Mustard Braised Corned Beef Brisket

I’ve only ever had corned beef brisket once before. It was sometime around St. Patrick’s Day a few years ago while living in Monterey, CA. We stopped into an Irish bar for dinner and I assumed it would be delicious – Irish bar, St. Paddy’s, corned beef – what could go wrong?

Well, aside from the rather delicious Guinness there weren’t too many redeeming qualities. It was tough, dry, and bland. A washed out pink-y color with a hint of shoe leather and a bouquet of meh.

I decided that this year I’d try making my own, even if I didn’t finally get around to it until the day after St. Paddy’s. While I was searching around the internets looking for methods of preparation I discovered that the cooking style of choice was boiling.

Boiling?

Who boils meat?

Poaching? Yes. Steaming? I suppose. Boiling? No, not so much.

I decided to take the middle of the road and slather the top of the brisket with some whole grain mustard and braise it real low and slow for a couple of hours. The result? Intensely flavorful, beautifully fragrant, fork tender brisket.

Yes, please.

Mustard Braised Corned Beef Brisket

3 lb. corned beef brisket (preferably Animal Welfare Approved)

1/3 cup whole grain mustard

Preheat oven to 300⁰F

Slather the fatty side of the brisket with the mustard. Place in a dutch oven with a tight fitting lid and cook for 2 ½ hours, or until the brisket is fork tender. Slice against the grain and serve.



Lamb Stew

There are few things more appealing when the weather is chilly than a hearty stew. It’s a bit fun making them, too. One feels a bit like an alchemist, taking a tough, sinewy piece of meat and slow-braising it until it’s fork tender and falling off the bone. All those tough pieces of cartilage and marrow melt into a velvety broth, coating the meat with luxurious flavor.

My big issue with stews though, is that all that slow cooking turns everything else in the pot in an unappealing mush. All the flavor’s been leached out of the vegetables and they’ve no texture left besides…well, mush.

The solution? Cook them separately. This way, the cooking vegetables in the pot braising with the lamb do their job by imparting lovely flavors to the meat and broth, but one isn’t forced to eat the finished product. Slow roasting the cubed veggies right next to the lamb allows their inherent sweetness to develop, without overcooking them. Throw them all together at the end and it’s a match made in culinary heaven.

There are three additional things worth mentioning:

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smoky three-bean chili

This is probably one of the better chilies I’ve had recently. I’m sure that it will never please a chili purist, but a chili purist I am not. I think chili can have beans and meat, either or both. It can be flavored and cooked in a myriad of ways. The only thing that should matter in the end is how it tastes – and this tasted damn good.

The smokiness of the chipotle in adobo and the smoked paprika were a pleasant diversion from the standard peppers and chili powder flavors of most chilies. It has a lot of heat – if you’re not one for spiciness I’d highly recommend substituting green bell peppers for the Anaheims and maybe omitting a chipotle pepper. I personally love the contrast of the smoky, spicy chili with the coolness of the sour cream and the richness of the avocado on top.

This recipe does call for a bottled jar of sauce. This isn’t something I usually do for recipes, but I had it on hand for a different recipe that required its use for a contest. I never ended up making that specific recipe, nor did I gain entry into the contest, so there it stood, staring at me from the counter. I didn’t feel like going to the store to grab diced tomatoes and tomato paste, so I used the bottled sauce. I have to admit, it was delicious and I’ll probably use it again in the future. That being said, if you are anti-processed food (and who can blame you after the monstrosity that is Sandra Lee) feel free to compensate by using diced tomatoes, a couple tablespoons of tomato paste plus some oregano and red chili flakes.

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red wine braised short ribs

Once relegated to the scrap heap, trendy restaurants all over have revamped the short rib and transformed it into contemporary rustic cuisine. After marinating some in red wine for two days and braising them nice and slow for a few hours I can definitely see why.

Short ribs have long received the same bad wrap as the Boston butt roast (pork shoulder), but that's due in large part to people who have been cooking them improperly. These fat marbled, cartilage ridden cuts of meat require a nice, long, low-heat bath to slowly transform all that greasy fat and yuck into meltingly decadent, fork tender meat that quite literally falls of the bone with the merest of touches.

These are a great weekend meal because they do require attention every 45 minutes for turning - in total about 3 hours or so of braising. But, braising is great because even though it does take a significant amount of time to cook, most of that time is hands off. 

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