Cooking Brisket: An Essential Jewish Skill

Cooking for large groups of hungry 20 somethings is no easy feat. Being able to prepare an entire Shabbat meal, or any meal for so many people can brew up several challenges. One of the largest difficulties involved in creating such a meal, is having everything be ready and warm at the exact same time. For my blog, I am going to teach you how to prepare a super tender and delicious brisket, which will even impress your Bubbe, and will require about 10 minutes of preparation at the most. This may not be the best method of preparing brisket, but we have already served it several times in Moishe House LA with rave reviews. I am going to give you the basic rundown of how to prepare this brisket, and then leave you with a list of ingredients you can mix and match to create your very own recipe.

Question: How much brisket should I buy?
Answer: I'd say each pound will happily feed 3 people...
To keep yourself under budget, serve foods with carbs (pasta, cous cous) that will fill folks up for less, and then the brisket will feed more people. Cooking Length: You should cook the brisket for 8 hours at 200 degrees if you want it to be extremely tender. Make sure someone is home during this entire process.

Preparation:

1. Get a pot that has a good cover that will fit your brisket inside. If you're making a larger sized one, you can get those aluminum tins at the market and cover with foil.
2. Put the brisket in the pot and fill the pot with liquids of your choice (see below) until it is about a half inch below the top of the meat.
3. Add spices and vegetables
4. Cover, place in oven, Set it and forget it!

Sauces (mix and match):

• Coca Cola
• red wine
• onion soup mix (or just throw in a whole onion)
  
• ketchup
• bbq sauce
• beer
• whiskey

Spices (mix n match):

• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic
• Hot Paprika
• Cayenne
• Cinnamon
  
• Coffee grounds
• Cocoa Powder
• Cumin

After 8 hours are up, just take out the brisket and slice it up! You can use the leftover sauce to pour over rice, or you can use it instead of water to make cous cous or rice.

If you make some brisket, respond to this post with what you did, and how it came out!

Thanks,
Benjie

St. Louis MH

So the winter here is slowly but surely coming to a close, but not before it has caused several snow days considering my car slides on a half inch of snow. I wanted to post about a recipe that we used for Shabbat that led to great success both with people liking the meal and the fact that we were able to get dinner on the table prior to 9:00. The recipe is here. It does consider it to be an intermediate recipe, but I would not consider it as such. It does have quite a few ingredients so it might be a bit hard to make it kosher. Good luck with it and as always great to be an MHer.

Ross

MHSeattle, Neal Schindler, 1/31/2009

I just returned on Monday from my ten-day East Coast trip, which included two nights in Washington, D.C., where I witnessed the Inauguration, albeit on a Jumbo-Tron in a crowded field of people just north of the Washington Monument. The mood was, as you might expect, distinctly joyous, and it's worth mentioning that my companions at the event were Rivka, Adam, and Steven of Moishe House D.C., plus their friend Maura. Our toes were cold, but we still enjoyed the festivities, and when President-elect Obama finally stood opposite Chief Justice Roberts to become President Obama, we weren't paying attention to how chilly it was. If you're interested in my experience, I suggest you check out the article I wrote for Jew-ish.com.

Winter is proceeding fairly comfortably here in Seattle; today there's even sun. I have a new part-time job, at Childhaven, a nonprofit that provides therapeutic child care for kids one month through five years old who have been affected by abuse or neglect. It's a great organization that does really good work, and I like my coworkers a lot. It's also the first job I've ever had that requires business casual attire, something I've grown to appreciate in the last few weeks, since almost everyone looks better in a dress shirt and slacks than in jeans and a sweatshirt. I think not looking like a college student every day of my life is a plus, not a burden.

Anyway, I have to go upstairs and bake some chocolate-chip cookies for a friend, and then maybe watch Mad Men in my room, unless the sunshine compels me to get back outside and enjoy it. Hope all's well at your various Moishe Houses!

MHSeattle, Neal Schindler, 9/24/2008

Food is a big part of the Moishe House Seattle experience, and I've found that four weeks among people -- and not just people, mind you, but Jewish people -- who like to cook has inspired me to do more inventive and exciting cooking than I've done in many, many years. Tonight my friend Elana came over and we made a dessert whose recipe we'd gotten from Rabbi Jacob Fine (of UW Hillel and Jconnect) and his wife, Julie. It was Mexican mocha pudding with pumpkin cream, something I'll surely make again in time for Halloween, if not before.

Being in a kitchen that's well stocked, and working with a pantry that has a lot of basic ingredients already in it (haven't had such a thing at my disposal for, again, many years), is thrilling. I've been eating too much lately, moving steadily toward the dreaded "Freshman Fifteen" that Masha warned me about, but hopefully I'll be able to straighten myself out fairly soon and eat in greater moderation. It is nice, however, to eat so well and to witness such passion for food and cooking on a daily basis. And I'm so, so grateful to live in a house where I can wander upstairs hungry around lunchtime and find that Tamar has made beans and rice, quinoa tabouli, and hummus for everyone to enjoy. I'm one lucky Jew.