I did not publish any BBQ posts for a while. But this time I tried something new: Brisket the sous vide way.
Brisket Sandwich
The ‘traditional’ way is to smoke brisket, long and slow (see “My First DIY Smoked Beef Brisket: Day 1 – Preparation“). I like brisket more the ‘lean’ way, so the piece for this BBQ is without too much fat, 1.5 kg:
Raw Brisket
Dry rub (pepper, salt, onion powder, paprika powder):
Brisket with dry rub
To add smoke flavour, I added liquid smoke into the bag.
Sealed Brisket
Then placed into the sous vide water bath:
Brisket in sous vide water bath
“The Food Lab’s Complete Guide to Sous Vide Smoked Brisket” provides good guidance about the temperature and duration. I decided for 55 hours at 66°C:
Steba Settings
💡 The plan was to go for 55h, but at the end it was 57h. One advantage of sous vide cooking is that the duration can be easily extended.
Because it was for such a long time, I sealed the bag twice and stones keep the bag in place:
Brisket in Sous Vide Cooker
The bags did not leak:
Brisket in Sous Vide
The sous vide juices are saved for a gravy:
Sous Vide Juice
The brisket looks good, but does not have that nice bark I love:
Brisket out of the bag
To add a bark, it gets placed into the oven for around 30 minutes at 200°C:
Brisket in Oven
During that time, prepared the gravy from the sous vide juice:
- heat butter in a small pan
- add diced onion, cook until the onions are just beginning to brown
- add flour and cook until it lightly browns
- add the sous vide juices
- continue to boil to the desired thickness
- Season with salt, mustard and lemon juice
Gravy from juice
At that time, the brisket has a nice bark:
Brisket with Bark
Removed it from the oven:
Brisket
First test cut:
Brisket cut
From the liquid smoke it had a nice smoke flavour. That ‘smoke ring’ is missing, but that would not add anything to the taste (it could be added with using curing salt to the process).
Et voilà:
Sandwich
It was very, very tasty, and lean as I like it. A bit overcooked, probably because I did not cool it down before putting it into the oven: next time I will put the bag first into ice water and then add the crust in the oven. Yes, it takes a long time to cook it in the water bath, but that’s mostly unattended. So far this is the best brisket I ever cooked. Not up to the one from Rudy’s yet, but very close 😉
Happy Brisketing 🙂
Links
- Low and Slow: Christmas Smoked BBQ Veal Brisket
- Part 1: Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style – The Meat and the Salt
- Part 2: Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style – The Rub
- Part 3: Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style – The Fire
- Part 4: Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style – The Cooking
- Part 5: Barbecue Beef Brisket Texas Style – The Result
MCU on Eclipse 
I would expect a Kinetis based PID controller for the sous vide bath.
I’m just joking. 😀
LikeLike
No need to add a controller to that cooking machine, as it already had one 🙂
LikeLike
will try this. Did you add water to the Sous Vide? I can’t tell from the photo.
LikeLike
I filled up the cooker to about half level, see https://mcuoneclipse.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/brisket-in-sous-vide-water-bath.png. I did not had to add water during the process as it has a lid on the cooker.
LikeLike
Where Im from you could get strung up for putting a Brisket in the oven… 🙂
LikeLike
I know, I know, that’s why I’m hiding for now, just in case. I had the choice to do it the real traditional way (means: dig a deep pit in the back yard) or using a more modern environment to get the job done). In some sense, for that preparation method, I simply skipped the Middle Age method :-). Although I love the way getting the job done with real fire and smoke.
LikeLike
Very interesting. I live in the southeastern United States, the heart of American pork BBQ (Texas is the beef brisket center). I don’t have a sous vide or I I would try this.
LikeLike
Sous-Vide cooking is what is used in restaurants too to prepare the ‘perfect’ meat. That cooking method looks odd, but I get exceptional results with it. More time needed, but much less timning critical. And I get the meet at the exact temperature I want to have it. Using the ‘traditional’ method is very hard (at least for me).
LikeLike