Chris Makes Grilled Brisket with Peanut Salsa

And have it be like that.

[Cameraman] That's what this is.

[Chris] We are all like talking to the camera.

Is that what this is?

[Cameraman] Yeah.

That's what this is.

We are doing grilled brisket with scallion peanut salsa.

People usually think of brisket

as like a low and slow braising cut,

which, you know, usually it is

but the cool thing here is that

if you slice it really thinly before marinating it,

you get like tons of flavor very quickly

and you actually don't get like

a super tough kind of chewy texture.

So we're super thinly slicing the brisket

and then we're going to hit it

with an intensely flavorful marinade.

So, all of that is gonna penetrate

very quickly into the meat.

First step is we're going to slice the meat

and get that set up in the marinade.

I froze this for about an hour beforehand

just because freezing the meat just firms it up

so it makes it a lot easier to slice.

And I like slicing it, like leaving the fat cap on

because that'll actually

add like a lot of flavor and richness when you grill it.

When I say thin, I mean like,

gunning for like an eighth of an inch.

However, it's very hard to get one long,

clean eighth of an inch slice by hand.

So, if you want to go ahead

and just slice your piece of brisket in half,

this is a pound and a half by the way,

that makes it a lot easier

to then get nice, clean slices off of it.

As you can see, we cut across the fibers of the meat,

that is doing a huge amount of work

in terms of tenderizing the meat beforehand.

If I were to cut with the grain of the meat,

all those strands of like the meat fibers

would want to stay really tough and chewy, you know,

even though we'd sliced it thin.

So really key to kind of go across the grain there.

The thing is like they're super flavorful cuts of meat

and they're not super expensive

so you can get kind of a ton of flavor,

you know, without spending a whole ton of money.

I haven't, you know, 'cause I have

to compete against Andy, you know.

Okay, so as you can see like a pound and a half

of meat ends up becoming quite a bit,

you know, looking like quite a bit anyway

when you're slicing it that thin.

Now, the marinade.

Lime juice just, you know, for brightness,

a good bit of acid, and get some

of that lime flavor in there.

Oyster saucer just 'cause it's got just tons of umami.

It's got like a lot of sweetness.

It adds a lot of body to the marinade

so it kind of like really clings

and wants to stay put.

Then, toasted sesame oil.

Brown sugar, because whatever residual sugar

is on the meat is going to kind of caramelize

as the meat is kind of you're getting all

of the Maillard reactions of like the proteins browning

in the meat so it all kind of comes together.

Grating garlic and shredding it apart

just adds like the most intense garlic flavor possible.

When you shred it apart, develop all that allicin

just like you release like all the flavor

that the garlic has to offer.

So I'm just going to whisk this together.

I just want to dissolve that brown sugar.

Brown sugar, especially, like when it hangs out sometimes

has that tendency to kind of form little clumps.

They're very upsetting.

I'm taking a minute to really work this marinade

into the meat just 'cause sometimes those thin pieces

really want to stick together

and you wanna just get the marinade in between all of them.

It's actually really satisfying to do this.

I said in the recipe, you could do this,

you know, let it marinade for as little as one hour.

Let's be honest, more is better

when it comes to marinade times.

I mean, yeah, you're going to get

some benefit in an hour just by dent of the fact

that the meat is so thinly sliced,

you know, we cut across the grains

of the in the fibers of the meat

so it's really going to penetrate,

but you really wanna give the acid, soy sauce,

and all of that a chance to really get in there.

So, gonna refrigerate this, you know,

ideally, overnight.

I don't know that you can take it too too far

in any kind of reasonable time period.

Carla, are we worried about acid and salt

in the marinade on a meat, like, couple of days

especially in the case of thinly sliced brisket?

I wouldn't worry.

If it denatures the protein a little bit,

it could be an advantage,

because brisket has tough proteins.

Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, don't worry about it.

If it was like chicken breast or something then like yeah.

Oh, yeah, then it might get a little mealy.

Mealy.

I wouldn't worry about it with uh,

yeah, I wouldn't worry about it with the brisket.

I knew you'd back me up.

Thank you.

I mean, whatever the recipe says, they're infallible.

[laughing] Exactly.

So we are going to make our scallion peanut salsa now.

The first thing I'm going to do is chop the peanuts.

I'm just doing like a rough chop.

I just want this to be kind of super textural,

but not like any kind of whole nuts to crunch into.

And I'm gonna to toast the peanuts in the oil.

We can actually set this on a bit of a low roll here.

I'm gonna kind of keep tabs on it

while we slice the scallions.

I'm gonna do a couple of things that are gonna

kind of mitigate, you know, how intense these scallions are,

because I want to use a lot

because I want a lot of texture in the salsa,

but I don't necessarily want

tons and tons of raw onion flavors.

