Slow Cooked Pulled Beef

Slow cooked pulled beef can be shredded as thin, or thick, as you like.  Just keep pulling it to shred it more and more if you wish.

The term pulled beef means that soft meat has been pulled apart, in a rough manner, not carved or sliced.  The easiest way to make slow cooked pulled beef as a recipe is to use a slow cooker and to cook a beef brisket joint.  Once the beef brisket joint is cooked you can then choose how much you want to turn into pulled beef and you simply take that portion and pull it apart using two forks!  You stop pulling when you like what you see!  Some people like to really make super fine shredded beef – I like to leave it medium to thick mostly.

It’s that easy!

When I make slow cooked pulled beef I just cook a beef brisket joint in the slow cooker – and decide afterwards if I want to serve it as chunks of melt-in-the-mouth beef, or to use it as pulled beef.  I’ll typically freeze portions as whole chunks, so, again, the decision can be left until the moment I want to serve the beef.

If you do freeze the brisket, it’ll keep for months in the freezer, although I do like to use most food up within 3 months simply to free up room and prevent me “putting off eating it”.

It’s also “better” in my opinion to leave the cooked beef unshredded if you freeze it because that helps to retain the natural meat juices and moisture in situ as long as possible…. but that’s just my personal preference and reasoning.  You can freeze pulled beef after you’ve pulled it apart if you wish!

Here’s how I slow cooked a beef brisket joint: Beef Brisket Slow Cooked

I just put it in raw and left the slow cooker on to do the work!

Ideas for How to Serve Pulled Beef and Beef Brisket: 

I’ll typically serve pulled beef as the meat part of a main meal, maybe a Sunday lunch – I’m not keen on putting it in a bread roll with sauce, although I know many people do.  I do, however, like to serve pulled beef in a pitta bread with a little salad and a splash of hoi sin sauce (fake crispy duck style!).

You can add a sauce to it at the last minute, then toss the beef over to coat it.  Sauces you can use are “what you like!” or “what you have”, whether that’s a BBQ sauce or something you’ve concocted yourself.  Personally, I don’t bother, I like my food quite “plain and how it comes”.

Here are some dishes I’ve served with beef brisket in the past, including pulled beef: http://www.foodcheats.com/tag/beef-brisket