Oven Baked Brisket

A few years ago, my younger self would have scoffed at the idea of cooking a brisket in the oven, but cold weather, darkness, lack of time, and the need for a potluck dish to feed up to 20 of my co-workers caused me to actually embrace the idea last week.

I used the Cook's Illustrated brisket recipe circu 2005 that I credit for helping me fine tune my competition brisket technique. After experimenting with the recipe a little bit back in the day I drastically improved the consistency of my brisket at KCBS contests. I would gladly post a link to the recipe if I could find one, but most of the links are to personal blogs and discussion boards that have reprinted the recipe from the published magazine. If I run across a direct link to the recipe, I'll post it here.

Whole brisket trimmed to make it a "flat".
I used a skillet for 7 minutes to help sear the meat side.

I flipped the brisket and skipped the skillet for another 7 minutes.

Then I carmelized some onions with a little brown sugar.

I don't have any more pictures of the process to share, but to summarize the onions were layered across the bottom of the pan with the brisket placed on top. I finished off the brisket in the oven for 3 hours at 300 degrees. At that point the brisket was 198 internal temperature.

I removed it from the oven and let it rest 30 minutes at room temperature before slicing. The slices were marinated in the au jus overnight in the refrigerator. The fat was skimmed from the surface before reheating.

The brisket was reheated for 25 minutes with some cooking wine and 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar as suggested by the original recipe.

An oven cooked brisket will never compete directly with a smoker cooked brisket, but it was actually pretty good overall.