BBQ DINNER MENU: Five Spice Pulled Brisket Sandwiches; Cilantro Slaw; Warm Blue Potato & Green Onion Salad; Chocolate Bark with Cinnamon-Coated Nuts and Cherries
When I made my Passover Brisket this year, I accidentally cooked it a little longer than usual. This wasn’t a disastrous mistake. It just meant that the meat ended up being too tender to slice into long, neat pieces. But when the filling of a sandwich, this tenderness is really something to strive for. Since the glop of stringy meat wouldn’t have looked so gorgeous alone on a plate next to someGreen Beans and Kugel, I decided to stuff it inside challah rolls (don’t worry, this was actually pre-passover), and serve it to friends. When the 4 pounds of meat disappeared even quicker than the sliced version from past years, I knew I was onto something.
Recently, I tried out the recipe again, this time giving the brisket sauce a sweet and spicy Asian kick with the use of some Chinese Five Spice Powder. I made sure to cook the brisket for an extra half hour so the texture would be perfectly tender and shredable, like Pulled Pork. Serve this piled on sandwiches with a little siracha and scallions, and you’ll be in brisket heaven.
From my kitchen, albeit small, to yours,
Phoebe, THE QUARTER-LIFE COOK
**Recipe**
Five Spice Pulled Brisket Sandwiches
Makes 8 servings
For this dish to be doable, you really need a stocked spice cabinet. Most below are staples of mine. The one wild card is the spice for which this dish is named: Chinese Five Spice Powder. Luckily, you can work around this by adding a little bit more of the other spices and adding a little cinnamon and nutmeg to the mix as well.
Ingredients
4 lbs brisket
6 garlic cloves, cut lengthwise into 4 pieces
3 cups beef stock
2 yellow onions, sliced
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp salt
1 tsp Chinese 5 spice powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 cinnamon stick
2 bay leaves
8 onion or challah rolls
scallions, seperated into strands length-wise, for garnish
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
Using a paring knife, cut small incisions in the meat and shove the pieces of garlic into them. Do this until the meat is stuffed with garlic all over. Place the brisket in a rimmed baking dish (preferably metal) and brown it in the oven, about 10 minutes per side.
Remove the meat, and pour in the beef stock (NOTE: if you are using a pyrex dish, wait a few minutes for the pan to acclimate to room temperature so it does not shatter. For more on this, see my disaster here). Turn the oven down to 350 degrees, cover the dish with foil, and cook in the oven for 1 hour.
In the meantime, saute the onions in 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-low heat until soft and caramelized, about 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove the meat from the oven, and add the remaining ingredients to the pan. Using a fork, whisk them all together with the beef stock. When the onions have finished cooking, arrange them on top of the meat. Cover the pan again with foil, and return it to the oven for 3 hours.
Remove the meat from the oven, and transfer it to a cutting board. Using a fork, pull the brisket apart into sinewy chunks. Return the meat to the sauce and serve, or store in the fridge over night-the brisket can be made a day or two in advance.