Does anybody at home know that Andy's knife

is nicknamed Herb Slayer? [laughing]

I'm gonna trim the tops off just a little bit,

then I'm gonna cut this kind of into three sections.

So I'm gonna cut these into length-wise

little kind of matchstick-ey pieces.

[sighing] I know that seems like a terrible fuss,

but there's something like very very cool

about what this does texturally in the sauce

that you couldn't really achieve another way.

Definitely not forgetting about the peanuts.

Oh, yeah.

These are right on the friggin' edge, man.

Probably a touch too toasty.

I messed up.

I'm gonna redo those.

We're gonna own it.

Chris, burnt the peanuts.

I just want to like point out though.

It's not that they're burnt,

It's eight and a half minutes by the way.

I'm making, I'm making a qualitative choice,

you know, that I just want different peanuts.

That's all.

All right, we're going to rinse these

while we do a redo on the peanuts.

If you're going to multi-task,

do a better job of setting a timer.

I don't have my trusty tee-em-ay.

[chuckling] I am a mess.

That's why like we can't do these videos

at like five o'clock on a Friday.

So I'm gonna let this cool down

and we're gonna take this party to the grill.

So here's the meat after one day in the marinade.

So it released a lot of liquid as you can see.

Just going to lay it kind of in a single layer.

Take a second to kind of separate it

just so that when I go to the grill,

I can throw it on there real fast.

I'm also separating the meat

just so I can just season very lightly.

Lightly, but insistently.

Let's do it.

[meat sizzling]

It's worth taking a minute to just lay these out flat,

because they're going to start to cook pretty quickly.

And when you go back to kind of turn them over,

you just want to make sure you're not turning the ones

that actually don't need to be turned.

You want to expose as much of the meat

as possible to the heat of the grill.

Again, like this is a braising cut

some of these I'm going to let go a little longer.

Great color on these.

Super fired up about that.

Going like one to two minutes on that first side.

Second side, you know, 30 seconds or so.

Feeling very justified in my t-shirt choice right now,

because it's hot.

Ready, Chris?

Yeah.

And, go.

[loud banging]

[group laughing loudly]

[Cameraman] Woops.

This is like really really deeply

and intensely flavorful and it's just like

that feeling of like, oh my God, like the flavor

literally has nowhere to hide.

So we've got the beginnings of our salsa

that has now cooled down.

And, I'm gonna put the honey, I like the honey,

just because it adds a little bit of viscosity

to this dressing so it just wants

to cling a little bit better to everything.

Lime juice.

Definitely needs salt.

And then I'm just gonna take a little bit of cilantro,

just going to leave that super rough.

So this is our salsa.

It's so good.

Bright, sweet, hot, crazy aromatic.

And the peanut and the sesame is really special.

[Cameraman] Do you wanna come taste?

Yeah, so basically like, it's super thinly sliced brisket,

you know, which normally like

it would be obviously a braising cut.

That's not what I think of when I think of brisket.

No, not at all, right?

Oh my god, you need to have that nubbin though.

Whoa.

The flavors got like nowhere to hide, right?

It's like the meat, charred, deeply savory,

and then you got that brightness of the salsa.

Even though you told me exactly what it is,

I still was still expecting a more

traditional, brisket, barbecue flavor.

No.

It's not that at all.

It's not that at all.

It's like a spicy, fragrant, delicious--

A little sweet.

Really like lively, flavor.

I love this!

I love your brisket.

I forgot how spicy it is.

There's an edge.

I feel like it's still like everything's pretty much like

in balance in like a crazy extreme way like

so herby, so bright, so tart, so a little sweet.

I'm not even hearing what you're saying right now.

[Chris] Yeah, sorry [laughing].

It's just really good.

I'll take this with me.

All right, cool.

Thanks a mil.

All right.

I feel like we're going to call this a win.

Let's just do a slow fade-out on Andy's shoes.

Really ugly.

Poor, Andy.

I think that wraps it up.

A brisket can be super delicious

just thinly sliced, grilled.

It just needs a little TLC on the slicing

and a lot of flavor in the marinade

and, you know, I think we definitely cracked this one so

I'm feeling really good about that.

And I think I'm going to make fun of Andy's shoes some more.

[Group] Look, he's doing the lean right now.

Yes.

He's the doing the lean I'm talking about.

It's the lean.

[Man] Let's see the Andy lean.

I don't understand that.

I don't how it's.

[Man] I'll tell you what it is, Andy.

It goes like this.

That's the one.

I just can't imagine me ever doing this.

[Man] Are you kidding me, Andy?

[Chris] Hey, Andy.

Yes.

[Chris] Nice lean.

What?

Nice lean.

[group laughing]

Who me? [laughing]