Jewish Sweet and Sour Brisket is a melt-in-your-mouth kosher brisket recipe to rival any mother-in-law’s recipe! Oven braised brisket in sweet tomato broth.
More elegant than Classic Pot Roast and even easier to make (no searing!), a juicy fork tender Beef Brisket is a must-have Main Course during the holidays!
JEWISH BRISKET (SWEET AND SOUR BRISKET)
Whether you are celebrating Passover or Christmas, you’ll love this easy and flavorful brisket recipe. It’s large enough to feed a big crowd and it slow braises hands off during the day so can you make all your side dishes. Plus this Jewish Brisket recipe can be adjusted for a slow cooker to free up your oven or the Instant Pot if you are short on time too!
What makes a Jewish-Style Brisket so melt-in-your-mouth good is the sweet and tangy sauce that it is slow-cooked in. There are few variations on how to make a Sweet and Sour Brisket Sauce but we love this easy ketchup-vinegar sauce. It has the perfect amount of vinegar to break down a tough cut of meat like brisket and make it fork tender in just a few hours.
Braised Jewish Brisket is a dish that gets even better the next day, after it has soaked up the delicious sauce overnight. Plus the meat is easier to slice when it’s cold. It’s a great recipe to make ahead the day or two before to save time the day of your dinner party. Simply cool and refrigerate without carving in the roasting pan with the sauce. Slice meat cold and place back in sauce, then re-cover and warm in the oven on low heat for about an hour before serving.
Jewish Brisket can be served with any of your favorite side dishes like Mashed Potatoes, or you can serve with traditional Jewish Holiday sides. During Hanukkah, you’ll find brisket served with Potato Latkes. For Rosh Hashanah, serve with Honey Roasted Apples and Potatoes. Try a spring favorite Roasted Root Vegetables, a kosher, grain-free and dairy free dish perfect for Passover.
HOLIDAY SIDE DISH RECIPES
Spinach Gratin
Candied Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows
Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Baked Mac and Cheese
Tips for Buying and Preparing Brisket
- Get your meat from a local butcher, or the butcher counter of a higher end grocery store, for the best quality.
- Ask the butcher for a first-cut of brisket. While brisket is tougher cut of meat in general, the first-cut is slightly more tender and has more marbling.
- If you don’t want to trim it yourself, ask the butcher to remove all but ¼ inch of the fat cap. Leave some fat to lock in juices and create a natural braise along with your sauce. Too much fat will make your dish greasy though.
- Keep your brisket refrigerated before trimming, the colder the meat the easier it will be to slice. Using a sharp knife, cut flat and parallel to the meat, starting from the thinner point. Again, leave about ¼ inch fat cap.
- You don’t need to sear your meat for this brisket recipe, but if you have the time, it is a great way to add more flavor to the meat! Season with salt and pepper, and sear in a cast iron pan with olive oil for 3-4 minutes each side.
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VARIATIONS ON JEWISH BRISKET
- Wine: Replace the water with red wine, Coca-Cola, beef broth, or dry white wine for a different layer of flavor. You can double the amount of liquid ingredients (except vinegar) to make a gravy sauce to serve with the brisket after it has cooked.
- Vinegar: The vinegar ingredient brings the sour to this brisket. You can use apple cider vinegar, white wine, or lemon juice, or vinegar-based BBQ sauce.
- Veggies: Use aromatic vegetables like carrots, canned tomatoes, and celery for more flavor. Add carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms during the last hour of roasting to make this a one pan meal.
- Seasonings: Other seasonings to try in your sauce are paprika, oregano, bay leaves, thyme, gravy mix, or onion mix.
- Ketchup: Instead of ketchup, you can use BBQ Sauce, tomato-vegetable juice, tomato sauce, or tomato paste. What you want is the acidity and sweetness from the ketchup so adjust the other ingredients according to taste if you use tomato sauce or paste.
Leftover Jewish Brisket Sandwiches
Instant Pot Jewish Brisket
- This is best with a 2-3 lb brisket. The cooking time is for a 3 lb brisket.
- Turn Instant Pot to Sauté Function. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and when shimmering, sear both sides of brisket for 3-4 minutes per side.
