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I have a cryovac corned beef brisket sitting in my fridge. Yesterday was St Patrick's Day and I usually make Reubens at this time of year when it's on sale at the grocery store. I got invited to some kind of corned beef dinner tonight so it's still sitting in the fridge uncooked.
I always just Google search for corned beef recipes and dump in any spice I see. I have all the spices like yellow & brown whole mustard seed, whole allspice, cinnamon stick, whole allspice, cloves, etc. I usually use chicken stock and sauvignon blanc for liquid. I'll buy a loaf of rye bread, some dairy case sauerkraut, some good Swiss cheese, and make up Russian dressing from Hellman's, sweet relish, and Heinz. There's nothing like a Reuben made with just-cooked corned beef.
Smoked brisket is a rainy day summer thing for me. That's the only time I have the 8 hours to care & feed my little Weber R2-D2 smoker.
Just finished cooking a brisket in my new house. Cooked, sliced, and into the freezer, with the follow on cleaning, and got to thinking of what my parents would think to see me doing this kind of cooking.
Which got me to thinking that growing up, we never had brisket at home. In fact, I don't think I even knew of the stuff till the 90s. Oh, I may have come across it as wonderful tasting meat at a cookout but I don't think I ever knew it was called brisket till then.
So here are the questions. Is brisket something that only showed up recently, in the past 2 or 3 decades or so, in the supermarket for the common person to buy and cook? Did other cuts of meat before stop it from being so popular? Did it take some form of reheating cooking, ie microwave, to make common home possible?
I am thinking that in the house I grew up in, it was just never an item, from lack of availability of even sirloin in some locations, such as 1 steak rationed a month, to no one having the patience to cook for 7 hours. Was there, however, other reasons in brisket's history?
oh my, I guess it depends on where you live and who does the cooking and how? We used every part of the beef I think. Brisket was referred to, in our family as a boiled dinner. We never had the huge ones, like we do now; it was cut into several smaller ones and served pretty much like corned beef just not corned.
It was around but not something we tended to have often because it took so long to prepare. I think there was also a regionality to things. We were in the south so there was a lot more pork or chicken than beef used by most folks, so when beef was used, it was either ground (usually by mom picking a roast and having it ground), steak, or a Sunday dinner roast. The only brisket we ate was corned beef.
When I went into the service, I went west and there was exposed to smoked brisket. And then tri-tip in California. So in some ways the movement of folks around the country is exposing more people to different cuts and cooking styles.
I think it has a lot to do with region. We too were raised in So. Ca. we had tri tip and I am talking 60 years ago, but I never heard of Rib eye. Our steak, which we had plenty, coming from a meat loving family consisted of porterhouse, T bone and top sirloin mostly. Oh and filet once in awhile, but my dad always felt it didn't have as much flavor as other steaks.
This is what I think of when someone says "brisket." I've not used this recipe myself, but it resembles the way one of my best friends' mothers used to make brisket, years ago (she didn't put celery in hers, however). It's called Jewish-style braised brisket, which to me is "brisket of the old school." It has instructions for cooking it in either a stainless steel roasting pan or a throwaway aluminum one.
Well, when I titled this thread, I was thinking of growing up in my parents' house, the previous generation, hence the old school. That maybe the reason why I didn't know of brisket was because of their thinking. While my Father did backyard grill up to the time I started high school, he didn't much after that.......maybe it was when he saw our cat steal the steaks off the grill that he thought better of it.
As recipes go, I am rather simple about it. Big, deep pan, lined with tin foil (makes it easier to clean). Set the stove to 250. Put the defrosted beef in. Coat the meat side with store bought brisket rub. Flip it over so it is fat side up. Coat that side with brisket rub. Pour in a can of beef broth. Cover completely with tin foil, into the oven for 6-7 hours, test with a meat thermometer before declaring that it is done.
From there, it depends on its intended use. If it is for a camp out, wrap up in tin foil, put in the frig, until it is time to put it in the cooler and send on its way. If for me, BEST if i slice it then and there, into baggies, and into the ice box. I have been LAZY in the past, though, and just put the pan and beast into the frig, swearing to myself that I will slice it up tomorrow, but just whittle it down over the weeks.
I have used a bottle of red wine before instead of the broth and it turned out okay but I haven't repeated that move again.
