Best Jewish (aka Sweet & Sour) Brisket

This is a never fail combo of two different recipes and it is only enhanced if you add some carrots with the onions and possibly cook potatoes in the resultant gravy.

Ingredients:

A brisket. Minimum two pounds, maximum however big will fit in your pot and feed your guests. Cut is up to you and what you are able to purchase.

One bottle red wine. It does not have to be a good wine, just drinkable.

Some onions. Some in this case being the highly variable number from minimum of 2 to as many onions as you think people will enjoy eating.

Tomato paste.

Bay leaves.

Salt & pepper to taste.

Garlic. A lot.

Sauce:

Ketchup

Brown sugar

Cider vinegar

Dash or two of Worcestershire sauce*

Instructions:

Take your brisket.

Put it in a giant ziploc bag with a bottle of red wine. It does not have to be good red wine, just drinkable. If you like, you can put in some smashed cloves of garlic. Let that sucker hang out in the fridge a while getting purple

When you are ready to cook it, take it out of the bag. SAVE THE WINE. YOU WILL NEED IT LATER.

Pat the now very purple meat dry.

Take a Dutch oven or covered sauté pan (or you can do this with a heavy roasting pan. You need something with serious weight that you can cover) and put it over a burner.

Heat the oil.

While the oil is heating, salt the brisket a little bit. Unless it’s not from a kosher butcher, in which case salt it a lot.

Slice your onions.

Now, with your hot oil, brown both sides of your brisket. Remove to a plate, lid of your pot, whatever. You want to be able to catch the juices.

Turn the heat down a bit and dump your onions and some garlic in the pot. Add salt and pepper and a couple tablespoons of tomato paste.

While the aromatics are getting nice and browned and soft, mix your sauce until it tastes right (you get to decide how much sweet vs sour you want).

Now, deglaze your pan with all that wine you saved and let it reduce.

Once you’ve scraped up all the lovely brown things on the bottom of your pan, put the brisket and juices in the pan

Cover the brisket with onions, dump sauce on top

Cover, stick in a 300F oven for about 3-4 hours

Take out, let cool, slice, and reheat with glorious sauce

Non oven instructions:

Should you possess a slow cooker that also allows you to brown the meat (e.g. an Instant Pot), use the sauté setting to brown the meat and aromatics.

Set the slow cook setting to 4 hours on low.

*There are some strictly kosher folks who won’t mix proper Worcestershire sauce with meat. I do, but you can either use an imitation or just soy sauce. The point is to round out the flavor with a bit of umami.