The Best Recipe for a Tender Brisket, According to a Butcher

Whether you’re celebrating Passover or Rosh Hashanah, having a backyard BBQ or just gathering with friends on a Sunday, a simple beef brisket recipe can be the perfect way to feed a crowd. With a side of mashed potatoes or a lightly dressed green salad, a wine-braised brisket in the oven, cooked until fork tender, can be the ultimate comfort food. Here’s how to make the best beef brisket—with a few tips and tricks to get you there with flying colors.

There are a handful of cooking firsts that stand out clearly in my brain amongst the daily fog of cold cereal and potato chip sandwiches. One is the first meal I ever made for my family: buttered spaghetti with boiled potatoes. There’s also the first time I ever perfectly poached an egg: I was in college working in a restaurant kitchen under the tutelage of a crush, and I was cooking on an induction burner.

Then there’s the first time I learned about “scraping up the browned bits”: I was eight years old, helping my mom cook sweet and sour brisket for Rosh Hashanah dinner. It was, I think, one of my earliest introductions to the crucially messy and ugly steps—the blackened bananas, the bloody bones, the pasty roux, the browned bits—that often go into preparing the most comforting foods.

We eat sweet foods on Rosh Hashanah with the hope of ringing in a sweet new year. The sour part of the brisket (often achieved with vinegar or orange juice) is probably there as a practical measure to balance out the sweet stickiness of the dried fruit or honey, but I was always told it’s also meant to balance the darker memories of the past with the hope of a sweet future. But tender brisket is also served for other major Jewish holidays such as Passover, which commemorates the Israelites’ escape from slavery and departure from Egypt.

What I love about sweet and sour brisket is that everyone and their grandmother has a different way of achieving the same flavors; some people swear by dates and vinegar, some use Welch’s grape jelly and powdered onion soup mix, and others turn to crushed tomatoes and brown sugar. Somehow, all that searing and scraping and simmering produces the same iconic flavor. It’s a little bit like a less acidic version of Carolina BBQ—only Jewish. It is a plate of ugly, gut-warming comfort food, even if you didn’t grow up eating it, which makes it great for any holiday or event where you’re feeding a crowd. Christmas! Hanukkah! A non-traditional Thanksgiving! You really can’t go wrong.

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Now, let’s talk about the best way to cook brisket so that it’s tender and delicious, rather than tough and chewy. First things first: browned bits. What are they and do they matter? The old way of thinking was that you sear the meat (thus, creating browned bits) before braising it to “lock in moisture,” While this is a nice idea, it turns out that it’s scientifically untrue.

So why do we still do it? Flavor! Sure, you could toss the raw brisket and some raw onion into your Dutch oven and it will still absolutely cook through and be fine—but fine is not fine. Searing the meat and caramelizing the onions before you throw them in to simmer will make a world of difference in the complexity and depth of your dish’s flavor. With meat, this is the result of a chemical reaction called the Maillard browning reaction; with onions, it’s because of caramelization. Thus, searing meat such as brisket has nothing to do with locking in moisture, but it is an important step for developing the flavor of the beef.

So beyond browning the meat, what are some other key cooking tips to get your brisket just right?

Here are some of my best tips for cooking a delicious brisket, including how to make the most of all those delicious browned bits:

• With meat, a dry surface is important for even browning, which is why recipes often tell you to pat your meat dry before searing it. For the best results, I like to first pat the meat dry with a paper towel, season my meat with kosher salt, and leave it in the fridge uncovered on a cooling rack (with a sheet pan underneath it) for one hour before cooking. This not only helps to dry out the surface, but it also creates a kind of quick brine that will add even more flavor. Over the course of an hour, the salt draws out the meat’s moisture and then sucks its own moisture back in, meaning your meat will be more evenly seasoned throughout.
• Use a neutral oil with a high smoke point for searing. It may seem pointless to dry your meat out and then add wet oil to the pan for searing, but the oil does a lot of good: it helps to conduct heat; it acts as a buffer for all the uneven, craggy surfaces of your brisket; and it creates a smooth, hot surface for your meat to evenly sear. Don’t use olive oil, because it will burn before it gets hot enough to sear. Instead, stick with neutral oil that has a high smoke point such as canola, vegetable, peanut, grape seed, sunflower, or refined coconut oil.
• Caramelizing onions takes patience, but your patience will be rewarded. These sweet alliums are a transformative ingredient for beef brisket. If you’re in a rush, you can add a little baking soda to raise the pH of the onions, which will quicken the process. I would also recommend using a combination of a high smoke point, neutral oil (like one I mentioned above) for evenly distributing heat over a long period, along with unsalted butter for flavor.

