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I’ve been working on perfecting a culmination of serveral receipes and I think I’m getting close.   This brisket came out very moist and had an incredable bark and flavor.  While some would argue that this same receipe could be made in the Big Green Egg in 10-12 hours, what I have found is that keeping my imersion circulator at 60 degrees over night is ALOT ( just add water before bed time) easier than keeping my BGE at 250 degrees over night (which usuall involves me getting up in the middle of the night to check on it). 

Ingredients

·         2 lb (half 4 lbs flat cut brisket)

·         ½ cup sugar

·         ½ cup salt

·         2 tablespoons sugar

·         3 table spoons kosher salt

·         2 tablespoons ground black pepper

·         Soaked wood chunks – Hickory, Pecan, maple, oak, fruitwoods such as apple, cherry, peach

·         ½ cup beef broth

Instructions

1.       Cut slits in the fat cap in a crosshatch patter.

2.       Brine the brisket in a 50/50 salt, sugar solution (4 quarts water) for 1 hour.

3.       Combine kosher salt, pepper and sugar in a small bowl

4.       Rub the salt sugar pepper mixture over the entire brisket and into the slits.

5.       Flavor the brisket by smoking it for 120 minutes in a 200 degree smoker (fat cap down) via indirect heat method on BGE with a handful of soaked wood chunks.

a.       You could use the BGE to cook the brisket at 250 degrees until meat temperature reaches 185 (4 to 6 pound brisket flat will take about 8 to 10 hours).

b.      Wrap tightly in foil with a half cup of beef broth and rest in warm ice chest for 1 to 3 hours.

6.       Vacuum seal the brisket with a half cup of beef broth. While the French Laundry cooks there brisket at 147°F (64°C) for 48 hours, I prefer to cook my brisket at 176°F (80°C) for 24 hours.

7.       Let rest for one hour in sealed bag, remove from bag and cut against the meats bias.

Recipe adapted from –

1.       Cook’s Illustrated – Barbecued Beef Brisket on the Charcoal Grill

2.       BGE Operating Manual & Cookbook – Beef Brisket by Nature Boy

3.       The Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking – Brisket by Douglas E. Baldwin

If you follow Top Chef you know that during the ‘Last Supper’ episode, Leah got ousted for serving Wylie Dufresne’s (from WD~50) favorite meal of Eggs Benedict to Jacques Pepin, Lidia Bastianich and Marcus Sammuelsson(from Aquavit).  She made a couple of mistakes with her dish which included diluting her hollandais, but the thing that caught my eye was that she slow-poached her eggs Sous-Vide and the whites were runny. Leah slow-poached her eggs because Wylie’s restaurant WD~50’s speciality is molecular gastronomy which utilizes scientific cooking techniques to achieve astounding flavors and textures and she wanted to impress him.

So I noticed during the show that Leah had set her immersion circulator at 63 °C and it’s said that just a few degrees difference in cooking temperature will greatly affect just how much the egg white solidifies. The issue is that egg white doesn’t coagulate until the temperature reaches 80 °C, while the yolk begins to thicken around 65 °C and sets around 70 °C. So I had to see if the popular Sous-Vide egg recipes on the Internet, 65 °C for 1 hour is the perfect poached egg…

So I fired up my immersion circulator at exactly 65 °C for one hour.  I used three temperature probes to make sure I had the temperature exactly right and the results were astonishing -

After I cooked the eggs for one hour, I peeled them in a tepid water bath.  During that process, I lost quite a bit of the egg white, so I’m not sure how Leah’s egg whites could have been runny as it doesn’t seem possible to peel the egg in a water bath (as she did) and still have runny whites?  But that’s how the Top Chef judges described Leah’s.  My egg whites were perfectly soft.

I’m not even sure how to describe the texture and flavor of the yokes. My imeadiate description was gelatinous, a term which Karen didn’t find too appetizing, so I thought creamy or silkey might be a better way to describe them, but I’m not really sure those words fit either… I just have to say it was one of the more incredible flavor texture combinations I have ever eaten.. who would have thought a simple cooked egg yoke could defy explanation? (Although I think gelatinous while not too appetizing is still the best term)  

To net it out, I would definitely do this again for soft poaching eggs as I really think this is one of those culinary experiences that is hard to describe but you have to experience… and as my dad pointed out, you better not be hungry if it takes you an hour to cook an egg…  But dad it was worth every minute of the wait!

Bon Apetit!

Mark