Spiced Apple Butter Brisket Recipe - How Can I Adapt to the WSM?


 
M

Mordechai F

TVWBB Member
My wife has a boiled brisket recipe she makes that has outstanding flavors, and I'd love to adapt it and figure out how to smoke it on the WSM.
The recipe calls for boiling the meat (the horror!) for about 2.5 hours in water, along with onion, garlic, and 10 whole cloves. You then make the following sauce:

10 oz apple butter
1/2 cup dry white wine
2T minced scallions
3T prepared mustard
1.5t kosher salt
.75t curry powder
.5t black pepper

Sauce goes on the meat, meat in oven at 325 for another 30 minutes, you can baste a couple of extra times while roasting.

I find the combination of the fruity sweetness of the apple butter coupled with the tang of the scallions and spice of the cloves to be an awesome combo. Problem is the meat is inevitably either somewhat dry or tough, or both.

Since I started doing high-heat brisket cooks on the WSM (thanks to the amazing crew on this board) I've had my eyes opened as to how I can get brisket that's moist and tender almost every time. I want to adapt the above recipe to a high-heat cook, and I have a small 4lb flat piece that I can experiment on tomorrow. (I usually do packers, but one time my wife needed a small piece of brisket for a dish so I bought a full packer and cut and trimmed my own meat. It was a great way to really learn the contours of a packer. I separated the point from the flat, and then cut the flat in half.) I'm thinking I do a regular high heat cook, but add a foil packet of cloves to the cooker along with my smoke wood. I'll cook for around two hours at 325/350, then foil the meat for another hour. I'm thinking I'll then transfer the meat to another foil pan (retaining the juices on the side obviously), coat with the apple butter sauce, and cook exposed in the WSM until tender. That's the draft gameplan, but I'm worried about drying the meat out as well as about the high sugar content of the apple butter burning. I also have no idea as to if I should use a rub or not. Any and all ideas and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Maybe marinate it over night in the onion/garlic/clove mixture, and instead of water, use beef broth or stock. Then sauce it, put your rub on top of the sauce and throw it in the smoker as you normally would. Did the sauce then rub thing yesterday on ribs with Sweet Baby Rays honey bbq sauce and my rub on top of the sauce. It got nicely blackened/ caramelized and sticky. That's the way I do all my pork. Maybe it's just me, but I sorta like the sauce burning...... Or just follow the recipe in the smoker. You shouldn't need a too deep pan for a flat. Maybe not letting it boil as long
 
here's my suggestions:

add a bit of clove to your rub. I feel clove is pretty intense, I'd think a little will go a long way here.

I've never burned clove, but I have done cinnamon bark, allspice berries, and star anise. make sure its in a foil packet, you dont want spices to burn. I've found certain spices (like star anise) release smoke that taste identical to them ground up, therefore, IMO, its more effective to use a small bit in your rub rather than burning a couple of ounces to get the same effect. This isn't a big deal if you can get a bulk bag of the stuff cheap (like cinnamon bark) but clove can be pricey.

Look for Indian grocers. we have a couple here that sells huge bags of spices for a couple of bucks. Quality isn't key here when your goal is to burn it.

the scent of smoldering spices can be heavenly (think incense in church) so if you are going to add a foil packet of clove to the mix, be sure to do when your guests arrive.

I'd consider adding a bit of the sauce to the foil stage. After foiling you can baste the brisket with the sauce/dripping.
 
Thanks for the input. J, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Meat is already up in the cooker, gonna make the sauce now and add some to the foil when the time comes. Turns out we had a large container of whole cloves that someone gave us when they moved and had to clean out their pantry, so I felt fine going ahead and burning a bunch in a spice packet along with the smoke wood.
I did rub down the flat beforehand with Wolfe Rub Bold (my go-to rub nowadays, force of habit I guess), so I'm hoping all the flavors getting mashed-up together play nice, will let you know how it goes.
 
Table sugar (sucrose) doesn't caramelize till the 320s; burns at 350. Fruit sugar (fructose) caramelizes and burns at lower temps. Keep an eye on things and be ready to foil the pan should the sauce darken excessively.
 
So Kevin, should I not sauce when I transfer to the foil, and instead use the sauce at the end at a lower temp as more of a finishing glaze? Per your guidance, once the meat is foiled I usually just let the temps run, usually they get up about 370 or so. Or should I sauce when foiling, but then ramp down the temps once foiled?
 
OK, foiled earlier than usual at 158 or so. Coated the bottom of a foil roasting pan with the sauce, flipped the flat so the fat cap is now up, sauced the rest of the meat.
Here goes nothing...
 
I'd add sauce when foiling the first time. The meat will throw off some juices which will mix with the sauce, the foil will protect the sauce from direct heat. If you then move the meat to a pan to finish, transfer it with the sauce (mix it with the meat juices first), and shoot to keep the cooktemps 325-350, at this point. Monitor for tenderness and for darkening. Foil the pan if darkening occurs before tenderness does.
 
Been in the foil for an hour and forty mins. Still a ways off from tender, will keep on checking. (Starting to get the usual nerves, temp reads 211!, will stay strong...)
J, I'll definitely provide you feedback on the cloves, and yes, they did smell fantastic when they went on the coals, but I would not consider this a controlled experimental environment by any means.
 
J, I'll definitely provide you feedback on the cloves, and yes, they did smell fantastic when they went on the coals, but I would not consider this a controlled experimental environment by any means.
Click to expand...

data is never perfect.

