close

SIMMER + SAUCE

Carnitas-Style Slow Cooker Brisket

This carnitas-style slow cooker brisket is divine.  I think brisket is always delicious and there are many ways to make it, but this is special.  I have a bunch of recipes for brisket that I love and use often, but this time I wanted to try something a bit different, and boy, did I find a good one.  This lovely recipe is not mine: it is from Feed Me Phoebe, a great gluten-free food blog I like. I have adapted the recipe only slightly, but the original recipe be seen here.

Despite only a few simple ingredients, this brisket is rich, flavorful, and satisfying either straight-up, as I served it here, or shredded and used as a taco filling. I liked this brisket recipe so much, that I made it for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, back in September.  And at my potato-loving son’s request, we had it with latkes, proving how versatile this recipe can be.

slow cooker brisket spices

Cumin, smoked paprika, chili powder, cinnamon and garlic make up a dynamic carnitas-style seasoning that just works.  The addition of hard cider not only helps tenderize this cut of beef but also adds earthiness and a slight sweetness.

brisket

Brisket, for those that don’t know, is a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest of either beef or veal; it is one of the nine “primal cuts” of beef. Because of the structural make-up of the brisket itself, which contains a lot of connective tissue, tenderizing and cooking a brisket is absolutely essential.  This is where a lot of home cooks make mistakes, and I have done so many times myself.  With this in mind, long, slow cook times help, and so does something acidic, like hard cider.

Hard cider is a fermented apple juice, which is lightly effervescent, tart, yeasty and dry. Hard cider is a great tenderizer in this recipe, and a bit different from what you typically see.  If you are unfamiliar with hard cider, be sure to try some before cooking all of it; it rather good. One of my favorite simple cocktails is actually a Snakebite, which is hard cider mixed with a good lager beer–absolutely delicious.  Mission Trail makes a great hand crafted hard cider that I like, but there are numerous brands out there so no need to use this one, feel free to experiment.  This is a great dinner option for a cold weekend night and for groups big and small.

hard cider for brisket

About the Author

Andrea Potischman

I am a professionally trained NYC chef turned CA mom and food blogger. I post about real food, with doable ingredient lists that are family friendly.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Comment Policy

Simmer + Sauce reserves the right to remove or restrict comments that do not contribute constructively to the topic conversation, contain profanity or offensive language, personal attacks, or seek to promote a personal or unrelated business. Any post found to be in violation of any of these guidelines will be modified or removed without warning. When making a comment on my blog, you grant Simmer + Sauce permission to reproduce your content to our discretion, an example being for a possible endorsement or media kit purposes. If you don’t want your comment to be used for such purposes, please explicitly state this within the body of your comment. If you find evidence of copyright infringement in the comments of simmerandsauce.com, contact me and I will remove that in question promptly.