This is a fantastic, easy, and delicious way to prepare brisket. The traditional methods for cooking brisket involve a crazy amount of prep work and smoking the meat for 15-18 hours, I’m too lazy for all that and they tell you to cut off the fat – that’s crazy man!
TL;DR: Cut up a brisket into manageable pieces, season it, sous-vide it for a long time, smoke it straight out of the water bath or you can refrigerate it for a few days if necessary. Impress your neighbors.
To cook brisket this way you’ll need a Sous-Vide cooker and a smoker (you could finish it with an oven or regular grill too but smokers taste better). These should be considered “Medical Devices” – since they are helping you eat healthy and preventing the complications of diabetes. For the Sous-Vide, personally, I have the older Bluetooth Anova Precision Cooker. If I was buying one today I’d just get the Monoprice Strata. It doesn’t have all the fancy internet connectivity and stuff but it’s $70 and it works – especially since once it gets cooking you just let it cook, you’re not doing anything. The Monoprice one also is the same size as the Anova so it fits in the same hole if you convert a cooler into a cooking container – which allows you to cook more at the same time and it uses less power (if you’re in Utah and want to come use my hole saw, I have one just for this). This particular brisket was for a neighborhood game night, had a lady that grew up in Texas say it was one of the better briskets she has had.
OK, so you got a whole brisket, looks good. Dry it off using paper towels.
The bags I use for my sous-vide aren’t big enough for a whole brisket. I have to cut mine into quarters.
Add seasoning. This will mostly be salt and pepper. I had a big bottle of “McCormick Grill Mates Montreal Steak Seasoning” so I used that too.
Season all the sides. It’s not even close to necessary to apply this evenly: when it’s cooking in the bag the juices will get al over the place and distribute it for you.
Put the meat into bags. I’m using a vacuum sealer, you can also just use zip loc bags that you get (most) of the air out.
Put the meat into the pre-heated water bath. There are a variety of different temperatures and durations you can use. longer time at lower temps, shorter time at higher temps. The water from my tap comes out at 140° F (60° C) so I just use that temperature.
Done cooking. At 140 this should be completed well before 36 hours but I get busy and tend to just let it keep going. With sous-vide more time = more better. I left this one in about 72 hours by the time I took it out. This particular brisket wasn’t going to be finished in the smoker for nearly a week so I just put the sealed bags in the fridge until I returned from my trip to California.
Smoking the Brisket. If you put the brisket in the fridge you may need to smoke it longer to bring the internal temperature up to serving temp, use a thermometer. I did this one for about 3 hours while I was smoking other meats.
After smoking you’re supposed to let it rest for a while to let the juices redistribute or something. Then you cut against the grain into slices and serve.
