MOTHER AND DAUGHTER BRISKETS

Doesn't every Jewish woman have her own brisket recipe?  My mom has one, and so do I - mom's (as you'll see) is clearly from the Mad Men era, with a sweet/sour effect.  Mine probably evolved from some Julia Child snobbery, concerning red wine and less processed foods, later on.  Though you may have noticed that the current barbecue craze has a lot of ketchup involved; so, as everything comes around again, I'm reconsidering.

Now we await:  Lena's, Eve's, Tamara's, ???

or

BARBSIE'S BRISKET:

• a 3 lb. single cut brisket (most briskets smaller than 5 lbs. are single cut - it means they don't have a thick horizontal layer of fat in the middle.)
• 1 pkg. Lipton onion soup mix (actually now it says 
• 1/2 cp. ketchup
• 2 TB Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 cp. brown sugar
• juice of one lemon

Preheat oven to 325. Mix the last 5 ingredients together. Place brisket on a large piece of heavy duty foil in a roasting pan.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and pour the mixture over the top.  Bring foil to cover and seal edges tightly.  

Bake for 2 1/2 hours.  Turn off the oven and leave the brisket in for another half hour.  It's best if you serve it hours or up to 2 days later, so slice it and let it sit in the sauce until you're ready.  Can be frozen also.  Reheat covered at 350 for about a half hour, until your thermometer (aka your finger) tells you it's hot enough.  

MY BRISKET:

• a 3 lb. single cut brisket
• 1 cp. red wine (some will tell you it needs to be really good, but I can't really tell.)
• 1 small can (8 oz.) ordinary tomato sauce
• 1/2 cp. beef broth (can be from concentrate - not too salty) or water
• 3 onions, sliced
• 2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 2" pieces
• 1/4 tsp. dried thyme

Preheat oven to 325.  Season the brisket with salt and pepper.  Put a glug of olive oil in a large saucepan, heat to medium, and brown the brisket on both sides.  Put it in an oven-proof casserole or pan slightly larger - better if it has a lid, but you can cover with parchment paper and aluminum foil otherwise.  

Back to the saucepan, put in the sliced onions and sauté them for a few minutes.  Then pour in the wine, tomato sauce and beef broth, and let simmer for 5 minutes.  Pour all this over the meat in the casserole, tuck in the carrots, sprinkle on the thyme, and cover with the lid - or else a layer of parchment paper with foil sealing the top.  (I don't like the food to make contact with the foil - which nobody worried about in the 60's - so you can adjust Mom's recipe accordingly if you agree.)  

Bake for 2 1/2 hours (if it's not tightly sealed, you may want to check the liquid level half through); turn off the oven and leave in for another half hour.  Put it on the counter and when it's cool enough, take the brisket out of the sauce and slice it as thick as you like it.  The liquid you can either leave as is, thin but tasty with the soft and savory onions and carrots alongside, or you can puree it all together in a food processor to make an actual sauce - or be indecisive and go half and half!  Now you can store it all together in the refrigerator, as above, for several hours or a few days, or freeze it, and then reheat it covered when you're ready, as above.  It's very forgiving, and can wait quite a long time in the oven as long as you don't let it dry out.