Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket

I have fallen a little behind with my cooking group. Last week's ingredient was coffee; yesterday I finally got around to making Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket from The Homesick Texan Cookbook.

It was a marathon cooking day. I made brisket, barbeque sauce, potato salad, coleslaw, and Pioneer Woman dinner rolls. I started out fresh and alert, but by 3pm I was pretty much disheveled.

 

Here's my 1 cup brewed coffee, for the sauce.

Spices for barbeque sauce.

Yay for my wonderful new vintage prep bowls.

 

I like this prep bowl too. It's Fire-King, one of my very favorite retro brands. It's holding ketchup, vinegar, lemon juice, worcestershire, and a minced chipotle chile for the barbeque sauce.

 

Here's the meat.

   

It cooked for 6 hours.

Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce

This sauce is good! I half-way thought it was going to be gross for some reason, but it was like my favorite part of dinner. {It's got a kick to it.}

~

Coffee-Chipotle Oven Brisket

from The Homesick Texan Cookbook by Lisa Fain

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons chipotle powder

1 teaspoon mustard powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 3- or 4-pound brisket, the flat cut, preferably with a bit of fat still on it

4 slices of bacon

1/2 medium yellow onion, cut into slivers

4 cloves garlic, cut in half

1 cup Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 325° and line a baking sheet with foil.

Mix together the salt, black pepper, chipotle powder, mustard powder, and cumin. Rub both sides of the brisket with the spices. Place brisket on a large sheet of foil, fat side down, and top it with the bacon, onion slivers, and garlic. Wrap the brisket tightly in the foil, and then wrap it with another piece of foil to ensure that no juices leak out. Place foil-wrapped brisket on foil-lined baking sheet (bacon side up) and cook it for 6 hours.

After 6 hours, remove the brisket from the oven and let it sit in the foil for 20 minutes. After it's rested, open up the foil (be careful, as very hot steam will escape) and remove the brisket from the foil. Add 1 tablespoon of the brisket juices to your barbecue sauce.

To serve, take off the bacon, onions, and garlic from the brisket and cut slices against the grain. Serve with the barbecue sauce on the side. If you want a bit of a crust, place the brisket under the broiler 5 minutes before serving.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Coffee-Chipotle Barbeque Sauce 

1 tablespoon bacon grease or vegetable oil {use bacon grease, it's fantastic!}

1/4 medium yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 or 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo, minced

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup tomato paste

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1/4 cup molasses

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 cup brewed coffee

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

Pinch of ground nutmeg

Pinch of ground clove

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Salt, to taste

Heat the bacon grease in a sauce pot on medium and cook the onion for 10 minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute.

Stir into the pot the chipotle chile, ketchup, tomato paste, vinegar, lemon juice, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, coffee, black pepper, mustard powder, nutmeg, clove, and smoked paprika. Turn down the heat to low and cook for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add salt to taste. If it's too thick, add a bit of water to make it thinner. Will keep for 1 month in the refrigerator. 

Yield: 2 cups

Homesick Texan Saturday Night

 No official Homesick Texan day this week, but I did make her buttermilk potato soup with bacon and roasted jalapeno this evening.

Um. Wow.

   

 

In addition to the buttermilk/bacon/roasted jalapeno, this potato soup calls for cumin, cayenne, and cilantro; all in tiny amounts. It's kind of wonderful. I wish I would have made this for myself right before I got sick. 

 

 

So good with an inappropriately large heap of shredded cheddar.  

I officially recommend this.

Homesick Texan Thursday

{ Homesick Texan Tuesday fell on a Thursday this week. }

Ever since I became obsessed with the Homesick Texan and Tex-Mex cooking, I've been having all sorts of strange new thoughts while grocery shopping. Thoughts like...

"Kroger isn't stocking poblanos 2 weeks in a row?

What's up with that!"

"Why does no one carry chorizo?"

"That bunch of cilantro looks a little skimpy to me."

So funny. There was a time I would not even eat Mexican food, ask my mom.

~

So for this week's Tex-Mex dinner night I made two recipes from HT's blog:

Green Chile Hominy Casserole with Chorizo

Ninfa's Green Sauce

 Found it!

The green sauce was interesting. You put all of these green things into a pot; green tomato, tomatillo, jalapeno (and garlic). You cook it for a little bit; then run it through the food processor, along with avocado and cilantro; then stir sour cream into that mixture.

Before stirring.

Green Chile Hominy Casserole with Chorizo

 

 

Good combination. The casserole was hot & spicy, and the green sauce was cool & creamy.

{ Quote of the Day }

Josh: OK you should be eating that. Eat it, don't tweet it.

"Homesick Texan Tuesday" Leftovers

I need to reiterate how fantastic Homesick Texan's "Green Chile Posole with Black Beans" recipe is. We have all been raving about it since Tuesday. This one's a keeper.

Pictured here without the shredded Monterey Jack. I can't find this recipe on her blog, or I would post a link. Guess you'll just have to buy the book...

Here's a cute pic of a leftover kolache I heated up for myself. I never really warmed up to these, but Mom and Josh liked them.

Homesick Texan Tuesday

There's this thing that sometimes happens between me and my mom, where I'll borrow one of her cookbooks, become fanatically obsessed with it, then she ends up on Amazon, one-click ordering a new copy. This is how I acquired The Homesick Texan Cookbook. This evening I tried to make it up to my mom by inviting her over for Homesick Texan Tuesday! I made green chile posole with black beans, gorditas with picadillo, and kolaches. (I'm exhausted BTW.)

Green Chile Posole with Black Beans

HT's posole recipe is wonderful. It challenged me to use all kinds of ingredients I had never dealt with, or even tasted. 

Such as tomatillos...

...serrano chiles...

...and a poblano chile. (Lard is new to me as well, but it was used for the gorditas; not the soup.)

 

Here is the poblano in roasted form.

 

So anyway, the posole is really neat because you put all this green stuff in a blender to make the soup base. Then you add hominy (which is the English word for posole), black beans, lime juice and half-and-half. Love this soup!

Gordita with Picadillo

So the gorditas were insane. More specifically, the gordita shell was insane. You make the dough with masa and lard, then you pan-fry it, then you deep-fry it. No wonder gordita means "little fat girl" in Spanish. I know how she feels...

 I'm not sure that my gordita shells "puffed" the way they were supposed to, but we made it work.

The picadillo filling is a seasoned ground beef mixture that calls for one diced russet potato. 

That first gordita was totally staged (Josh's lunch gordita for tomorrow), but this is the actual gordita I actually ate for actual dinner. Not as picturesque, but it's covered in wonderful shredded lettuce.

This is Mom's actual gordita. She likes lettuce and tomato.

Kolaches

Not sure how I feel about the kolaches. I did half with cream cheese filling and half with apricot filling. They're not very sweet. The bread-to-filling ratio seemed off, especially with the apricot. I guess I'm not crazy about these, but I may feel differently tomorrow.

Homemade Corn Tortillas

Today I made homemade tortillas for the first time.

I used The Homesick Texan's recipe from her new cookbook.

 

I have been so excited to use this tortilla press I borrowed from my mom.

Masa balls.

My first tortilla!!!

They were smaller than what I expected. At first I didn't think they would be flexible enough to fold over for tacos; but as I kept stacking the finished ones under this towel, the steam made them more pliable. 

One of my tacos. I didn't get enough fixins on this one. Although the tortillas are small, they are dense, and so require lots of fixins.

Josh's lunch tacos for tomorrow, doused with his beloved Cholula sauce. 

P.S. I'm so into my hair today. It's so calm.