Mom’s Brisket
This is the tried-and-true Abbett Family brisket recipe. It has great flavor, the brisket ends up very soft, and creates plenty of delicious sauce. It can stand up to long periods of heat (i.e. to enjoy it warm for Shabbos lunch), tastes great cold, and makes fantastic sandwiches.
A word about the beef: if you’re feeling especially generous, go all-out and buy your guests a center-cut 6 lb. brisket, as my mother prescribes. To save some money, and actually get some more flavor from the meat, buy three “deckel” cuts (around 2 lbs. each). Deckel is the “point cut” of the brisket which has a bit of extra fat. About.com offers a good explanation of brisket and corned beef.
A word about slicing the beef: Williams-Sonoma offers this professional-quality meat-slicing knife which works wonders with boneless cuts like brisket, turkey breast, roast beef, etc. Keep it very sharp with a ceramic sharpener.
Karen Abbett’s Brisket
6 lb. brisket (center cut)
3-4 cans Rokeach Tomato and Mushroom sauce
1/2 cup Marsala or any red wine
1 envelope onion soup mix
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1 large onion, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
Disposable roasting pan (big enough to hold brisket)
Heavy duty aluminum foil
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line roasting pan with heavy duty aluminum foil in a criss-cross pattern (you will need to make an air tight wrap on the brisket)
- Heat olive oil in large pan and saute sliced onion, then mushrooms
- Place brisket in lined roasting pan and rub with onion soup mix.
- Pour tomato sauce and wine over brisket.
- Add sauteed mushrooms and onions.
- Wrap tightly; fold and seal aluminum foil over brisket.
- Place pan on a cookie sheet and put in oven. Cook for 2 hours.
- Remove from oven and unwrap aluminum foil carefully (steam inside is hot). Remove partially cooked brisket and slice perpendicular to the grain with a sharp knife
- Place slices back into pan and re-wrap foil tightly. Put back in over for another 2 hours (you can never overcook brisket!)
This past Shabbat, instead of performing step 10, we wrapped up our sliced brisket and sauce in a smaller EZ-Foil pan and kept in on the warming tray overnight until lunch.
Cook’s Illustrated did a piece recently about braised brisket. Their suggestion to assure a very moist, neatly sliced end result was to cook the brisket, then refrigerate it overnight (left wrapped in the pan), and the next day, slice it, then continue cooking. The cooling allows the meat to relax and absorb all the liquid it’s sitting in. So, you get not only tender meat, but moist and tender meat.