Marinading & Cooking a Brsiket..Western Style!

More about BAR-B-Que!


Ah, Yes, back to that bar b que brisket we talked about rubbing down the other day.

I think we about covered the rub part of the whole thing and, as simple as it sounds, that rub will do more to add flavor to your meat than anything I know of.

However..............BEFORE you rub.....you could marinade if you wanted and that's a good thing too. Sometimes I marinade and sometimes I don't depending upon which way my wind blows on any given day. It's kind of a matter of taste, if you will.

Ok, let's now talk marinade if that particular activity floats your boat.

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons or more of Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of pepper

OPTIONAL but doggone good!

1 can of beer or 12 oz of apple juice from concentrate

Lay out the beef in a shallow pan and pour this mixture all over the brisket and then cover and stick it in the ice box.
Go watch movies, work cattle, roundpen your colts, change the oil a couple of times in your pickup truck, do something for several hours or even overnight. The longer you marinade, the better this works.

When the beef is done marinading and patted dry with some paper towels, and you have lightly slathered the brisket in some good olive oil, then you rub it down with all the spices we mentioned earlier.

Get out the heaviest skillet you have and turn up the heat under that booger until it's hot more than just a tad more than medium high then stick the meat in the hot skillet and sear it so the outside is brown and deliscious and the inside is juicy and tender.

Make sure you have fired up the grill. Now, if you are cooker or grill handicapped, meaning you aint got one of these things and for the life of me I have NO idea why anyone in their right minds would live life without a grill or cooker, why then you can wrap the brisket in tinfoil tighly and put it right there in your kitcken oven at 300 degrees for about 3 or 4 hours or until the meat is falling apart tender.

What you want is indirect heat here. Lot's of smoke too. One way to make sure you get smoke is to soak some apple or oak or pecan or better than any of the above, MESQUITE woodchips in some water overnight and then drain the water and spread the chips all over the whitehot coals.

LOW & SLOW is the key to any good bar b que and your brisket is going to need to cook for about 3 or 4 hours under indirect, low heat to make it mouth-watering and Texas tastin!

I am assuming here that yall arent going to own a cooker the size of a one ton dually Ford truck. If you do, fine, turn the heat down and forget about the meat for about 10 hours but if you dont then this is a good way to have the taste of Texas without all the trouble.

Just make sure you do all this on a low fire and v-e-r-y slowly.

GOOD STUFF TO GO WITH BRISKET

Mexican Horseradish Sauce

Easy to do and GREAT with bar b que! In fact, this is a great compliment to any kind of cooked beef.

1 little jar of prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
little bit of lemon juice

Mix this up and enjoy a dash on your beef.

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FIRECRACKER JALAPENOS

30 to 36 good sized whole peppers
About a pound of ground pork sausage.
Enough bacon strips to wrap the stuffed peppers in.
( 12 or 15 pieces of bacon, halved)
cream cheese
diced onion
garlic powder
parsley
cayenne pepper or paprika
Shoot you can even chop or dice some cooked shrimps if you have them, dont be shy this is YOUR appetizer, after all!

Wash the jalapenos and cut a slit lengthwise in the peppers and scoop out the seeds and membranes with a table knife or a spoon.

Cook sausage and drain well.

In a bowl mix up the cream cheese, parsley, onions, sausage, garlic powder, and/or shrimps and then...

Stuff the jalapenos and wrap them in the bacon slcies and stick them with toothpicks to keep them from coming apart on the grill.

Grill your peppers on one of the tin grill pans available at the grocery store, the ones with the little holes in it for about 15 or 20 minutes or until all is crispy and happy.

Well, that's about it! This all started because Tamara asked me to pass on some of our version of in-home, easy to do bar b que that still tastes like bar b que.

Sauce you say? What about sauce??? Dipping sauce or bar b que basting sauces? Pardner, thats a whole nother blog!

Remember food is sharing. Food is reaching out from right here in East Texas and taking the taste and aromas all the way to California or Maine or anywhere folks enjoy good cooking.

Food is laughter and family and friends and fun, memories both good and bad and it's all rolled into a meal!

Say, how about YOU sending me some recipes form your family kitchen to mine?


Yall Can send me stuff at ralph@nutrader.com or POST A RESPONSE to my blog, whatever makes your monkies chatter!

Thanks yall and be sure to holler at us on the RADIO show...MONDAY from 2 until 4 in the afternoon cst, and also FRIDAY 7 until 9 in the evening CST. The CALL in number to the show during airtimes is 347 215 8849.

You can listen to archived shows at www.blogtalkradio.com/ralphsbackporch too!