Beef Brisket from the Crockpot to the Grill

I'm not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to the kitchen and especially cooking. I am a much better baker than I am cook. My friend and I collaborated on a fun page on facebook called 'dumbestic divas lazy kitchen.' Our mission was to share the easiest, laziest recipes on the planet that even we could not screw up. She blogged about all of her kitchen adventures both good and bad. Every now and then she'd have food blowing up in her oven, but she also succeeded with many of her meals. Being a newlywed and trying to cook dinner 7 nights a week was quite the challenge for me. Especially since I am a health eating freak. I related well to her blog. Between the two of us we'd write out recipes and create some good and bad meals. We got super busy and that project really slowed down. That being said, I still am not the best in the kitchen. Our page is still up and running if you want to check it out!

There are plenty of days when I decide to create a meal off the top of my head and my husband has a full jar of peanut butter ready to go in case I burn it or the flavor just is not right. Peanut Butter takes all flavor out, and he can smile and say he ate a great meal no matter what!

My goal was to make an awesome smoked bbq brisket. But who owns a smoker? I decided my next best smoker would be my crock pot. I guess I could have thought about my oven, but the crock pot won. That being said, I grabbed a nice piece of brisket, which actually may be a corned beef brisket, we're not sure. HA! I had celery, onions, shallot laying around and some beef broth so I came up with this concoction I call beef brisket, which actually tasted pretty good!






Ingredients:

• 1 slab of beef brisket
• 1 large shallot, sliced
• 2 C chopped celery
• 1 Onion of your choice, sliced
• 1 C water
• 1 box Swanson Beef broth/stock
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 2 tbsp dry mustard seasoning
• BBQ Sauce

Directions

Pour the water into the crock pot, which should be on low set for a good 9-10 hours. Throw everything in the crock pot, I prefer meat in the middle with seasonings on top and sliced veggies all around it. They say to let the meat cook, fat side down, but I kept turning it every 2 hours. After 4 hours I poured in beef stock with a can of diced tomatoes. My can of diced tomatoes happen to have jalapenos in it. Wow- did I get a spicey soup from that!

Here is where the 'dumbestic' in me comes out.

Truthfully, you really need to smoke your brisket to get a good bbq brisket, and since I did not have a smoker. I chose to cook it, just like you would corned beef, and then bbq it. NOTE: Husband was prepared with peanut butter, like I said!

My goal was to get to a bbq brisket, which left this lovely pot of a beef soup if you will. Once the brisket was removed, I had no beef. This gave me the idea to make a second meal with the broth. I grabbed some stew beef and threw it in after I browned it to cook for a soup!

After 9-10 hours in the crock pot, (last hour was on high) I pulled the brisket out with plans to grill it. Ah, but of course we were out of propane! Thank God for the Grill pan I got for my wedding shower, I LOVE grill pans. They are the best.

I put Sweet Baby Ray's bbq sauce on my brisket, while I grilled it for about 10 minutes.




The preferred internal temperature of a full cooked brisket is about 200 degrees per the meat thermometer. Well, I broke both my meat thermometers by putting them in the dishwasher. OOPS!

My meat had a nice red center, and tasted great- so I'm not worried!




How gorgeous does that look? Tastes just as great too!

I decided some broccoli and cheese would be a great fit with my brisket, and really wanted garlic bread. I had about 10 minutes and no bread baked up in the house. Rather than sending my husband or myself out to the grocery store to get some, I grabbed regular bread, added butter and garlic, into the oven for 3 minutes on broil and got my garlic toast!

It's definitely a different approach to the brisket, but tasted great and gave me two meals in one. So all in all it's a winner! Take that Charlie Sheen.