- Remove meat and set aside.
- Deglaze pot with 1 cup beef broth (or water), scraping off any browned bits. Turn off Instant Pot.
- Add remaining sauce ingredients to pot and stir.
- Return brisket to pot, cutting in half and stacking if needed.
- Close lid and seal pressure valve. Cook on Manual High Pressure for 70 minutes.
- Naturally release pressure, about 20 minutes. Remove brisket to slice and serve.
Slow Cooker Jewish Brisket
- Trim fat cap from meat and place in slow cooker fat side up.
- Mix your sauce ingredients and pour over meat.
- Cover with lid and cook on low for 7-8 hours on low, until meat is easily pierced and tender.
- Remove brisket and broil for 1 minute to crisp fat cap.
- Rest for 10 minutes before carving. Slice against the grain and serve.
MORE HOLIDAY MAIN DISHES
Roast Turkey
Baked Ham (with Brown Sugar Glaze)
HoneyBaked Ham (Copycat)
Perfect Garlic Prime Rib
HOW TO STORE JEWISH BRISKET
- Serve: You can serve Jewish Brisket warm or cold, and keep at room temperature for up to 2 hours before storing.
- Store: Store sliced Jewish Brisket in sauce in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Reheat in a dutch oven on the stove top, with the sauce, over medium low heat.
- Freeze: Slice brisket before freezing with sauce in a sealed container. Jewish Brisket can be frozen for up to 3 months and should be thawed overnight before reheating.
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup ketchup
- 1/2 cup vinegar
- 2 large onions , diced
- 3 cloves garlic , minced
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 tablespoons Kosher salt
- 4 pounds beef brisket , trimmed
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Combine water, ketchup, vinegar, onions, garlic, brown sugar and Kosher salt in a large mixing bowl.
- Place the brisket in a large baking dish, then pour the ketchup mixture over the brisket.
- Cover the baking dish tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 4 hours until meat is fork-tender.
- Serve thinly sliced, against the grain.
Nutrition
I haven’t made this recipe yet but Passover is coming up. My aunt made brisket for every passover since I was a kid(60 yrs) but I never asked for her recipe. Cuz I never thought I’d have it better than my aunt. So she left her house when my uncle passed away. That’s when I was able to ask. But by then she couldn’t recall her ingredients so she tried but I knew that wasn’t it.
This year I’m gonna try your recipe. Thanks for the help!
What a wonderful recipe! My whole family loved it . First time to make a brisket and couldn’t ask for a better recipe.
Thanks, Mary
Thank you Mary and thank you for the 5 stars.
Tender and tangy- delicious!
Just put it in slow cooker, used red wine and seared/deglazed the cut, I am looking forward to dinner now, gonna prep up the latkes. Yummy!
I baked at 300 for 5.5 hours. It fell apart! I then refrigerated overnight to make it easy to slice for serving the next day. Fabulous recipe. Not a speck left on the serving platter!
This brisket recipe is aaaaamazing. I’m not a huge fan of a plain brisket. I love a saucy flavorful brisket, and a sweet and sour sauce to me is just the best. I found this recipe a month ago and am already on my 3rd time making it! Today I’m making it a day in advance. I’ll slice it and put the slices in the sauce and reheat it in the oven at 300 again tomorrow night for dinner. If I can wait until tomorrow to eat it!
I made this in the past and Thomas 84 how excellent. But today I am confused. I read this part of your comments six times and can’t figure them out! You wrote “You can double the amount of liquid ingredients (except vinegar) to make a gravy sauce to serve with the brisket after it has cooked.”
Is this at the beginning like when are cooking? What are you saying to make a completely separate batch of sauce but then why would you double the ingredients? So I’m not sure exactly when you were saying to increase or double the amount of liquid ingredients? Are you saying when it’s all done cooking that you could just simply add another cup of Coke or water or wine and are you also supposed to add another cup of ketchup? Also if I made an 8 pound brisket instead of four what I simply double every single ingredient, including vinegar? My sauce had a rich taste until I added 7 1/2 ounces of Coke and according to your recipe I should be adding another 8.5 ounces of liquid or A total of 2 cups of liquid Doubling the meat, yes? But if 7 1/2 ounces water down the flavor I am a little scared what adding another 8 1/2 ounces will do? I think the ketchup and vinegar and Coke liquid should be sufficient for my Insta pot unless it’s too thick and causes a burn notice? So please clarify what you meant and also what would you do if you were making 8 pounds instead of four in a single a quart Insta pot? Ty!
