Another mountain climbed! Vegans need not apply.

I have made it my mission for the summer to become a meat cooking expert. While I've always been adept at making side dishes, meat, especially larger cuts like roasts, have always intimidated and intrigued me. They're notoriously easy for novices to ruin, and yet there's this caveman appeal, this prehistoric urge for humans to cook meat over fire. Reason #32 why I don't understand vegans. They see a drawing of a cave-family in their fur skirts cooking a side of gazelle over a fire and they see a massacre. I see a family dinner.

It's not really fair to make fun of vegans. They don't have the strength to fight back.

Last week, I'm proud to say I cooked a whole chicken for the first time, and what a success that was. It's not that hard to make something taste good when you have butter and garlic at your disposal. To prepare my chicken, I trimmed away the excess fat, ripped the guts out, and gently began pulling the skin away from the flesh. I really got my hands in there, all along both sides of the body of my bird, creating a tasty pocket to hold butter, which I melted and added a few cloves of garlic, some lemon zest, and some dry tarragon. Baked for an hour at 350 in a covered roasting pan, then took off the lid and stuck it under the broiler to crisp up the skin. AND there were enough drippings to make gravy! Which I ate on toast.

OK, chicken down. Easy. So I decided to seek out a notoriously difficult to cook cut of meat.

Brisket.

If cooked wrong, fatty, tough and stringy. If cooked slowly, melt in your mouth beef candy. Never having cooked brisket before, I did the sensible thing and Googled a recipe. Now because brisket has so much fat and connective tissue in it, it needs to be cooked slowly for the fat to melt into the meat, which softens it. I've had it slow cooked on the grill, which was to die for. Unfortunately, it takes about 6 hours to cook on low indirect heat. I opted for the braising method which takes a mere 2 hours. Until recently, I had no idea what braising was. It's a method of oven cooking where the cut of meat is immersed partially in liquid and tightly covered to preserve the meat's tenderness. The recipes I encountered in the google-sphere ranged from boring (just broth) to the insane (ketchup, onion soup mix and cola). I opted to wing mine.

For a 2 pound brisket:
1 cup broth (I had vegetable broth)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp salt (I'm fancy, so I used smoked sea salt)
1 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp dry rosemary
1/2 tsp cumin
maple syrup
(I didn't measure, but my estimate would be 1 1/2-2 oz, yes I measure in shots)
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp paprika
3 cloves of garlic, crushed

I'm guessing on most of those measurements. I rarely measure, I add stuff, I taste, etc. I added everything to a small sauce pan and simmered until the concoction reduced to about 3/4 of the original volume.

Brisket has a thick layer of fat on one side, so to prep, I cut into the fat diagonally in both directions, which will help the fat render into the meat. I rubbed the meat with a mixture of sea salt, brown sugar, pepper and dry rosemary, which I ground with my mortar and pestle. Really crust that mixture on both sides of the roast. I also opted to sear the meat before I put it in the oven, in a large frying pan on high heat. Just under a minute on each side, until the fatty side gets a bit crispy looking. Then pop that sucker in a roasting pan, fatty side up, pour in the braising liquid, which should come up about halfway on the side of the roast, cover and stick it in a 275 degree oven for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, I removed my roast from the oven, poured the braising liquid back into a saucepan over medium heat to reduce it some more. And I put the roast back in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes to crisp up that fat. Oh and I coated it with more maple syrup. Serve with the reduced braising liquid for dipping.

Warning! Even slow cooking won't render away all the fat. Do not operate any heavy machinery after a brisket. This is a very heavy meal, and as a result I will be eating salads for the next few days.