Everyday beef brisket

The cost of living is getting higher. How many times a day do we hear or read that in the news and on social media?

The majority of posts on this blog feature expensive cuts of meat.

With the cost of food rising, I need to increase my consumption of more economical cuts. I will limit buying the more expensive cuts of meat.

Most days, lunch is supermarket bought beef mince (ground beef for North American readers).

To break up the monotony, other “economical” cuts include chuck and brisket.

This beef brisket cost about $AUD30 for about 1.8 kg. That’s roughly $AUD17/kg.

Most of the scotch fillet steak or rump steak I buy is more expensive than that. This is particularly true if the meat is Coorong Black Angus beef.

This piece of brisket will give me with eight serves ($AUD3.75).

Recipe

Tonight I prepared some beef brisket meat with a creamy sauce, some broccolini, and sourdough bread.

Ingredients

• Brisket — Initially cooked in a slow cooker for 8 hours. It was then refrigerated. For this meal, the brisket is finely diced.
• Sourdough bread — organic sourdough bread frozen to develop resistant starch, and then thawed and toasted.
• Broccolini
• Swiss brown mushrooms
• Cream cheese
• Blue vein cheese
• Pure pouring cream
• Beef fat — the fat separated from the cooking liquor from the slow cooker.
• Beef broth — the cooking liquor from the slow cooker.
• Butter

Equipment

• Frypan
• Kettle

Instructions

1. Add the diced beef, beef broth, and beef fat to the frypan. Gently heat the contents until the liquid has evaporated. Continue heating until the meat has softened. Set the reheated brisket aside.
2. Sauté the mushrooms in butter. The mushrooms will soften when they have absorbed the water from the butter. Then, add crumbled blue vein cheese and the cream cheese. Stir slowly and thoroughly. Finish with a dash of pure pouring cream and season with freshly cracked black peppercorns.
3. Parboil the broccolini with boiling water from the kettle.
4. Place the toasted sourdough bread on a dinner plate. Place the broccolini on the toast. Spoon the brisket next to the bread. Spoon the sauce over the broccolini and bread and let the rest settle next to the meat.

Thoughts on the meal

While beef short rib meat is more unctuous, as a cheaper cut, brisket is pretty good.

Beef and blue vein cheese go well together and combine well on the toast which adds a crunchy mouthfeel.

The broccolini adds some colour to the dish.

Photographs

These are photographs of the meal. Select one and then scroll through the rest.

Questions

• What is your favourite “cheap” cut of beef?
• Do you like brisket? How do you cook it?
• Do you eat leftovers for lunch?

Some of the other meals from this brisket

Other photographs

Some other photographs from this week.

Beef brisket. Slowly cooked beef brisket reheated in a frypan with beef fat and beef broth. Served on sourdough bread, which had been frozen to develop resistant starch. The photograph features a Dolphins NRL plate.