Yummy! Thanks for the recipe.
A little too sweet and tangy but very good. Very tender. I cooked in casserole dish with glass lid instead of foil.
My Brisket was only 3lbs and between three of us it was all gone so I didn’t have the opportunity to savor it the next day?
Next time I will buy a much bigger cut and try a little variation with the beef broth and other additions like the paprika. Thank you for the recipe! Shalom
This was prepared for our Christmas meal?
More typos corrected: Please post this review and leave out the duplicate reviews
Thank you for saving my sanity. I bought two 3.8 lb pieces of prime Brisket… very lean.
I read for a few hours about brisket and various recipes and thought I did everything correct. I seared the meat on all sides for a few minutes, I caramelized the onions and the carrots and the celery and some mushrooms prior to adding in the meat with some beef stock, and I even seasoned and marinated the meat for a few hours ahead of time. Long story short, the meat came out with a funky taste, tender enough, I guess, and the sauce wasn’t horrible, but it certainly wasn’t the luscious brisket of my memories. I couldn’t decide whether to eat or throw it out because it really had left a bad aftertaste. I was really upset and determined that the 2nd piece would be better. I must’ve looked at 30 or more recipes. They had everything from grape jelly too cloves to 36 pieces of garlic, and every other imaginable spice and sauce, but none of them seemed to appeal to what I was seeking. That is, until I found your recipe! I didn’t have Coke in the house so I bought that and went about following the recipe, but I had to halve everything since I was only cooking about 1.5 pounds. I cut my piece into two and wanted to ensure I wasn’t going to ruin another 3.8 pounds! My plan was I was going to try your recipe, and I was going to try another one. But your recipe came out so incredibly delicious, that I am scrapping my other ingredients of the other recipe and making the other 1.5 ish piece using your same recipe again! I am very grateful you posted. Thank you so much. I can’t wait to share my cooked brisket with my parents. Thank you!! (I hope my second try comes out just as delicious as my first one!)
I’ve been a brisket connoisseur all of my life, I was born to braise…. I BLEED brisket. I’ve made every conceivable version possible and have always enjoyed every single bite. But I’ve never found a clear winner until now. My husband and I scarfed the entire 4 lbs in one sitting, completely ignoring the potato and vegetable sides. While hovering over the baking dish, fighting over the last slice, we agreed that our search for the Perfect Brisket is officially over.
Seriously, Sabrina…. you rock.
I’m so happy it was a hit!! Thank you!
I’ve been making brisket for years, this is the best recipe I’ve found. It’s easy to prepare using simple ingredients.
Wow! Thanks, Dawn.
You were not exaggerating when you said this gets even better the next day. We were all fighting over the leftovers. So delicious!
Haha, it’s the same in our house. You’ve got to get to it first! Glad you all enjoyed it.
What kind of vinegar do you use?
THIS WAS JUST SO AMAZING!! I never write comments but this was yum, yum, yum so I just had to let you know!
Yay!! I’m so glad you loved it enough to come back and let me know.
Outrageous! DELICIOUS! You rock! Thank you!
Thanks so much!
Does cooking under the foil the whole time brown the meat? Or do I need to seat it prior to putting in oven? Thank you. This recipes sounds amazing I can’t wait to try it..
You can choose to sear it first if you’d like. Just season with salt and pepper, and sear in a cast iron pan with olive oil for 3-4 minutes each side. Enjoy!
How long do you cook it if it’s a large brisket from Costco?!
If the package indicates a cook time per pound, go with that while checking for internal temp periodically.
This Brisket looks delicious, one of these days I have to try it but not right now. The looks of this Jewish Sweet and Sour Brisket deserves Five Stars and when I make it and eat it I know it will get Five More Stars!!
It’s perfect anytime! Enjoy!