Introduction
Brisket has been part of my life almost from the moment I started eating solid food. For decades, braised brisket was the centerpiece of the Sabbath dinners that took place at the home of my grandparents Ethel and Sam every Friday night. No holiday dinner was complete without my aunt Annette’s magisterial brisket made sweet with dried fruits and kosher wine and enlivened with chunks of fresh lemon and freshly grated horseradish.
As a teenager, I ate my fair share of corned beef and pastrami at Baltimore’s landmark delis. And at college I had the good fortune to work for a delicatessen that did all its curing and smoking on the premises. After college, I moved to Paris to study the history of cooking and modern French cuisine, and there I experienced a different sort of brisket—slow simmered with red wine and root vegetables and served by the stylish name of boeuf à la mode.
Back in the US, I became the restaurant critic for Boston Magazine. My beat often took me to Chinatown, where I discovered red cooked brisket (braised with soy sauce, rock sugar, and star anise). As a roving freelance food writer, I ate ropa vieja (“old clothes” literally), brisket stewed in cumin-scented tomato sauce in Miami’s Little Havana, and bollito misto (a two-brisket boiled dinner) in Italy’s Piedmont region. From there it was on to what we then called Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City) as a travel writer for National Geographic Traveler to report the pleasures of Vietnam’s brisket-rich beef noodle soup, pho.
My immersion in the most famous brisket culture of all—Texas barbecue—came relatively late. The year was 1994—I just started work on the book that would change my life (and I hope many of yours): The Barbecue! Bible. I crisscrossed Texas, feasting on briskets the color of coal, cooked in metal and masonry pits that look like relics of the Industrial Revolution. Said briskets not only smelled of smoke—they were the essence of wood smoke, just as the meat was the quintessence of beef. Tender? Let’s just say that no knives were provided and none were required. If this was brisket, what had I been eating all these years? I wanted in, and I wanted more.
This book tells the story of my brisket obsession and education. And it’s written in the reverse order of how brisket came to play such a significant role in my life.
We start with the reason many Raichlen readers and viewers will pick up this book—barbecued brisket—in all its glorious manifestations, from Texas Hill Country packer brisket to Kansas City burnt ends, and from obscenely rich Wagyu brisket to a fiery Jamaican jerk. And—gasp!—there are two briskets you actually cook in minutes directly on the grill. Chapter 2, “Brisket Barbecued and Grilled,” is by far the longest chapter in this book, just as barbecue casts an oversize shadow on America’s culinary landscape.
The next chapter deals with another distinguished branch of the brisket family tree—cured brisket. In it, you’ll find that triumvirate of great brisket deli meats: corned beef, pastrami, and Montreal smoked meat—all of which owe their rich umami flavor and inviting rosy hue to a curing salt called Prague Powder #1. (Later on, you’ll learn how to use these meats to make the ultimate deli sandwich: the Double-Down Reuben, lavished with both pastrami and corned beef.) And you’ll learn about corned beef’s lesser known, but eminently worth discovering cousin: Irish spiced beef.
In subsequent chapters, we’ll explore brisket braised (including those steaming slabs of beef I grew up on), brisket boiled, brisket sandwiches, brisket appetizers, brisket side dishes, brisket for breakfast, the best sauces and rubs for brisket, and, yes, even a brisket dessert. Together we’ll circumnavigate the globe, just as I have done many times in my pursuit of the world’s best barbecue.
But first (in chapter 1), we’ll master the brisket basics, from how to buy, trim, cook, carve, and serve this majestic cut of beef to the necessary cookers and gear.
So fire up your smoker and haul out your stockpot and Dutch oven: The Brisket Chronicles is about to begin.