• Brisket is traditional for this recipe, but there’s no reason other hard-working cuts couldn’t be substituted. If you can’t find brisket, try chuck eye, shank, or bottom round. They cook about the same and taste alike too, so it’s a seamless substitute, especially if you’re late to the game and can’t find true brisket in the grocery store.
• Buy your meat from a butcher. As a butcher, I might be biased, but I think being able to talk to a human about what you want makes a big difference. Ask them to trim down the meat and tie it up, and find out where it came from and how it lived; it makes for more confident cooking. Butchers will be more knowledgeable than an inanimate grocery store shelf and you’ll probably walk away with some bonus cooking tips.
• Buy grass-fed beef; it’s better for the animal, which means it’s better for you. Plus, it gives you a major leg-up on flavor, and that’s important if you want to still taste your meat in a recipe with this many powerful ingredients.
• Time to cook: Now that you have procured the meat and properly seasoned it, it’s time to let it cook for a few hours. It will go faster in a Dutch oven (about three hours total) compared to cooking it low-and-slow in a slow-cooker, which typically takes 7-8 hours, but it’s all a matter of preference.
• Resting time: Like all meat, let brisket rest before carving it. Give it at least 15 minutes, but 20 minutes is even better for the juiciest meat (this is when locking in the moisture matters).
• After resting, slice your meat against the grain. This is especially important with tougher cuts like brisket that are made up of long, strong muscle strands. If you cut along those strands, you are lengthening and toughening the muscle; if you slice against it, you’re shortening the muscle structure, therefore tenderizing it. The grain can be hard to spot on cooked meat, so if you’re unsure, give a corner of your brisket a little slice on a cutting board—the grain on cooked brisket can sometimes be easier to see from the inside.

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Additional ideas from the editors:

1. Nach Waxman’s Brisket of Beef

The best recipe for beef brisket is a straightforward one: Here, Nach Waxman borrows from two beef brisket recipes he loves (his mother’s and his mother-in-law’s). The genius trick, though, is carving the meat halfway through cooking before it gets too tender. And oh, does it get tender.

2. Pressure-Cooker Corned Beef Brisket With Charred Cabbage & Dill Vinaigrette

Hugh Acheson’s recipe turns a 4-pound beef brisket into a fork-tender corned beef brisket, thanks to spices like caraway seeds, yellow mustard seeds, Tellicherry black peppercorns, allspice berries, and Insta Cure #1, which is a basic sodium nitrite cure for meats, poultry, and fish.

3. Sweet & Smoky Brisket

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Reminiscent of Texas BBQ brisket, Leah Koenig’s recipe makes use of canned tomatoes, vinegar, and brown sugar for a sweet but balanced gravy.

4. Milk-Braised Brisket With Potato & Onion

“I ate a lot of brisket growing up,” writes Recipe Developer Emma Laperruque. Her version is simple and classic—with one twist: the braising liquid. As Marcella Hazan braises pork shoulder in milk for tender meat and rich gravy, so too does Laperruque take advantage of the wonders of lactic acid to break down the fibers of a beef brisket.

5. Brisket Ghormeh Sabzi

Jew-ish cookbook author Jake Cohen takes classic Passover beef brisket and hybridizes it with both Ashkenazi and Mizrahi food cultures. His Persian treatment can be tasted in the dried limes and bright, fresh herbs.

6. Steven Raichlen’s Salt-Crusted Beef Tenderloin Grilled in Cloth (Lomo al Trapo)

Once you’ve mastered brisket, take a stab at this traditional Colombian beef preparation. The clothbound salt crust is a brilliant way to lock in moisture, yielding the juiciest possible beef, while grilling right on the coals imparts an unmatched smoky flavor to the meat.

7. Chicken al Mattone With Thyme Pesto

Think spatchcocked grilled chicken, but hit with a brick. It’s the Italian way! In all seriousness, this Tuscan technique for grilled chicken yields a slightly smoky, extremely juicy, crispy-skinned bird that is seriously delicious with any vegetable side and a big hunk of bread.

8. Coffee-Crusted Barbecue Beef Ribs

Yes, these coffee-rubbed ribs take a whopping 13 hours. Yes, they are worth it. You’ll know for sure after that first bite of a deeply-spiced, sticky-sweet crusted, fall-off-the-bone tender beef rib. Patience is a virtue—you’ll be rewarded with four perfect racks of ribs. Tell your friends to bring the coleslaw and cornbread, and you’ll be good to go.

10. Matilda, Maple, & Garlic Pork Shoulder With Crispy Skin

With nearly 250 glowing reviews, this maple-garlic glazed, pull-apart-tender pork shoulder is a winner. Don’t believe me? Take it from reviewer Sarah B., who writes, “This recipe is SLAP YOUR MAMA GOOD!! I’m telling you it may be one of the best recipes I have ever made!” I mean, I don’t think there’s anything else left to say about it.

11. Kalbi-Style Short Ribs

Short ribs are some one of the best, most overlooked cuts of meat in American grilling. Sure, they braise like a dream, but what about when it’s too hot to turn on the oven? Take a note from Korean barbecue, head outside, fire up the grill, and make these spicy short ribs. The sugar in the marinade gets crispy and slightly charred over the coals, setting these ribs aside from the ones in brothy braises of colder months.