Brisket vs. Corned Beef

For the 4th of July, Gerry and I had talked about doing a Brisket on the grill, and once I realized the 4th was on a Monday, I decided to stay with the Meatless Monday theme, so we have been thinking about this brisket for almost a week. I decided Sunday was the perfect day to try this Brisket.

I scoured the market on Saturday and found huge pieces of brisket, weighing between 8 to 9 pounds. My recipe called for a mere 3 pound brisket. I kept looking and finally found a flat trimmed brisket weighing just under 3 pounds. I was quite pleased with myself.

On Sunday morning, I carefully prepared a rub of granulated onion, celery salt, dried dill, kosher salt, and freshly ground pepper. I opened the brisket, trimmed a little more fat from it, and Gerry applied the rub all over it. It went into the refrigerator for 4 hours and then spent 1/2 hour at room temperature while Gerry prepared the charcoal grill.

The brisket was rubbed with olive oil and seared over a hot grill about 4 minutes per side. The seared meat then went back in the aluminum foil pan and had some whiskey and beef stock added. The entire an was covered with foil and grilled for 4 hours. Gerry carefully tended the charcoal fire and added coals periodically to keep the heat just where it needed to be.

After a couple of hours of grilling, some red potatoes, small white onions, and baby carrots, all tossed with olive oil and salt and pepper were added to the foil pan with the meat and covered to continue to cook for another 2 hours.

This entire process took 8 1/2 hours from start to finish and we were ready to feast. Gerry brought the pan in; removed the meat and tented it with foil to rest for a few minutes while we placed all the vegetables in a serving bowl, and strained the pan juices.

When Gerry sliced the meat, I was a little surprised by its color, but I'm not really familiar with brisket. I plated both of our dinner plates and we eagerly dug in. The first thing I noticed besides the red color, was the extreme saltiness of the meat. Two bites in and I decided this tasted more like a Corned Beef. We finally dug the wrapper out of the trash can and in big, bold letters were the words Corned Beef, which also had the words Flat Trimmed Brisket in much smaller letters under it.

What can I say; I was looking for a brisket and hence that is what I focused on, completely missing the Corned Beef label. We have decided that we really don't like Corned Beef and we can't wait to try this whole process again with the right cut of meat.