Braised Beef Brisket

Braised Beef Brisket is a recipe that appears in The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.

Official description
Beef brisket is a cut of meat from the chest of a bovine animal. There are different ways to cook brisket: the "Southern way" usually involves smoking the meat very slowly over several hours and serving with barbeque sauce. This is yummy, of course, in a barbeque sauce sort of way, but I much prefer the brisket my mom always made: instead of cooking in an enclosed smoker, it cooks slowly in a pan in the oven, braising in a delicious liquid consisting of beef consomme, soy sauce, and other ultra-savory ingredients.

Brisket must be cooked slowly over many, many hours. The scientific explanation is that it takes hours of low heat to dissolve the very tough connective tissues found throughout the meat; if it's not cooked long enough, brisket will be unpleasantly tough and difficult to chew. On the other hand, if you go overboard and cook it too long, the connective tissue will disintegrate altogether and the resulting meat will be dry. In my experience, however, it's much easier to salvage brisket that's a little overcooked - the cooking juice can rescue it nicely - than it is to eat brisket that hasn't been cooked long enough. So allow for plenty of cooking time. And be patient. The fall-apart goodness of this delicious meat is worth every hour.

The brisket is delicious served with mashed potatoes, with the juice spooned over both. It's also fabulous on toasted sandwich rolls with cheese melted on top. And it's great for a crowd. So... let's dissolve those connective tissues, shall we?

Recipe

 * Two 10.5 ounce cans beef consomme (not beef broth)
 * 1 1/2 cups low-sodium soy sauce
 * Juice of two lemons
 * 5 garlic cloves, chopped
 * 1 tablespoon liquid smoke (optional)
 * One 7- to 10-pound beef brisket, untrimmed

I like to marinate and cook my brisket in a large reusable aluminum foil pan. Makes life easy.

In the roasting pan, combine the beef consomme and soy sauce.

Halve the lemons, juice them...

And add the juice to the pan.

Next, chop the cloves of garlic and add to the mix. If you're a garlic lover, add more than that. won't tell anyone. If you're using liquid smoke, add it now, too. Some people find the aroma and flavor of liquid smoke to be a little overwhelming, but in my experience, a tablespoon isn't too tough to take. It'll give the brisket just a slight smoky flavor reminiscent of barbeque.

Place the brisket in the pan, fat side up. Ladle some of the liquid on top, just to get the marinating process going.

Next, cover tightly with foil and place in the fridge to marinate for 24 to 48 hours. When you're ready, pop the brisket - still covered in foil - in a 300*F oven and cook for about 40 minutes per pound. This 8-pound monster was done in 6 hours.

When the cooking time has passed, peel back the foil and check to see if the brisket is fork-tender: stick two forks into the meat and pull them in opposite directions. The meat should come apart fairly easily. If you meet much resistance, cover with foil and return to the oven for 20 minutes.

When the meat is fork-tender, place it on a cutting board. With a sharp knife, cut away the large slab of fat from the top of the meat. As you cut, try not to take any meat with you. The meat just under the fat is some mighty good eatin'.

Just keep going until most of the fat is trimmed.

With a large serrated kinfe, slice it against the grain. When the brisket is truly in fall-apart mode, this is what it looks like (a picture was in the cookbook that is not inserted into this wiki; we apologize).

Now, here's the kicker: scoop up the sliced meat with a spatula and return it to the pan, juice and all. This'll make it extra yummy and moist. Cover with foil and place in the oven to warm up, if necessary.

Serve the brisket with mashed potatoes, on toasted rolls, or whatever suits you. It's a major-league crowd pleaser.