Beef Brisket

I purchased a new slow cooker cookbook the other day - I know what you are thinking - another cookbook???  I just needed a little bit of inspiration for different things to put in the slow cooker.

In the beef section there were many recipes for Beef Brisket.  I googled what a brisket was, and looked at some

images and then set off to ask my local butcher.  It seems that this is not a particularly popular cut of meat here in Australia - but it is available.  He told me that he could get me one, and I planned to pick it up several days later.

Ok, so now I have the brisket in my possession - what am I going to do with it?  Which recipe will I try?

I think this is where I went a little wrong - I left it wrapped in it's brown paper bag in the fridge until I was ready to pop it into the crock pot.  Boy, was I surprised!!!  I was expecting a thicker piece of meat have a look here and tell me what you think??  Well this puppy (no, not a dog - the meat!!) was thin and long, and had huge amounts of fat on it (aaagh!!!)  I set about cutting it into three pieces that would fit into the crock pot.  I put them in, then took them out, then put them back in again - I simply could NOT cook this piece of meat with so much fat on it.  SO I took them out again. I tried to trim as much fast as was humanly possible from this cut - which was not easy given the thinness of the meat in some places.

Here is what eventuated.....

Barbecue Brisket
Inspired from a recipe in Easy Slow Cooker Cookbook

1.75kg beef brisket (trimmed of fat!!!)
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 red capsicum, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, cut into rough pieces
150g (approximately) Barbecue Marinade (bottled BBQ Sauce!!)

Place all the ingredients in the crock pot, stir to combine - add more sauce if needed to evenly coat the meat.  Put the lid on, and allow to cook for 7-9 hours.

The butcher told me that this particular cut of meat requires long, slow cooking in order for it to become tender!

So what does one serve with this???

I scrubbed some potatoes, cut them into wedges, tossed them in a good slurping of olive oil, and a generous shake of parmesan cheese.  The kind of parmesan cheese that you can find on the shelf - it is great for things like this.

This gave the wedges great flavour, and lots of added crispiness!!

I then wrapped some corn on the cob in foil - added a small amount of crushed garlic and a knob of butter, wrapped them up like a christmas bon bon and baked them in the oven for 15 minutes.  Cooking the corn like this produces lovely sweet juicy, buttery corn.  Too easy!!!

Add another slurp of the BBQ sauce to the meat before serving!

What was the verdict?  The meat was easy to shred - but it was still kind of stringy and chewy.  A little too chewy for my liking.  At $13.99 per kilo it was relatively inexpensive - but for my money, a pork scotch fillet at around $7.99 per kilo is a much better buy.

Personally I think this recipe would be much better using the pork.  I don't think I will bother buying a brisket again.

So Dear Readers I would love to hear from anyone that has any experience with cooking a brisket.  Did I just get a "toughy"?