Bohea Barbecued Brisket Recipe

Posted by Darren Hartford on


A dear friend (and great photographer) shared the following recipe for using Colonial Bohea Tea as a dry rub for Brisket. I thought I would share, Hope you enjoy! ~Oliver

Dinner last night was TOO good and TOO easy not to share! 

My mom got us an instant pot for Christmas, and it has been one of the greatest kitchen appliances I have ever owned. I have been so grateful. And I am striving to use the extra time that it provides for me with wisdom and care. One of the phrases that has been going through my head the last few weeks is “don’t waste the minutes”.

I used Oliver Pluff’s (I’m going to sound like an advertisement here, but this was legitimately the best and easiest dinner I made all week!) Colonial Bohea tea as a dry rub on the brisket. I placed a generous layer on the bottom of a baking pan, sat the brisket on top of it, and placed another layer on top and then let it sit covered in the fridge for a day. 

Yesterday I pulled the instant pot out, turned on the sauté feature, and seared the meat by just leaving it for 5 minutes on each side and wrangled babies in between my phone timer going off. I added a few cloves of garlic, a half cup of chicken broth, 2TB of vinegar and onion powder, 1TB of honey and maple syrup and poured that in the pot, and then let it cook on high pressure for 90 minutes.

The brisket came out PERFECTLY.

Because of the tea, it had an incredible Smokey flavor; and because it cooked in the instant pot, it was incredibly tender and had soaked up all the flavor. 

I took the brisket out, ran the broth at the bottom of the pot through a strainer to get the tea leaves out, and then added a cup of ketchup, and 2TB of brown sugar and Dijon mustard, and let it sauté again until the liquid was reduced to a perfect BBQ sauce consistency. 


The whole thing from start to finish took me about 10 minutes, and made for a delicious dinner after I photographed it.