Poor man's food may be part of it in my upbringing....or perhaps not. After all, I was raised on powdered milk and have readapted the practice as an adult.
I didn't get into cooking my own till only a few years ago and that's because I was trying to figure out how to feed a large number of divers on a campout on my dollar. Skipping the analysis of how I came to the conclusion, once I found out how cheap it was to the pound (but have to buy a lot of pounds), I took off with it. To me, it seems like the best thing since sliced bread.
I was almost taken down a false path, however, with trimmed brisket. Ie, "I don't have the time to trim it, guess I will have to pay someone to do it for me!". A co worker stopped me from that path, though, and explained that the fat was part of the cooking process. One of those marketing practices to get more money out of the client by convincing them of what they need.
As far as long cooking times go, it sounds like the family friend who once did a many course dinner for us. He started at dusk and by midnight or later, with the main course still not served, many of us went to bed. I don't think he is the brisket type, though.....because he hunts moose.
The poor man's meat theory does have its merit. When it came to steaks, my father did seem to insist on the best and hence, maybe brisket didn't fit into his view of what to serve for beef and potatoes......or beef and wine. C'est la vie.
powdered milk....thanks for the chuckle,,,in my mind I'm picturing a huge box that says carnation on it...
that stuff was gross....but we drank it..!!
when I got my own place/apartment at 18,,,, I was working full time two jobs,,,, and had sundays off... my day I would always have gallons of real milk around with plenty of chocolate syrup...and have rib eyes or porterhouse steaks as a treat.... never again did I want to see that carnation box...
you do need fat for flavor so its good you didn't trim the briskets .......and the latest food science reports are saying fats from meats do not cause high cholesterol as we once thought
oh my, I guess it depends on where you live and who does the cooking and how? We used every part of the beef I think. Brisket was referred to, in our family as a boiled dinner. We never had the huge ones, like we do now; it was cut into several smaller ones and served pretty much like corned beef just not corned.
I do often use brisket for stew but also use it for tortilla sandwiches and it is the latter that I often use too much of it in a sitting.
It works well in a stew since it breaks up easily. The curious thing about stews is that my Father introduced me to beans when I was low on money. That may have been a history lesson, though, as I don't recall having beans for meals except at Sunday brunch.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mainebrokerman
powdered milk....thanks for the chuckle,,,in my mind I'm picturing a huge box that says carnation on it...
that stuff was gross....but we drank it..!!
when I got my own place/apartment at 18,,,, I was working full time two jobs,,,, and had sundays off... my day I would always have gallons of real milk around with plenty of chocolate syrup...and have rib eyes or porterhouse steaks as a treat.... never again did I want to see that carnation box...
Well, 2 or 3 things on that. My box is not carnation but Wally World for they are the only ones around here who sell the great big box. HEB did, long ago, but they have gone down to the small box, so it wasn't worth it anymore. I suppose they believe that people don't actually mix the stuff to drink.
Once when they did sell the big box, when I was checking out, the bagger asked the cashier "What's this stuff?" and the cashier answered, "Oh, that's for babies.". I was talking to another diver last week, I mentioned I was going over to Wally World to get some and he asked what was I baking?
As it is, it is what I drink for milk. For whatever reason that moves me to why, it fits my concept, whether that is accurate or not, of forest ranger living and is rather economical with less waste and less need to go into town. I did buy 2 large boxes last week; heaven forbid the merchants should ever decide that no one uses large amounts any more.
Further, when I do need milk for baking or things like pancakes, I just mix in the powdered amount if I don't have any chilled to spare.
One thing about brisket and other meats that come in large amounts is the need to have a freezer. When meat prices are low, buy it and stick it in the freezer until ready to use it. There is a pork loin in my chest freezer waiting its turn. Till I got the ranch house, I had to borrow my Dive Boss's freezer to store such meat if I was not going to cook it quite soon.
Which is another thing that puzzles me about my parents. It seems any house I ever lived in under their roof always had a freezer, a chest one for K-3, and then a standing one thereafter. So my parents were into storing food and I even remember my mother saying in my K-3 years how for milk, she would save money by fresh, "day old", and powdered and freezing some of it.
I don't know. I'm thinking that perhaps in the places where meat was rationed, maybe brisket was too impossible to buy, when I was growing up in Texas was when my father was often deer and quail hunting and that is its own treat, and maybe we did in my K-3 years but I was too young to remember if we ever had it then.
