Recipe Mutiny steals recipes from food blogs and recipe sites. Then we publish them. With credit (Naturally).
Saturday, March 16, 2019
What Is the Difference Between Brisket and Texas Brisket?
Maybe you’ve never wondered, “What is the difference between brisket and Texas brisket?”—maybe you didn’t even know there were multiple types of brisket. But there is a difference, and it’s all in the cut. Find out more about the finer points of brisket, with side trips into corned beef and pastrami, burnt ends, and even barbacoa.
Anatomy of a Brisket
Williams Sonoma
Brisket is cut from the breast section of a cow, just below the chuck; there are two briskets per carcass, and each brisket consists of two distinct areas separated by a layer of fat. The point (also called the deckle) is the richly marbled, fatty section of meat that sits on top of what is called the flat, the bigger, leaner bottom section, which also has a more even thickness.
Point vs Flat
If you’re browsing the meat section of the average grocery store, the 2- to 6-ish-pound hunk of meat you’ll usually find labeled “brisket” is most likely a trimmed flat (also called the first cut). This is the cut for slow cooking and braising in your Crock-Pot or Dutch oven, and other moist heat cooking methods; if you smoked it for hours and hours like a Texas brisket, it would have the textural appeal of leather.
It’s rare to find the point or deckle sold separately, but you’re more likely to see it around St. Patrick’s Day because it’s an ideal cut for corned beef. The higher amount of marbling (i.e. intramuscular fat running through the meat) will help keep it tender as it’s braised for hours, and impart more flavor. You’ll probably want to peel off the really big pockets of jiggly connective tissue once the meat is cooked, but by then it will have served its purpose anyway. If you prefer a leaner start, go with the flat.
The point is also the piece you remove from a cooked brisket to make burnt ends (more on that below).
Texas Brisket
When you’re talking Texas brisket, you’re talking about a full, packer brisket (i.e. the entire cut, with both point and flat sections intact) that weighs anywhere from 8 to 12-plus pounds. This is what pitmasters smoke at “low and slow” temperatures (225°F to 250°F) via indirect heat for 8 or more hours for classic BBQ brisket—meat that is tender and imbued with a smoky flavor so delicious there’s no need for barbecue sauce (although that never hurts).
You can use a full Texas brisket or packer brisket for making other dishes that are braised or slow cooked if you like, but if you have the time and the tools, its highest calling truly is barbecue.
Brisket Recipes
Below are just some of the many fabulous ways to enjoy your brisket, and there’s something for all palates—and levels of patience.
Texas-Style Smoked Brisket
Jody Horton/Texas Monthly
Here’s the dirty little secret about Texas-style smoked brisket: Most formal “recipes” are bogus because they focus on some fancy brisket rub or sauce and give you zero guidance in setting up your charcoal or wood smoker and running it between 225°F and 250°F for eight or more hours. If you’ve never actually cooked a full, packer cut brisket or run a smoker for half a day, Aaron Franklin’s no-frills breakdown is a great place to start. (He is the main behind the famous Franklin Barbecue in Austin, so he knows what he’s talking about.) Get the Texas-Style Smoked Brisket recipe.
Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto, $20.99 on Amazon
Get more of Aaron's expertise in cookbook form.
Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Beef Brisket
Chowhound
For the cooks who will never attempt a Texas brisket, nor lose any sleep over this fact, this is your pitch-perfect, fall-apart-tender brisket recipe. Some of us would prefer you not ever refer to the outcome as “barbecue,” but the same “us” would gladly accept an invite to eat this at your house, anytime. Get our Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Beef Brisket recipe.
Grandma Irma’s “California” Brisket
Chowhound
Food snobs, take note. There’s much to love about this back-of-the-box recipe, and it starts with Irma, who was too busy bringing home the bacon in the ’70s (protesting the Vietnam War and fighting for equal rights) to fuss over artisanal, frou-frou ingredients. We also love producing a melting-tender brisket in less than three hours (that’s just as tasty served as a plated dinner or sliced for a sandwich). It’s a good reminder of why we cook: to feed the people we adore, but more importantly, to have the time to enjoy their company. Get Grandma Irma’s “California” Brisket recipe.
Red Wine Braised Beef Brisket
Still, if you want to go a little more highbrow than Grandma Irma’s brisket, this is how you get there. (It takes a full bottle of wine, so be sure to get another one to drink along with.) Get the Red Wine Braised Beef Brisket recipe.