You didn't use clove in the rub, and there's none in the sauce, so if you can taste it, it worked.
 
Dinner's done. It was a valiant attempt on my part, but didn't exactly get there.

First, to J's question, the burning cloves definitely imparted flavor. There was none in the rub, none in the sauce, and yet there was some on the tongue. I used an amount equivalent is size to a large gumball or cherry tomato (I know, I should have counted the actual number of whole cloves, sorry) and created a small upright foil pouch to hold the cloves. Note that I added the cloves about 45 mins into the cook after the main blast from the initial smokewood had tapered off somewhat.

Two things I know went wrong, and need to figure out how to fix. First, the meat was somewhat salty, probably because the salt in the rub combined with the salt in the sauce was overkill. Second, I either overshot tender by the additional cooking time exposed in the oven at the end, or I once again panicked and pulled the meat too early. (Arrgh!) The brisket was on the tough side.

However, the whole thing has given me serious food for thought. Is it possible to get a tremendous brisket from a moisture and tenderness standpoint, and still utilize finishing sauces or glazes? The thought of one of Larry Wolfe's Sri Racha marmalade sauces wrapped around a brisket is making my head spin...
 
I have been reading this link with great interest and thought I would put my penny's worth in if that is ok. I did a brisket a while back where I placed a dutch oven in the water-pan with leeks,garlic,onion,lardons,bay-leaf,a little balsamic vinagar and a good lug of red wine. Then cooked the brisket above on the top rack to 135 degrees allowing the juices to fall into the open dutch oven. Then put the brisket into the dutch oven once it had taken on the smoke flavour. Placed the lid on the dutch oven and cooked it for another 2 hrs.
It turned out really nice and tender, and certainly would try it again using your recipe with the cloves and the curry powder, sounds great.
Look forward to reading your next brisket attempt with Larry's Sri Racha marmalade sauce. Now that does sound good. I wish my lot would eat spicy food as I would really enjoy making that sauce.
Cheers
Alan
 
it really doesn't have to be that complicated. Adjust your rub, cook normally, and serve with sauce.

you shouldn't have much problem taking the brisket out of the foil after bringing it to tender. Flop it back on the wsm, glaze it and 15 to 20 min of HH should be sufficient to get it to set up.

for comps I try to get my briskets back on to tighten up the bark and never really noticed problems associated with overcooking (although, like you, I usually pull them too soon
icon_mad.gif
)
 
The brisket was on the tough side.
Click to expand...
Undercooked.

And yes, if you take it to tender in the foil (whether you've made a sauce addition or not) you know it's done. You can then return it to the grate unfoiled, if desired, to firm, which doesn't take that long.
 
Originally posted by Alan Mathews:
I have been reading this link with great interest and thought I would put my penny's worth in if that is ok. I did a brisket a while back where I placed a dutch oven in the water-pan with leeks,garlic,onion,lardons,bay-leaf,a little balsamic vinagar and a good lug of red wine. Then cooked the brisket above on the top rack to 135 degrees allowing the juices to fall into the open dutch oven. Then put the brisket into the dutch oven once it had taken on the smoke flavour. Placed the lid on the dutch oven and cooked it for another 2 hrs.
It turned out really nice and tender, and certainly would try it again using your recipe with the cloves and the curry powder, sounds great.
Look forward to reading your next brisket attempt with Larry's Sri Racha marmalade sauce. Now that does sound good. I wish my lot would eat spicy food as I would really enjoy making that sauce.
Cheers
Alan
Click to expand...

Nice touch Alan! I'll be wanting to give that a try. I think would want to pull it out of the DO and back on the rack to tighten it up though. I take it from you post that it went from the DO to the table?

Nice technique, may have some other uses as well IMHO.
 
Ray. The brisket went straight from DO to table after a short rest on the chopping board. It didn't last long which is always a good sign I haven't made a complete botch job of it.
I must to admit to becoming a bit of a dutch oven fanatic along with the WSM, but there isn't many links where people of have used both. I have actually used it with two dutch oven's doing a slow beef stew and a chicken curry on a very cold winter's night in Scotland where an open fire would not have worked. So there are certainly many applications the WSM can be put to.
Cheers to you all and have a good Thanksgiving.
 
Alan, can you elaborate further? Are you using the Dutch Oven instead of using foil where ordinarily you'd be foiling? Or are you only using the DO for dishes like pot roast and the like?
 
I don't use the dutch oven instead of foiling. It was just an idea after reading on some of the sites where guys have used clay pots to stabilize the temperatures in the WSM instead of filling the water pan. I thought why not try the dutch oven as it is a large pot which absorbs allot of heat. And by cooking the brisket first on the grate above to get the smokey flavour then finish it as a pot roast. That way getting the best of both, the smoke flavour and tenderness of a pot roast. As for foiling. I foil my ribs and pork roasts. On the occasion I did the beef stew and curry we were away in the highlands of Scotland and we needed something that could cook enough for ten people. And the WSM is still the only BBQ I have found that I can cook even when the weather is terrible. I put the DO with the beef in the water pan and the second DO on the upper grate. Fired up the WSM using the minion method just after lunch and then left for the day. When we got back in the evening everything was going great. I did add some more liquid to the beef stew and it turned out fine. I left the top vent 100% open with the three bottom vents around 50% or slightly less. I didn't have a temp gauge. I do plan on installing one in the lid for future cooks. Hope that helps.
 
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