a bit of brisket

Every now and again, when I’m in Morrisons, I peruse their butchery section, which is surprisingly good, and if there’s a special offer, and I have room in the freezer (hollow laugh) I buy it. Having been quite unwell this week with a flu-ey thing, I fancied something both easy and nice today, so  last night I fetched out a piece of rolled brisket that I bought last June, so it could defrost overnight.

If I’m doing a pot roast, I like to put lots of veg in – you get lovely gravy and veg then, which can go in the soup pot, or go to make stovies, which will be featuring on a plate near here later in the week.

So I cut four carrots into batons, and peeled about nine shallots, and chopped up some garlic cloves (I think it was about six, but you might like to tone that down a bit – we like garlic).

I dug out my ancient and beloved Le Creuset cast iron casserole, heated some olive oil, and browned the brisket. Transferred the meat to the slow cooker, then tipped the veg and garlic in and cooked them off a bit. I added a slug of Cointreau at this stage – I generally put something sweet in with the veg to caramelise them a bit, and we have stacks of liqueurs here that I used to love, and now find far too sweet (and indeed can’t drink because of diabetes).

The  veg were then transferred to the slow cooker, and I built up a sauce/gravy with a couple of teaspoons of grain mustard, a glass of red wine, some cornflour, peppercorns, juniper berries, sea salt, chopped sage and thyme. Brought that to the boil, and added it to the slow cooker, and switched it on (at about 11.30).

After three hours, I put a piece of foil over the top, to stop the sauce evaporating further, and now we’re supposed to wait until 7 to eat it, with roast potatoes and sprouts. [eyes clock] Not much chance of that …

One Comment

  1. San says:

    Sounds promising, but whenever I try to cook brisket it always seems to come out dry. My incompetence.

    Coincidentally, I saw the brisket today in Morrisons, but I left it there (no freezer space – snap!) and just came home with some shin. Agreed, Morrisons does seem a decent supermarket butcher (got pork cheeks (reduced for being smelly 🙂 ) last week.

    If you can’t eat “sweet” because of diabetes, where does the sugar in, say, Cointreau go when you cook it?

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