Burnt Ends
Hey Grill Hey
Burnt ends happen when a pitmaster surgically removes the point from a smoked brisket, cuts it into cubes, and tosses those cubes back on the cooker in a pan, where they turn into spicy, charred, fatty nuggets of bliss. When you’ve aced the art of the Texas-style smoked brisket, burnt ends are the next step in barbecue bravado. If you’re not cooking a full brisket, keep an eye out for point cuts (ask your butcher to save a few) and you can make burnt ends from scratch—perfect if your favorite part of smoked meat is always the bark. Get the BBQ Brisket Burnt Ends recipe.
Oven-Smoked Pastrami
Chowhound
There’s no easy way to say this: Making pastrami is not for weenies. It is a time-consuming endeavor that requires a huge hunk of brisket, a few special ingredients, and some MacGyver-ing in the kitchen. Truthfully, though, it’s not laborious; most of the time involved is just you waiting 10 days while the meat cures in the spice mix. And you can skip the oven-smoking rig if you own a smoker or large kettle-style grill that can be set up for indirect cooking. Get our Oven-Smoked Pastrami recipe.
Slow-Cured Corned Beef Brisket
Shutterstock
Yes, you can make a St. Patrick’s Day corned beef with the eye of round, but what would your ancestors think? The point cut is traditional (although a trimmed 5-pound packer cut would work fine, too) and yields fatty, seasoned slices perfect for a sandwich year-round. Get our Slow-Cured Corned Beef recipe.
Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef Brisket
The Recipe Critic
Brisket does well in the slow cooker, as we’ve already established, but slathering it in barbecue sauce isn’t your only option. Try a Mexican brisket with chipotle, garlic, cumin, and oregano, and pile those juicy chunks into tortillas for some of the best tacos you’ve ever had. Get the Slow Cooker Barbacoa Beef Brisket recipe.
Chinese Brisket and Turnip Stew
Chowhound
Truly a world traveler, brisket is great in classic Chinese dishes too; this one is a tender braise fragrant with ginger, star anise, garlic, and chu hou paste. Serve it with vermicelli noodles for a new favorite winter stew. Get the Chinese Brisket and Turnip Stew recipe.
Colleen Rush is a food and travel writer who eats, drinks, cooks, and writes mostly in New Orleans, but also … everywhere else. She is the author of “The Mere Mortal’s Guide to Fine Dining” (Broadway Books, 2006), and coauthor of “Low & Slow: Master the Art of Barbecue in 5 Easy Lessons” (Running Press, 2009) and the upcoming “Low & Slow 2: The Art of Barbecue, Smoke Roasting, and Basic Curing” (Running Press, 2015). Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
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New Cookbooks to Devour If You Haven’t Yet
Top 9 Recently Published Women-Authored Cookbooks
Whether you dabble in collecting recipes or consider yourself a cookbook connoisseur, it can be a challenge to determine which ones are actually worth owning. Cookbooks—especially those published recently—are an investment of not only money, but also time and attention. You need to look beyond the drool-worthy photos and easy-to-understand instructions, and consider whether a particular cookbook’s recipes are ones you’d actually make at home. If they call for hard-to-find ingredients, complicated techniques, or just don’t inspire you to dash into the kitchen and get cooking, then they’re probably not worth it.
To save you the trouble of figuring it out for yourself, we’ve come up with a list of the top nine recently published women-authored cookbooks you should make room for in your personal library.
“Dining In: Highly Cookable Recipes” by Alison Roman, $15.99 on AmazonBuy Now
When was the last time you glanced at the recipe names in a cookbook’s table of contents and immediately feel compelled to make every single one? There’s a reason Alison Roman’s recipes go viral on social media; flipping through these pages, you’ll be itching to get cooking. Yes, of course, you need to bake those Insta-famous salted butter and chocolate chunk shortbread cookies for yourself if you haven’t already. (Why on earth haven’t you yet?!) But you’ll also be tempted by her inviting, relatable style and simple instructions to try so many other recipes; anchovy-butter chicken with chicken fat croutons, spicy, garlicky white beans, fennel and grapefruit salad with honey and mint, and fried eggplant with harissa and dill are just a few examples. Bottom line: there are so many winning recipes in this cookbook, you’ll never get bored with it.
“In My Kitchen: A Collection of New and Favorite Vegetarian Recipes” by Deborah Madison, $22.09 on AmazonBuy Now
Deborah Madison, whose name is synonymous with vegetarian cooking, is not afraid to admit that her tastes have changed and her recipes have evolved over the past few decades. Whether or not you’re a fan of her bestselling “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone,” her newest cookbook deserves a spot on your shelf. Much like Alice Waters, Madison’s focus is on crafting simple, seasonal recipes that let quality ingredients shine, such as white peaches or nectarines in lemon-verbena syrup, roasted pepper and tomato salad with basil and capers, zucchini pancakes with feta and dill, and potato and chickpea stew with sauteed spinach.
