Coca Cola Brisket | Impromptu Monday

Описание: When I first heard about Coca-Cola brisket, I thought some people must like Coca-Cola so much that they cook their briskets in it. Digging slightly deeper, I thought it was genius. The classic Coca-Cola contains the following ingredients:

Carbonated Water, Sugar, Colour (Caramel E150d), Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavourings Including Caffeine.

The sugar gives the sweet taste to the brisket and the sauce and improves its ability to caramelise. The caramelisation is also reinforced by the E150d colouring itself. On the other hand, the phosphoric acid balances the sweetness with the right amount of acidity. It’s the perfect sweet and sour cooking liquid in a can. And given that caffeine’s boiling point is way higher than water, you might even get some extra energy from it. (Not a doctor. Please don’t quote me on this.)

0:00 - Intro
0:52 - Fat Cut v Point Cut
1:29 - Rendering the Beef Fat
2:16 - Slicing the Onions
2:35 - Increasing the Heat & Searing the Brisket
3:09 - Caramelising Onions with Coca-Cola
5:39 - Adding the Brisket Back To Cook
6:46 - How Long Do You Cook Your Brisket
7:16 - Check on the Brisket
8:02 - Carving & Plating

By all accounts, the beauty of the dish is you can throw everything in the oven or pot and wait for your fork-tender, perfectly balanced brisket, but since it’s Impromptu Monday, I thought I’d do a bit of unnecessary work.

A few things came to mind. First, a bit of browning in the beginning is a no-brainer. The Maillard reaction makes the meat taste meatier.

Second, many recipes call for dried onion soup mix. I thought we could use the rendered fat from the brisket to cook some caramelised onions to give the dish some extra texture and deeper flavours.

Third, when I make caramelised onions, instead of low and slow, I always like to do it at high heat and keep deglazing with water or sake. This is normally done for speed, but since we have some Coca-Cola here, I decided it would be fun to deglaze with the Coke instead.

A side note in terms of the choice of cut. I normally always prefer the deckle to the flat, since it has more inter-muscular fat, making it always more forgiving. I used the flat here because I want to be able to isolate and render some fat for the onion and get a good browning on the flat flesh side.

Ingredients
Brisket - flat end
Vegetable oil
Onions - about 3, thinly sliced crosswise
Coca-Cola Classic - 250 ml
Chicken stock - 250 ml
Hot sauce - to taste, I used about 30 ml during cooking and served the dish with hot sauce on the side
Salt
Black pepper
Lemon juice - to taste

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 120°C (302°F) fan.
2. Add vegetable oil to a casserole dish at medium heat (induction 6.5). Season the brisket with salt and pepper on both sides. Add the brisket fat side down to the casserole. Cook until the fat side is golden brown and a significant amount of fat has been rendered. Adjust the heat if parts of the brisket start burning.
3. Increase the heat to medium-high (induction 7.5) and flip the brisket carefully. Cook the flesh side until browned. Transfer to rest on the side.
4. Add the sliced onions and season with salt and pepper. Cook at high heat (induction 8.5) stirring constantly. When the bottom starts to slightly burn, add a dash of Coca-Cola and scrape the burnt bits vigorously with a spatula. Repeat this step until the onions are well browned, similar to what you would expect from a French onion soup. Lower the heat if necessary.
5. Add the remainder of the Coca-Cola, the chicken stock, and the hot sauce. Add the brisket fat side up back to the casserole. Make sure the flesh side is mostly covered. Top up with more Chicken stock if necessary.
6. Cover with a lid or tin foil, and transfer the casserole to the oven. Cook for 5 hours or until fork-tender.
7. Before serving, skim off most of the fat and add a dash of lemon juice.

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