Man, what to do with all that leftover brisket. While I try my best, I can’t put down a full packer and end up refrigerating/vacuum-sealing a good portion of it. Here’s an off the wall kind of recipe for you.
Like most of my cooks, I have an idea.. make it, photo it, and hope it’s good enough to type up a post about it. This one hit surprisingly well, so I’m so happy to share this one. Fair warning, the recipe is full of estimate. Make your cheesy brisket mix the way you want it.
The Prep Table
Only three ingredients for this one: Leftover brisket, my homemade pimento cheese, and store-bought wonton wraps.
The Process
Give the refrigerated brisket a 45 second shot in the microwave to warm it up and make it easier to shred/chop/cut. Mix it in a bowl with a good amount of that pimento cheese and really incorporate it well. These wraps are pretty small, so we’re only putting about a teaspoon on there. We want each teaspoon to be meaty, yet creamy.
Some of my scoops were teaspoons, most were about tablespoons and ended up making quite the mess in the tray. The first couple will probably be a disaster, but they’ll get better the more you do. I think I did about 20 of them and you’ll see they were in different shapes. I did the YouTube thing and found different ways to wrap – but I’ll let you know what worked best in my opinion.
One important aspect is to have a separate dish of cold water – moisten your digit and use that on the wonton edges to create that seal. Here’s the different shapes I went with:
My opinion – throw a scoop on a wrapper and wet your finger and and seal it up like I did that triangle one pictured above. Re-wet a finger on those bottom two corners and bring all the corners up to the top so it looks like a bunched up disaster. Those get a special amount of crispy which brings a welcome texture to the snack.
The Result
Before throwing them in the 400F RecTeq, I hit ’em hard with the Duck Fat Spray. Throw ’em into the pellet grill for only about 10 minutes. I had some leaky bastards from my amateur seals, but we’re looking for the wrappers to get golden brown. You may have noticed I do very, VERY little frying on this site – and while I’m sure those would’ve been better, I don’t do that. If I can fake fry with a bake – I’m a do it.
I like pimento cheese. I love brisket. How’s the mix in a wonton? A damn winner is how it was. I was so very pleasantly surprised that I’m typing this up an hour after enjoying (a rare feat nowadays). These aren’t crazy crispy like your Chinese restaurant Crab Rangoon (New Big Wong anyone?). But they have enough texture to be good. The brisket/pimento blend was absolutely delicious. I might give these a whirl in an egg roll wrapper if I can find them things.
And lastly, we lost our elderly cat this week. It’s been a rough year with a lot of pet loss. (and deck loss, and gutter loss, and roof loss.. trees.. yeah.). The latter we can replace and will. Can’t replace Fantastico.. so her memory will stay with us. Until next week!
The Recipe
Baked Brisket/Pimento Cheese Won Tons
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb Leftover Brisket chopped
- 1 Cup Pimento Cheese
- 20 ish Wonton wrappers?
- Duck Fat Spray
Instructions
- Pre-heat RecTeq for 400F
- Heat the refrigerated leftover brisket until easy to chop/pull/dice.
- Mix chopped brisket and pimento cheese in a bowl. Eater discretion on proportion – rough estimates were given.
- Teaspoonish of the mix onto the wrapper and seal 'em up. You can see I tried a few different ways – wet the edges with water to create seal. Best ones had the crispy tops – egg-roll style weren't the best.
- Place wontons on a tray, and give 'em a spray with Cornhusker's Duck Fat spray.
- Place into RecTeq for about 10 minutes, until Wonton's golden and your cheese is drippy and melty.
- Serve with a side of BBQ sauce or your favorite dipper!