the leftover fluid (from the bottom, because we remember that water is more dense than fat), heated it in a pan, and thickened it with a mixture of 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 2 tablespoons of water.

I then served it up in the finest plastic Gladware container I own in order to store it for the remainder of the week.

This wound up being a formidable dinner for me for six nights. I actually wound up freezing the last two portions because I don’t like keeping prepared foods around too long without freezing.

It came out really good. The meat was tender and juicy, and the sauce that became of the beer, brown sugar, spices, and beef drippings was bold, robust, and packed a decent spice. I did augment the heat level with some of my Ghost Chili hot sauce in some cases, but I am indeed a madman.

Add this to the category of relatively simple prepared dishes with relatively inexpensive cuts of meat that yield plentiful portions.