I haven’t blogged in a while because I was uninspired, bored with food choices and grossed out by the texture, taste and size of our meat products; both the chicken and pork most times have a sponginess in the flesh and, of course is tasteless. What is that?! The supermarkets seem to be fond of selling beef steak without the bones and declaring that every piece is Angus cow. I immediately went on “yellow alert” about the boneless meat, you really can’t tell what you’re getting. As far as Angus is considered, the bar has been set so low by our USDA that any black cow can be considered Angus. Forget the fish, it comes from fish farms and are fed with a dog food mixture of chemicals and whatever, then frozen before it makes it to the market. I now get all poultry from the Jewish kosher store in Scranton, beef and pork from either the IGA in Hawley or Pete’s Market in Narrowburg which, I hope, comes from local farmers and at least has some taste and no sponginess. I swear, I have lost my “joy of cooking” here, but I’m coming home in a few weeks, so voila!
Anyway. Beef brisket, although I was born in Texas, was never on my barbecue list. Growing up we barbecued, beef and pork ribs, steak and chicken, no brisket. When I heard about Texas barbecued brisket, I assumed that it was just some bizarre innovation of barbecued meats created by people who didn’t know any better.
I finally had some Texas barbecued brisket when we were in Haiti. Our neighbor from Texas brought a large brisket back from the States and barbecued it, proving my point 😀 So I didn’t bother to try beef brisket for decades until listless, bored, depressed and unenthusiastic, I was shopping for meat at the IGA in Hawley (beef, chicken, pork) and spotted a 2 lb beef brisket that my husband and I thought, hopelessly, we might as well try.
I rubbed the roast down with bavarian essence, set it inside an aluminum wrapped roasting pan, let it sit for 1 hour and then threw it, in the pan, off flame, onto a 250 F preheated gas grill, top down, went away and drank Bailly Rose cremant for 1 1/2 hours. It looked okay. I then slathered it with barbecue sauce, turned it over and continued to grill for 15 minutes. I slathered again, turned it and grilled another 15 minutes until the sauce coated the roast but was not burned.
We were interested and my husband started to hover, snack and look for sandwich makings.
He grew these heirloom tomatoes and the flavor is wonderful. They taste like tomatoes! He toasted a Hoagie loaf and layered it with mayonnaise, horseradish, tomatoes and lettuce. Mea Culpa, the brisket was juicy and flavorful. I’ll do it again when we get to France.