Dry Rub Oven Baked Brisket

sliced dry rub roasted brisket with cilantro and tomatoes on on a white platter

5 from 362 votes

Dry Rub Oven Baked Brisket

You're going to love how easy my dry rub oven-baked brisket is to prepare. And your friends and family are going to love how delicious that fork-tender brisket is!

Prep Time10

Cook Time5

Resting Time25

Total Time5 10

Course: Main Course, sandwich

Cuisine: American

Servings:

Calories: 482kcal

Ingredients

5 lb beef brisket
¼ cup brown sugar
2 tablespoon coarse sea salt kosher salt can be substituted. *If you use table salt cut it down to 1 tbsp.
1 tablespoon cracked black pepper more if you like black pepper as much as I do.
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon sweet paprika
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon dried mustard
1 teaspoon dried thyme

US Customary - Metric

Instructions

Mix dry rub ingredients. (This recipe for dry rub will cover a 5 lb brisket.)
Remove the brisket from the package and trim away any silver skin or excess fat.
Coat the entire brisket with the dry rub and massage the dry rub into the meat. Make sure to coat the sides of the brisket.
Wrap the dry-rubbed brisket tightly with non-stick aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight. Completely wrap it as a package in one direction then go across the other direction sealing the foil.
*A minimum of 3 hours is needed for the dry rub to penetrate the brisket.
Take the brisket out of the refrigerator an hour before cooking it, allow the brisket to get to room temperature before cooking.
Preheat the oven to 275° F
Insert an oven-safe meat thermometer into the thickest part of the brisket
Place the foil-wrapped brisket on a baking pan (if you have a rack place it on the baking pan and place the brisket on the rack which is on top of the pan).
Place the baking pan on the center rack of the preheated oven and slow roast the brisket until the internal temperature reaches 175 degrees F.
Remove the brisket from the oven and carefully cut the foil open to expose the brisket, and continue roasting until the internal temperature reaches 195-205 degrees F.
*Depending on your oven and where you inserted the meat thermometer, this process may take 5-6 hours.
Do not be tempted to raise the temperature for faster cooking time, or your brisket will be very tough. Slow oven roasting allows the fats to break down gradually, tenderizing the beef, so it has a stretching juicy quality in the end.
Remove the brisket from the oven and place it on a cutting board. Tent the brisket with a sheet of foil, and let it rest for one hour so the juices redistribute evenly throughout the brisket.
When cutting the brisket make sure to go against the grain. Slice the brisket in pencil width slices. *See Notes

Notes

CHEF DENNIS TIP:

Do not be tempted to raise the temperature for faster cooking time, or your brisket will be very tough. Slow oven roasting allows the fats to break down gradually, tenderizing the beef, so it has a stretching juicy quality in the end.

HOW DO I SLICE BEEF BRISKET?

The first and most important step is to let the beef brisket rest for an hour before slicing.

Allowing brisket to rest lets juice redistribute throughout the meat. If sliced right off the grill, the meat would lose moisture.

After the brisket has rested, the next step is finding the grain. The direction of the cut is key to having tender fall-apart slices of brisket.

The grain is how the strands of muscle run through the meat. It's like a long series of rubber bands, and you'll see the lines in the meat. Turn the meat so your knife is perpendicular to the grain. When you find the grain, set your knife up so that you're slicing against the grain.

You want to slice against the grain. The grain of any meat is the alignment of the muscle fibers. When you cut with the grain, the muscle fibers remain somewhat intact and result in meat that is tough and difficult to chew. When you cut against the grain, you break up the muscle fibers evenly so that the meat becomes much more tender and easy to chew.

CHEF DENNIS TIP:

Before cooking, find the grain and slice a corner of the flat. This will make it easier to find the direction of the grain when the brisket is done and ready to be sliced.

Nutrition