I used to do my briskets in the oven. However for ease of being able to put a meal on in the morning, go to work, and have it ready to go that night when I get home, I switched over to using a slow cooker. What I’ve found though is that the flavour of my briskets doesn’t pop nearly as much when slow cooked.
So after a lot of trial and error I have a recipe that works. And the best bit is that it doesn’t take too much prep so you can still prepare it and set it going before going out for the day!
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large yellow onion
1.5kg beef brisket
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups beef stock
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
Method:
*Slice onion into thin half moons. Put the olive oil in the pan and slowly caramelize on a low heat, then set aside.
*Put the brisket in the frypan and sear on both sides.
*Make up 2 cups of beef stock. Mix in the two tables of Worcestershire sauce and the 1 tablespoon of soy sauce.
*Place the brisket in the slow cooker, fat side up, and season with salt and pepper. Take the minced garlic and spread it over the top of the brisket.
*Pour in the beef stock mixture.
*Put in the onions, on top and around the brisket.
*Cook on low heat for 6 – 8 hours (depending on brisket size)
*Leave on warm for half an hour before serving.
And that’s it! A really simple yet really delicious way to add a bunch more flavour to your briskets.
As I mentioned when reviewing theE-I-E-I-O burger, I love a meal where there is more than one meat contained within the dish. And on a recent visit to Katoomba NSW I discovered a restaurant-slash-bar that had on its menu a dish that contained not two meats or three but indeed four!
So lets have a gander at the Bootleggers Meat Share Plate.
A meal made in Trev-heaven!
So the description of the meal is a Share Plate and it is indeed intended for two people. Given it was our anniversary I relented and shared this plate with my wife, but being the kind woman she is she let me devour the lions portion of it.
The meal comes with four meats from two different animals. Beef brisket and links (sausages) and chicken wings as well as fried chicken. Personally I would have preferred the links be made out of pork but you can’t have everything.
Along with the above came enough non-meat foods to ensure that you would have some chance of being able to pass your next bowel movement. Slaw, Corn, Pickles, Potato Salad and Chips. Good to see that at least 40% of the sides were spud based – potatoes being that good that they should almost be considered an honorary meat!
Unto the breach!
The meats were all very tender. The fried chicken was done very well, not remotely oily or greasy like that one would get from a fast food restaurant. The chicken wings were lightly spiced so not as hot as buffalo wings but at least had a bit of bite to them. The brisket was very tender as brisket should be. The only meat that didn’t impress me was the links. They weren’t bad in any way, but just your average beef sausages so were somewhat overshadowed by the rest.
The non-meat stuff was good too. I think. I dunno, I wasn’t really paying attention.
Exploding Hot Sauce!
Sauce made by chef Wile. E. Coyote
The waitress brought out two types of hot sauce, espousing their virtues about how they were made on site, not simply store bought. As readers of my blog would know I love hot sauces so was eager to try them out. The red hot sauce was indeed very hot, not as hot as the likes of Mad Dog 357, but still had a helluva kick. The green sauce? Well I went to open it…
…and it exploded!
Perhaps exploded is not the right term. The heat had built up in the bottle so as soon as the top was twisted it made a sound like shook up cola can and the sauce blew forth! It covered my shirt, splattered my face and even left a sorta Trev-shaped splatter pattern on the window behind me.
The poor young waitress was very apologetic. After ascertaining that it had not gone in my eyes she brought multiple wet paper towels for me to clean myself, then later appeared with a shirt from the restaurants merchandise stash for me to wear home. So sadly, unless I had chosen to lick my clothing I never got to sample what the green hot sauce tasted like.
The shirt I wear when doing my radio show, though my music isn’t bootlegged – the CD’s are just really worn
Overall
This meal is nearly $80 but its certainly enough for two people (as long as one isn’t me) and its very good tasting. Besides the volatile hot sauces the only other accompaniment was a small bowl of BBQ sauce – personally I would have preferred to get a hearty gravy but perhaps that would push the meal into the realms of making a coronary a certainty. The bar had a different selection of wheat beers on tap which were quite nice, but if you’d take my recommendation skip the ginger based beer, it was pretty average. So yeah, do yourself a favour and if in Katoomba drop past Bootleggers – you will get a decent feed and maybe a free shirt!