“I Am a Filipino: And This Is How We Cook” by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad, $22.48 on AmazonBuy Now
Even if you weren’t aware that Filipino food has been touted as “the next big food trend” to hit the U.S., thumbing through the recipes in this cookbook will make you agree it should be. The authors boldly declare in the beginning pages, “This is not just a cookbook. It’s a manifesto.” Why? Because the cuisine of the Philippines has been overlooked, they explain, and we have truly been missing out as a result. In addition to recipes for dishes that reflect a Chinese, Spanish, Mexican, and American influence, you’ll learn about Filipino food history and culture. Ponseca also shares touching personal stories to give her country’s cuisine context, and the pages are chock-full of lush photos worthy of any high-end travel magazine.
“Bravetart: Iconic American Desserts” by Stella Parks, $23.79 on AmazonBuy Now
This cookbook reads like a greatest hits list of every American dessert you could ever want to try to make at home. You’ll struggle to decide which recipe to try first—the red velvet cake or the oatmeal cookies, the cherry pie or the banana pudding, the devil’s food chocolate ice cream or the yeast-raised potato doughnuts. If you’re good at following instructions (and, when it comes to baking, you really need to be), you’ll appreciate Parks’s thoughtful and precise directions. As an added bonus, many of her recipes include alternate instructions to make them gluten-free.
“Now & Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers” by Julia Turshen, $23.79 on AmazonBuy Now
If you’re looking for inventive ways to use up leftover food and prefer a low-stress approach to menu planning, Julia Turshen has you covered. The recipes in this book are cleverly organized by occasion—brunch for a crowd, no stress Thanksgiving, Middle Eastern dinner outside, easy all-green lunch—but you’ll be tempted to make them anytime. Turshen’s encouraging words and reflections on her own eating experiences make you feel like you’re cooking side-by-side with a trusted friend who’s got your back. You know, the kind who generously shows you how to make her favorite dishes, including the best matzo ball soup, mustardy deviled eggs, spiced banana brown bread, and lamb burgers with grilled red onions.
“The One-Bottle Cocktail” by Maggie Hoffman, $16.93 on AmazonBuy Now
One of the things that may have prevented you from experimenting with mixology at home is the lack of a full bar. When cocktail recipes call for expensive liqueurs and obscure ingredients, it can put a damper on your enthusiasm (not to mention your wallet). That’s why Maggie Hoffman’s collection of cocktail recipes, organized by spirit, is worth owning. The ingredient lists are inventive without being intimidating, and the photographs are stunning.
“Sweet Potato Soul: 100 Easy Vegan Recipes for the Southern Flavors of Smoke, Sugar, Spice, and Soul” by Jenné Claiborne, $13.38 on AmazonBuy Now
Jenné Claiborne’s cookbook proves that vegan soul food is not a contradiction in words. Through the inventive use of meat substitutes and bold, balanced, flavors, her recipes will please vegans and omnivores alike. Standouts include cauliflower fried chicken, jackfruit jambalaya, coconut corn chowder, gumbo with sausage made from red beans, and ginger-kissed peach cobbler.
“Salt Fat Acid Heat” by Samin Nosrat, $22.50 on AmazonBuy Now
By now, you’ve likely heard of Samin Nosrat, the author of Salt Fat Acid Heat and endearingly enthusiastic host of the Netflix series by the same name. She’s likable, knowledgeable, and if you’ve watched her show, you probably want to be her best friend (like I do). But do you actually own her cookbook? Because it’s worth the hype. In addition to the colorful and charming hand-drawn illustrations, it’s so much more than just a collection of recipes. Think of it as one of the coolest textbooks on cooking you can find, complete with information on food science, culinary technique, and simple lessons for improving your skills in the kitchen. Nosrat aims to give you the confidence to play with flavors and make a recipe your own, but don’t misunderstand—this is not just some dry educational tool. She makes cooking fun—and isn’t that what trying out recipes should really be about?
“Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One” by Anita Lo, $17.98 on AmazonBuy Now
No need to cue the sad violin music if you’re eating alone with this cookbook in hand; it’s a beautifully illustrated, inspiring collection written by Anita Lo, a talented chef with a wickedly wonderful sense of humor. To the solo diner’s delight, she’s crafted recipes you never thought you’d make just for yourself—mac and cheese, chicken pho, New England clambake, orange olive oil cake—without an obscene amount of leftovers. A table for one never sounded so sweet.
All featured products are curated independently by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, we may receive a commission. For more great hand-picked products, check out the Chowhound Shop.
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