Okay, I'm going to say something I might regret, but this is way better than PW's brisket.
*ducks*
No, really. Maybe it's the fact that I grew up on this brisket. I wouldn't even be exaggerating if I told you it was on the table 3 nights a week at our house growing up, right next to the Stouffer's Spinach Souffle and Syrian rice and kugel.
I had a 5 lb brisket I got at Costco, which was the biggest one they had but per my mom was "too small". Apparently it shrinks in size by 2/3. Anyway, I thought it was lovely. I sliced some onions and lay them on the bottom of the pan and placed the raw brisket on top. I had no idea which side should be up, since the golden rule is usually fat side up but brisket is nothing but fat, it appears. So lay that sucker on those onions and think about butterflies or something.
I made a marinade from 1 cup of Open Pit Onion BBQ Sauce (does anyone else sing their scales to open-pit-bar-be-que-sauce" or is that just me?), 1 cup of ketchup, a generous splash of Worceshireshireshireshirechester sauce, onion powder, seasoned salt, 4 tbsp dark soy sauce (I had Mama Sita's Tapa Marinade) and some brown sugar. Then poured the marinade all over the meat and lay out more sliced onions on top.
This is a really horrible picture, but the steam was preventing my camera (cough-iPhone-cough) from getting a good image. Anyway, I had a 5 lb brisket and the rule is 1 hour per pound at 325 degrees. Every hour or so (give or take) I would pull the pan out of the oven and spoon the sauce over the top to keep it juicy. When I had 1 hour left, I dumped a bunch of chopped carrots in the pan and let it cook the rest of the way.
Crazy, surreal picture of the cooked brisket. At this point I'm supposed to mention that you can take the brisket back to the butcher (if you got the meat from the butcher) and have them slice it. Then again, this is coming from my mother whose favorite expression is "I'll pay for it". If you have a sharp enough knife, it's easy to make some nice, even slices. The thinner the better, but no need to make them paper thin.
I don't think I did a bad job slicing. It tasted divine. Well, as divine as a fatty slab of beef is going to taste, anyway.
Ooooh. We never had brisket but I remember going to a family vacation where friends of ours cooked it. Delicious. I've always shied away from it because they are so huge at the store! I didn't realize they cooked down so much though.
ReplyDeleteThis is getting tried out once we move and I get my roaster back from the depths of a storage unit!