The first recipe says it’s “fall off the bone tender”. FWIW, I never saw a brisket with a bone in it. If I have a whole brisket I corn it & make corned beef or pastrami. A brisket has two parts, the flat & the point. The point is triangular, cheaper & fattier. Mrs W probably cooked a flat. A brisket is really just a very very tough pot roast. Cook it low & slow for a really long time. If you’re not sure if it’s done, it’s not. 4-4 1/2 hours seems reasonable.
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Only Heinz. grin Hunts just isn’t the same, and Hellmans is red sugar water.
Thank you for the recipe. I’m leaning toward a slow cooker. Your grandmother’s recipe looks like it would convert beautifully.
I think you’re right. My experience with NY delis is that all the pieces of brisket are the same size so flats, not tips. BBT had some great science consultants. I have to believe that had similar help getting Mrs. W.'s cooking right and consistent.
The episode after Carol Ann Susi passed and took Mrs. W. with her and the power went out leaving a freezer full of food to thaw broke my heart.
I believe you’re underestimating this crowd’s appetite for adventure.
And delicious voluptuous meat 
!
I’m thinking of using your grandmother’s brisket recipe as a base, mostly because you kindly offered it up so quickly and I have to start somewhere. grin I’m thinking of some liberties with all due respect to your grandmother. I value your thoughts and those of others here.
I usually cook with whole carrots, peeled and chopped/sliced/diced/whatever. That shouldn’t matter. Onions and carrots beg for celery (mirepoix) or bell peppers (Cajun Trinity). I think peppers would not hold up but celery might be interesting. I think the onions should be cut pretty big so they don’t melt away into the sauce.
I’m tempted to use a slow cooker and make a three day process out of preparation. Day one to do all the prep and put the slow cooker on overnight for ten to twelve hours. I go to bed early and rise early so if the cooker starts at 8pm I can check it at 4am and keep an eye on it. I can even put in my office/lab. This leaves plenty of time for it to cool during day two before transferring to the fridge. Day three I can remove the fat, slice the meat, portion, and fiddle with the gravy as seems appropriate.
Again, much appreciation for putting your family recipe forward. All comments are welcome.
I bought the meat last December planning to do something with it during one of my wife’s business trips. All her travel is off due to the pandemic. She isn’t a red meat kinda gal so I’m not in a big hurry. The topic bubbled to the top for me because we emptied, sorted, and organized our chest freezer yesterday and I found the meat. It’s back in the freezer buried in a bottom corner.
Given the number of people who followed a couple of my recent delivery trips their taste for vicarious adventure is quite apparent. grin
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In my experience it is difficult to find a whole brisket or brisket point in regular grocery stores in my area. Even Costco carries flats only. When I want a whole one, I have to go to Restaurant Depot for it. However, the flat is perfect for Jewish style or pot roasted brisket, so no need to worry about it in this case.
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When I was a kid, pot roast was brisket at grandma’s. It was wonderful. I do a version now that is kind of my signature dish- everyone loves it. It’s a brown braise and I use red wine and beef stock for, the liquid. Onions, garlic and carrots, of course, and a little tomato paste of even ketchup on the liquid. It coils for hours and just melts.
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That is also what my grandmother did with brisket. (I don’t think she added ketchup, and we never had anything like tomato paste in the house.) As someone said up-thread, I think the brisket as pot roast is a Jewish thing.
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Yes, I’m sure!!! My grandma added thin slice potatoes too. She’d slice, the meat Against the grain after two hours in the oven and out the thin sliced potatoes in too. Those were heaven! The cook till it was meltingly tender. I can smell it now!
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@Auspicious, I think that’s a great plan, and also, you should be very pleased with the slow cooker results. It’s never failed me for brisket, either fresh, or corned, in a variety of different preps. The recipes all look good that folks have offered up so graciously. Now I want brisket! Curiously, at the two Seders I’ve attended, it’s been roasted lamb, as that’s my friend’s choice of meat for that holiday.
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Please feel free to adapt the recipe to make it your own. Seems like everyone has their own version. I’m sure my grandmother wouldn’t mind. She wasn’t much of a cook and probably got the recipe from someone else. She was probably relieved to have something easy that everyone liked.
I only make it once or twice a year, and only when it’s cold out. It’s a pretty heavy dish, but it does make your house smell wonderful. Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.
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I married into a Jewish family and the only thing I’d note, besides the much higher Roasting temp than bbq brisket, was that the recipe used always required Lipton Onion Soup mix- the dry packet. Perhaps a regional variation.
Very interesting to read everyone’s memories.
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Between this thread, and the nostalgia thread, I almost feel like I’ve been in everyone’s childhood home, and even in some cases, tagged along to their grandma’s places too. Such a link between the sense of smell and memory. I’m sure everything tasted great too, especially at grandma’s, hopefully…
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In case you don’t already know this, onions sliced pole to pole don’t “melt away” as much as those sliced latitudinally.
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I used to feel that way (Anything As Long As It’s Heinz), but then Hunt’s had a long, very-cheap sales campaign about six months ago and after several weeks I could no longer resist the lure of a 50¢ bottle of name-brand ketchup, so I tried it. And liked it. (And then promptly bought a lot of it, of course.
)
It is noticeably different than Heinz - mostly lighter on the spices, I think, but it actually tastes more like tomato to me (without tasting like diluted tomato paste, like some of the “natural” stuff), which is never a Bad Thing in my book… Also, I haven’t compared their labels and it might just be that it’s a little more acidic, but it doesn’t taste quite as sweet to me, which is also a Good Thing afaic. I’ve yet to find a “natural”, low-sugar/non-sweetened, etc ketchup that tastes anything like “ketchup” to me, but while I liked its seasoning, I have always thought Heinz was just this side of unbearably sweet.
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For comparison…
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My husband always use to smoke a brisket for hours outside, then bring it in, wrap in foil and finish it off in the oven for a couple hours until tender. The only problem with that method was the house smelled like a BBQ joint but not in a good way. So now it’s the reverse… Bake in the oven until almost done then back on the smoker.
As a funny aside: Years ago on CH a young lady bragged about her brisket with a BBQ sauce that had “2 bottles of liquid smoke” in the mix. Needless to say, that thread didn’t end well.
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FWIW, in the past my Costco (Redwood City CA) has had whole briskets periodically, even Prime grade!
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When faced with a recipe involving ketchup, I swap in canned tomato puree or crushed tomatoes for a third to a half of the Heinz.
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I was just pointing that out. I shop a lot differently from most people.
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I find them as corned beef every now and then, and use them to make pastrami.
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