Brisket leftovers

[PeterD]

I'm planning to do a 12-14# packer in a few weeks with the intention of cooking for just 3 or maybe 4 people then having a week or so's worth of leftovers for lunches.

I have a couple of questions. The first is relating to food safety. How do I safely handle the cooldown process? After we eat, the brisket will still be quite hot so putting it directly into the fridge is a Bad Idea, but if I just leave it out, won't I risk it sitting in the danger zone for a long time until it's cool enough to refrigerate?

Second, we use a Food Saver system to vacuum-seal and I'm wondering what's the best way to handle the leftovers? Should we just slice up what we're having for supper the night of the cook then, let's say I want 8oz portions of brisket per lunch, just cut "blocks" that size, seal/freeze and then thaw/re-heat in the pouch, then slice after re-heating or should I slice the whole thing up, portion and freeze, then have the sliced pieces in the bags?

Finally, is there a better way to re-heat than immersing the sealed bag into almost-boiling water for 15 minutes? If my briskie turns out as juicy and moist as it did last time, I'd like the leftovers to retain some of that moisture (or find a way to reconstitute it in the reheating process).

Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance.

 

[CullenJ]

Peter, good luck on your upcoming cook!

Edit this portion (I misunderstood original question): I've seen this method explained before and I find it works well. If you put your leftovers in a large zip lock bag and then slowly lower it into an ice water bath, you can bring down the temps pretty quickly. Leave the top open and be careful!

I do not use a foodsaver, but this is my basic process. I slice the entire flat into typical serving slices (pencil-thick slices). I always chunk the point so I have a bunch of nuggets left as well. I will usually put about half of the leftovers in a zip-lock bag into the fridge and we'll eat off that over the next week. The rest goes into a freezer bag. I'll pull that out at sometime in the future when I want brisket again and, again, eat off that over the course of a week.

If you want to prepare individual, food-saved portions, I would slice the flat as I do above and just put a couple of slices per pouch. It will be easier to portion out and reheat that way.

Lastly, I've done about every kind of reheat method I can think of and, to be honest, most of the time I throw 'em in the microwave and they come out just fine.

 

[Gary S]

I've cooked three briskets in the last month or so. I have a Food Saver. I have bagged and frozen it both ways..sliced and in pieces. Done the same with pulled pork too. I usually let the meat cool outside of the fridge for an hour or two and then seal it for the freezer. Otherwise it goes into tupperware type containers and is refridgerated where it keeps for several days if it lasts that long.
I like the warm water method for reheating I also use the microwave but place it in a bowl with a lid and reheat on a lower power. I have also added a few drops of water when doing that. We love the left over brisket that way for sanwiches. I'm not sure about the best way to deal with the point as I have only saved it to the freezer once and I left it in a piece, wiped off the excess fat when it came out of the bag and then nuked it as above, chunked it and served with some sauce. It was still really good.

I don't notice much difference with left over pork or the brisket when vacuum sealed, frozen and reheated. The key to the microwave it lower power a lid and just a little moisture

 

[Bob Sample]

I reheat in the microwave as well on a low power setting. I slice it and portion it into sandwich size amounts and then just pull out as much as I want when needed.

 

[Mark R (LR)]

Alton Brown did an excellent episode of Good Eats on freezing meat. You can probably find the episode on YouTube. He suggested a way to try to duplicate flash freezing at home: cutting the meat into smaller pieces, refrigerating briefly, then freezing. The theory is something along the lines of - freezing the meat faster creates smaller ice crystals that do less damage to the meat.

 

[Jeff Brown (KY)]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by PeterD:
....but if I just leave it out, won't I risk it sitting in the danger zone for a long time until it's cool enough to refrigerate? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>Once the meat is cooked there is much less risk of contamination. Let is cool, package the way you like and freeze. Things like cooling in ice water help with the wait time.

 

[Stuart S]

I just did this on the weekend with a brisket and a 13lb pulled pork that I cooked at the same time as the brisket, but we didn't serve with dinner.

Sliced what we needed for dinner, then put the rest of the brisket whole into a ziploc bag and stuck it into an ice bath in the sink. Left it in the fridge overnight, then sliced and put into food saver bags and into the freezer. The reason I didn't slice the whole thing right away was to prevent it from drying out once sliced.

I ice bathed the whole PP in the other sink, then refrigerated overnight. Pulled it the following day so I could remove most of the fat that hadn't rendered out. The other thing I did was the scrape off all the gelatin that settled on the botttom of the shoulder, then heated it and mixed with some apple juice and BBQ sauce, then poured the whole shooting match over the giant bowl of PP before putting in the food saver bags and freezing. I've done this before and the results when using the bag in hot water technique are very moist.

I love the heat in boiling water method. When you open the bag you get hit with a blast of smokey meaty goodness scent and it's like it just came off the WSM.

Hope that helps!