The Thanksgiving Brisket Plate
GTFO
No turkey. Brisket, macaroni cheese, stuffing, spiced apples and cranberry sauce, and my entire caption on it was GTFO.
It is a better Thanksgiving plate and the reason is simple: turkey is the only thing on the table nobody is excited about. Everything else is a side, and the sides are what people actually want. Replace the one lean dry item with fourteen hours of smoked brisket and the whole plate improves.
The spiced apples are the piece worth stealing. Cooked down with cinnamon until they are soft but still in slices, they do what apple sauce does with a pork roast.
- Feeds
- 8
- Hands-on
- 2 hours
- Brisket
- Smoked the day before
- Turkey
- No
What you need
The brisket
- 1 smoked brisket, made the day before, sliced cold
- 1 cup beef stock, for reheating
The spiced apples
- 6 firm apples, in thick slices, skin on
- 4 tbsp butter
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp cloves
- A pinch of salt
- A squeeze of lemon
The rest of the plate
- Macaroni cheese, a full dish
- Herb stuffing, baked in its own dish
- Whole-berry cranberry sauce — 12 oz berries, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, orange peel
How it goes
1 — Smoke the brisket the day before, always
Nothing about a fourteen-hour cook belongs on a day when eight people are arriving. Smoked, rested, cooled whole, sliced cold the next morning.
2 — Reheat the slices in stock, covered
Laid in a tray with the stock poured around, covered tightly with foil, 300°F for twenty-five minutes. Covered and wet — brisket reheated dry in an oven is ruined brisket.
3 — Cranberries fifteen minutes, left chunky
Berries, sugar, water and a strip of orange peel simmered until most have popped. Stop with a third still whole. Cooled — it belongs cold on a hot plate.
4 — Spiced apples, skin on, thick slices
Butter, apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves and salt in a wide pan. Eight to ten minutes until soft but still in distinct slices. Lemon at the end.
5 — Stuffing in its own dish, never in a bird
Covered for forty-five minutes at 350°F, then uncovered for fifteen so the top browns. Soft underneath, crisp on top.
6 — Macaroni made last, sauce loose
It thickens as it stands, so make the sauce looser than you want it and take it off the heat before the cheese goes in.
7 — Plate it in blocks, nothing merged
Macaroni taking one side, stuffing in a corner, apples and cranberry at the top, brisket slices along the far edge. Everything touching but nothing stirred together.
pro tip — Warm the plates. Eight dishes landing on cold china means half of them are lukewarm by the time anybody sits down.
GTFO. LFG.