My grandmother is a horrible cook with a lot of heart. The kind of woman who’d spend hours carving swan figures out of crookneck squash but couldn’t even make a good brisket (the fattiest, most mess-up-proof cut of meat). Unfortunately for my family, this was what she made for literally any holiday. The Jewish ones, the non-Jewish ones, the Jewish-ish ones.
Jews and those who love them know the kind of brisket I’m talking about: smothered in ketchup with too much sugar and too little salt, cooked either not enough or too much but somehow either way results in a sweet, gloppy, underseasoned, too-tough hunk of meat. And to those rings of uncaramelized onions, I ask, who sent you?
As I sampled other briskets from other home kitchens over the years, I realized I was maybe being too hard on Grandma because I couldn’t really get behind, well, any brisket. Even recipes from this very website follow that same ketchup-y, meatloaf-inspired formula. How could Grandma have known better?
I refuse to accept this brisket narrative.
I want to make brisket worth looking forward to. I want to cook brisket like I’d cook any tough, beefy cut: seasoned heavily with salt and pepper, seared until deeply browned, strewn with caramelized savory aromatics (no mushy carrots!), and braised until fall-apart tender.
I want to uncover that perfect piece of meat, crank the oven, and brown the top again, restoring the crust lost in the braise and reducing the liquid to a rich spoonable sauce. And I want to scatter the whole thing with fresh herbs. And yeah, of course there will be red pepper flakes because every hunk of meat deserves some heat and I like what I like.
My grandma is unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it) past her brisket-making prime, and I don’t think she’d easily embrace this new- school ideology. But if she really wants, I’ll serve hers with a side of ketchup.
