Braised beef brisket

If you’re familiar with Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller, you’d probably know that the whole point of the show is to come up with tasty, healthy meals during the week even if the cook doesn’t have the luxury of spending hours and hours in the kitchen. The trick is to prepare a main ingredient in bulk during “cook day” (ideally, over the weekend) then just dress it up and add trimmings during week days.

I wondered how time-saving the technique would be. I wondered if pre-cooked meat or seafood will taste good even if just reheated instead of being served newly cooked.

In a crazy whim to challenge myself, I bought a two-kilo slab of beef brisket then braised it in the oven for four hours. I cooled it, chilled it… The challenge is to come up with three to five dishes over the week using the beef — dishes that are so radically different from each other so that the beef does not become boring and monotonous.

To make a long story short, Robin Miller’s technique worked. At least, with a slab of beef brisket. I’ve made tacos and spring rolls with the beef, and both were delicious with moist tender beef. I have two other dishes in mind for tonight’s dinner and for tomorrow’s lunch.

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I cannot, however, guarantee that other cuts of meat will yield the same results. Beef brisket has generous amounts of marbled fat and that helps a lot in keeping the meat moist.

But before I share with you the taco and spring rolls recipe, first things first. Since both dishes were made from the same slab of braised beef brisket, I should start with the recipe for the braised beef brisket itself for it is the foundation of all the dishes to follow.

Ingredients

a whole, uncut slab of beef brisket, about 2 kg. in weight
2 tbsps. of rock salt
2 tsps. of ground black pepper
2 tsps. of cayenne powder
2 tsps. of brown sugar
3 sprigs of rosemary
3 sprigs of thyme
4 cloves of garlic
2 to 3 c. of newly-boiled beef broth

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 300F.
Pat the meat dry with paper towels.
Mix together the salt, black pepper, cayenne powder and brown sugar. Rub the mixture over the entire surface of the meat.
Place the meat in an ovenproof dish that is at least three inches high.
Add the rosemary, thyme and garlic.
Pour in the hot broth — it should reach halfway up the height of the slab of beef brisket.
Cover the dish tightly with foil.
Bake in a slow oven, at 300F, for four hours.
After four hours, remove the dish from the oven but do not peel off the foil. Let the meat cool. At this point, you can slice the beef and serve the slices with a salad or bread, or however you like. The beef is already cooked and it is very tasty. But since my intention was to treat it as the pre-cooked main ingredient for meals for the coming weekdays, I stored the meat in the fridge.
Prepare two large sheets of foil.
After the meat has cooled, lift and lay on one sheet of foil. Cover with the other sheet then fold together the edges of the two sheets to seal the meat. Chill in the fridge until needed.

Preparation time: 10 minute(s)

Cooking time: 4 hour(s)

Number of servings (yield): 12