Brisket!

Tomorrow I'll be attempting, for the first time, to cook a brisket.  I'll be cooking it the way my mom does.  Her brisket is always awesome and magnificent (yes, both), so I hope mine turns out that way too.  I'll be marinating it in a marinade that she swears by (Claude's Brisket Marinade Sauce), then cooking it long and low in the oven.  It sounds too easy to screw up, right?  Well, if it can be screwed up I will be the one to do it.  I'm not a horrible cook; in fact, I think I'm pretty decent.  But, like anything else, it takes practice to get "the feel" of some things.  And for some reason, new big meat dishes take me a couple of trials to get right.  For example, the first time I cooked pot roast was a disaster.  "How can you screw up pot roast?" you might be asking.  Well, you can, and I did.  I have no idea what I did wrong, but I know that the large lump of meat was inedible in the end.  It was dry and tough and ended up in the trash.  Hopefully, this will not be the case for my first brisket.  This huge hunk of meat came from the quarter of a cow that Garrett and I bought last August.  This purchase was one of the best things we have invested in, and I recommend it to anyone.  My brisket is being cooked in celebration of my dad's and grandmother's birthdays, no pressure.

So here's my process, I cut off some of the excess fat (there was quite a bit on this puppy), then tenderized the meat with a fork and some meat tenderizer.  Next, I placed it in a tin, that was far too small, and poured the marinade over it.  By the time I cook it tomorrow, it will have marinaded for 24+ hours.  Tomorrow morning, I'll put it in a 250 degree oven for at least 6 hours.  I have no idea if that is long enough for this chunk of meat; after tomorrow, I'll let you know how long it actually took and post some pictures of the beefy goodness.  Here are some pictures of the marinade and the soaking brisket in it's small container (it's all I had, don't judge me).  The pictures were taken with my phone, so forgive the poor quality.

 

The marinaded brisket actually looks kind of gross, but I'm hoping it'll turn out heavenly.  If this works out well, I think I'll try The Pioneer Woman's homemade brisket marinade to kick my culinary skills up a notch.  Again, I'll post pictures of the finished product and tell you how wonderful or awful it turned out.