Project Brisket

When I was growing up, my mother would make a brisket every year for Hanukkah. Oh, it was good! No knives necessary—the meat would just fall apart when you picked it up. And the potatoes and carrots were so soft that not even Grandma had any complaints.

So this year, I decided I’d try to recreate the delicious meal of my childhood. How hard could it be? Buy the meat and potatoes, cook the hell out of ‘em, and voilà! Brisket. I had already planned on a Hanukkah theme for my monthly girlfriends’ dinner party (more on these dinners some other time) and was going to serve potato latkes. Yes, brisket would the perfect main dish for us.

I called my mother and told her my plan…and gingerly asked for her recipe. After a not-so-short lecture about how her recipe is really the only way to cook a brisket without it tasting like crap (her words, not mine) and how Tzeitel (my sister-in-law) doesn’t make it like she does (read between the lines), I duly wrote down every word. Then I called Tzeitel for her recipe. Then I scoured the Web for an hour. In the end, I decided to combine what I considered the best elements from a few select recipes (yes, parts of my mother’s recipe were included).

I’ve been trying to be more judicious with my spending, so I opted to shop at the local Safeway instead of Whole Paycheck (a.k.a. Whole Foods). The night before the party, with my backpack and canvas tote bags in hand, I trotted off to the store with my list. I filled my cart with nearly ten pounds of brisket, five pounds of potatoes, and three pounds each of carrots and onions. Plus the requisite cheese, crackers, applesauce, and sour cream (the last two were for the latkes). I lumbered the seven blocks home, feeling like I was doing some kind of new functional training workout.

There’s something you need to know about brisket: it’s a really cheap cut of meat, so you have to cook it for, like, a week in order for it to be tender. Well, okay, so I exaggerate. But you do have to cook it for a really long time; some recipes call for six hours, some for eight. Then you have to take it from the oven and refrigerate it. This is so you can remove the fat once it’s solidified. (It’s gross, I know. But just think if you skipped that step how much fat you’d be eating?!) Then back into the oven it goes for the remaining hour or two.