Making food this tasty should not be this easy.

Over the weekend I slow cooked a brisket for 8 hours.

What is brisket?

Brisket is a cut of meat from the breast or lower chest of beef or veal. The beef brisket is one of nine beef primal cuts.

Thanks wikipedia.

I was lucky enough to have a good friend cook me a stunning brisket at the beginning of last summer and I’ve been tweaking my own recipe ever since.

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What you need to put in your shopping basket:
 1 bag of large shallots, celery, 1 orange pepper, medium red chills, garlic, pine nuts
Paprika, good hot asian chilli paste (I used the Indonesian sambal oelek), beef stock
fresh thyme, parsley, and coriander
A bottle of marsala wine (dolce), a bottle of red wine

Take yourself to a good butchers and purchase a beef brisket in a size of your liking. In my experience, the brisket will get finished if you’re cooking for other people, so go big.

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Set the oven to 250 degrees celsius.

Start by finely slicing the shallots, 2 sticks of celery, the orange pepper, and 1 and a half red chilis.
Take a good handful of each herb and chop finely. Crush 4 garlic cloves.

Prepare the meat by rubbing it generously with flour, the paprika and salt and pepper. Drizzle some olive oil over if it makes the prep easier.

You’re going to need a big frying pan (I used a wok) and a large casserole dish. If you don’t have a big enough dish with a lid you can simply cover it with foil.

Heat some oil in the casserole dish until very hot and add the brisket. Brown well and evenly on each side. At the same time you can add a good handful of the pine nuts, the garlic and the chilis to the wok on a medium heat.

After 5 minutes you can add the celery, shallots and pepper to the frying pan and continue on a medium-high heat for another 8 minutes or so. Season well.
By this point the brisket should be smelling and looking delicious.

Take the brisket out once you’re happy and transfer the veg from the pan into the casserole dish. Reduce to a medium heat and add about a 1/4 bottle of the red wine and a 1/3 of the bottle of marsala.
Keep it simmering on medium heat for 6 minutes or so to reduce.

Throw in half a beef (or chicken) stock cube, 2 teaspoons of the hot chilli paste, and top up with 3/4 pint of boiling water.
Re-add the brisket and finish with the herbs.

Season well, stir well and cover. It goes into the oven at 250 but then lower the temp to around 125.
I left mine in for 8 hours but any more than 5 is fine. The longer the better.

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When the time arrives, remove from oven, and enjoy.

We simply enjoyed our brisket on fresh, crusty, thick sliced white from the bakery, added some applewood smoked cheese and jarlsberg, and put it under a hot grill to make an unbeatable sandwich.

The delicious gravy works perfectly with pasta, couscous or rice. You could even make a cottage pie out of the leftovers.

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