Whew, it’s been a busy week.  I received some great news this week, I landed a day job!  By day I will be a financial analyst for a health care company.  I’m really excited to get back to work.  Not to worry, I’m still going to be grilling and blogging, I’m just going to have to give up some sleep to get it all done.  Besides, the best thing I have done the last 4 months was this blog, I can’t quit now.
So now that I’m done with my celebrating my return to the workforce, I decided to grill something really big. I wanted make something that would embody New Mexican and BBQ flavors in one dish. Now, I have been kicking this idea around in my head for a while, then really started obsessing about it last week when I bought the brisket.  Today’s uber-creation is Chile con Brisket, a fusion of NM red chile and BBQ brisket.  This recipe turned out to be everything I hoped for and more.

Red Chile Brisket

I started out smoking a 6lb choice grade brisket on the Big Green Egg (BGE).  Since I was going to cover this brisket in a red chile sauce, I seasoned it with a simple salt, pepper and garlic mix. If you ever need a simple and delicious rub, you can always use the classic salt, pepper and garlic.  Just mix equal parts of salt, pepper and garlic together.  It’s practically full proof and will compliment whatever meat you are cooking.  The brisket smoked on the BGE for 4 hours over indirect heat over mesquite charcoal and mesquite wood chunks.  Mesquite adds a really great flavor to beef.

sauce

Red Chile Brisket on the Big Green Egg

While the brisket was smoking away I made a red chile.  I took a short cut and used frozen red chile to make my sauce.  The hardcore chile people would make their sauce from dried pods, but I don’t have that kind of time or patience. This is basically the recipe from the side of the container with a few changes.  The bay leaf is a great trick I picked up over the years that really helps take the bitter bite out of the chile. 

Red Chile Sauce

1 tablespoon oil, vegetable or olive
2 tablespoon unbleached flour 
1-14 oz. container Red Chile Puree
3 cups of water
2-4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
2-3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar 

Heat oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium high heat.  Add flour and stir until golden brown, making a roux, about 2 minutes.  Add red chile and water.  Stir to eliminate any lumps.  Add garlic, oregano, bay leaves, sugar and salt. Although this recipe only calls for a teaspoon of salt, I used about a tablespoon kosher salt.  Red chile is bitter and it takes a bit of salt to cut the bitterness.  Just be sure to add the salt gradually and taste after adding salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer with skillet uncovered 20-25 minutes.   

After the sauce was completed.  I pulled the brisket off the egg and placed it in a foil pan and poured the sauce over the entire brisket, filling the pan about 2/3 of the way full. Then I covered the entire pan with foil and returned it to the BGE for another 4 hours.  I wanted the brisket to fall apart like a pulled pork, so I cooked it to an internal temperature of 200F.
When I took this brisket off the egg it smelled amazing.  The smell of smokey beef and red chile was wafting all over the back yard.  As usual I had to take my taste test and the first taste was absolutely delicious.  It was better than I had imagined.  The brisket flavored the sauce with a great smokey flavor and the fat from the meat made the sauce into a really rich red chile gravy.  

Red Chile Brisket with potatoes and sauce

So here’s the final dish, Chile con Brisket.  I fried up some potatoes in the Disc-it, topped it all with some cheddar cheese.  I wanted to talk about the potatoes in this post but I’ll have to save that for another day.  You can see the red chile sauce in the bottom of the bowl here.  This dish was so good, I impressed myself.  This is exactly the fusion of New Mexican chile and BBQ I was trying for.  This dish is definitely going to be part of the regular rotation.  That’s all I got for today, chow for now!