STILL, though, it probably takes a certain type of person to be ready to cross that 6-7 hour cooking barrier. Just once the rewards are experienced, one thinks nothing of it!
powdered milk....thanks for the chuckle,,,in my mind I'm picturing a huge box that says carnation on it...
that stuff was gross....but we drank it..!!
I winter at a ski resort where the nearest grocery store is 20 minutes. I have powdered milk on hand as an emergency staple.
I actually made a quart this winter. I wanted to bake some cornbread and didn't have any milk. I'd also run out of half & half so I used some in my coffee the next morning because I'd also failed to replace my canned evaporated milk emergency staple. LOL
Well, when I titled this thread, I was thinking of growing up in my parents' house, the previous generation, hence the old school. That maybe the reason why I didn't know of brisket was because of their thinking. While my Father did backyard grill up to the time I started high school, he didn't much after that.......maybe it was when he saw our cat steal the steaks off the grill that he thought better of it.....
Quote:
Originally Posted by TamaraSavannah
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STILL, though, it probably takes a certain type of person to be ready to cross that 6-7 hour cooking barrier. Just once the rewards are experienced, one thinks nothing of it!
Wanted to comment to both at once since we seem to have had similar raising, just different regions. When we grilled out, it was typical burgers and dogs. But yes we did cross that 6 hour barrier a lot. Typically that would be a group event where we'd do a whole hog for 4th of July, or a fish fry where several guys would pool their fish and we'd be cooking whole piles of it in caldrons along with corn on the cob and hushpuppies.
The other big, all day cook would be shrimp. Being from SC, dad and his buddies would get up early and head to the docks. They'd get there about time the shrimp boats pulled in and come back with tubs of huge fresh shrimp right off the boat. Then us kids would gather around to peel and devein 'em for the cookout. So that night would be grilled shrimp, boiled and chilled shrimp cocktail, and fried shrimp like you wouldn't believe.
Funny when you think about it. Country folk eating massive shrimp cocktails and going back for seconds and thirds because shrimp was cheap and steak was expensive. The way regional "peasant" cuisine is someone else's gourmet.
Wanted to comment to both at once since we seem to have had similar raising, just different regions. When we grilled out, it was typical burgers and dogs. But yes we did cross that 6 hour barrier a lot. Typically that would be a group event where we'd do a whole hog for 4th of July, or a fish fry where several guys would pool their fish and we'd be cooking whole piles of it in caldrons along with corn on the cob and hushpuppies.
The other big, all day cook would be shrimp. Being from SC, dad and his buddies would get up early and head to the docks. They'd get there about time the shrimp boats pulled in and come back with tubs of huge fresh shrimp right off the boat. Then us kids would gather around to peel and devein 'em for the cookout. So that night would be grilled shrimp, boiled and chilled shrimp cocktail, and fried shrimp like you wouldn't believe.
Funny when you think about it. Country folk eating massive shrimp cocktails and going back for seconds and thirds because shrimp was cheap and steak was expensive. The way regional "peasant" cuisine is someone else's gourmet.
Well A and B.
Long ago at the family vacation house on Hilton Head (sold a few years back), the local, informal sport was catching crab, boiling them, and then everyone being around the pass through, cracking the shells and extracting the meat. The more the merrier and while the extended messy task was not a fav memory from childhood, it was a pleasure at a family reunion around the turn of the century seeing families of cousins all working together.
For all the work in catching and extracting meat, it often provided decent meal items for a few days (if one has refrigeration).
B: One of the highest points of my marine biology course work were breakfasts of gumbos in makeshift cafes or dinners where the table cloths was butcher paper, there was a hole in the middle of the table, and they brought you buckets of shrimp, corn on the cob, maybe other sea life, and pitchers of beer. A very nice break after a day of being out in the sun, salt, and sand.
In other marine biology field trips, a prof showing up with a shrimp boiler for the meal at the end of the day was the treat. In both situations of B, of course, the shrimp was bought at market, we didn't catch it.
So just as it might be country folk, so it might be those involved in some aspect of the trade.
And then there is C......where I seem to remember that dietary speaking, shrimp is a more efficient way to get protein than steak.
Had some of the newly cooked brisket today for tortilla sandwich lunch but I goofed. The baggie I grabbed out of the ice box were the scraps I had gathered for stew making but it all looks alike in plastic.
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