Helen RandellBeef Brisket
October 15th 2010 23:38
On one of the nights when Mr Rough Cooking was in charge of dinner, I came home to find a 2kg beef brisket in the fridge and a takeaway pizza menu sitting by the phone. He had seen this lovely piece of meat marked down at the supermarket, and thinking he could roast it, bought it home with plans of chucking it in the oven for an hour or so for dinner.
Luckily, he checked with head chef Google, and noted that when roasted quickly, this meat becomes quite tough, and that the ideal way to cook it is at low heat, for several hours. So, on that occasion we had pizza, but the next day we set aside time to make our brisket.
I've often heard of brisket as a cut of meat described as very tender, and usually done so by television characters on American sitcoms. We were keen to sample this delicate taste.
We found a recipe on the Jamie Oliver food site and gave it ago. We followed some of the users comments and decided to seal the beef first.
Cooking time was around three hours, and when we carved, the meat literally fell apart. However, it was about every second mouthful that either myself or Mr felt the need to comment on how fatty the cut was. As much as the fat had rendered down in the cooking process, it was still there, as a strong presence in the mouth feel.
We sliced off what we wanted for dinner and then over the next few days continued to demolish the meat as something to fill our sandwiches. This probably gave us more pleasure, as one the fat had solidified again we were able to cut it off and discard it.
So, advice for cooking a brisket? If you are staring at two of the same cuts at the butcher, go for the one with less fat... and make sure you get one big enough to allow for leftovers
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