Low and Slow is the Key to Success! Tasty Slow Roasted Brisket Recipe! Noreen's Kitchen

Time to prepare for another in our bulk cooking series.  This time around I am using a beef brisket, slow roasting it to perfection and then see how many meals for four we can get out of it.  I have slow roasted brisket in a video many years ago.  Time for an upgrade!  Brisket can be intimidating to some people, simple because of the nature of the cut.  It is not forgiving and if done wrong, it can be be an awful experience.  There are a few tricks to doing it just right.  First off, low and slow is imperative, secondly, the way you slice this cut of meat is going to make all the difference in whether you have a melt in your mouth slice of beef or a chewy, stringy and tough piece.  Today I am going to show you the right way to achieve the perfect brisket!

I have around a 10 pound brisket, with a trimmed fat cap.  You want to make sure your cut is trimmed well.  Some brisket can come with a very fatty layer, which can be unappealing after it is cooked.  You don't want the fat to be trimmed away completely, because the fat helps to flavor the meat and keep it moist and delicious.  You can always discard it when serving.  Over all, I like to leave about a half inch if it is not already trimmed well.

Like my Calphalon roasting pan?  Check it out here: http://amzn.to/2kKzb1Q

Next is the seasoning and aromatics.  I have created a "rack" of vegetables to place the brisket upon.  Carrots and celery are great for this.  I also thick cut a yellow onion and scattered it around the roast.  For seasoning, I have generously spread some of my homemade dry onion soup mix.  If you would like to see how I made that, check out my video here:  http://bit.ly/2kQoLRo

I also added some bay leaves and crushed rosemary to the seasoning as well.  I added about 3 cups of water to the bottom of the roasting pan, then covered the roast with parchment and a double layer of foil.  The brisket was roasted in a 300 degree oven for 7.5 hours then allowed to rest for an additional 2 hours before slicing.  Allowing the brisket to rest for a long period is going to be helpful when slicing.  

To slice a brisket properly you will want to ascertain the grain of the meat.  Slicing straight across the meat is not the way to go.  You want to slice against the grain.  To do this you will want to slice diagonally from the narrow end of the brisket to the wide end.  This will help you to know that you will get nice short, tender, melt in your mouth pieces of meat instead of long stringy inedible pieces.

This brisket is a delicious treat.  It does cook down a bit so in the end, I would guess that we have about 7 pounds of edible meat.  We enjoyed our brisket the first night with mashed potatoes, gravy made with some of the drippings and steamed veggies.  We will be sharing other options to use the leftovers.  This makes for great budget cooking and freezer banking for nights when a long cooking process is out of the question.  

The leftover meat from a  tasty brisket is great for bbq beef sandwiches, taquito filling, burritos, enchiladas, tacos, tostadas, hot beef open faced sandwiches, Chicago style beef sandwiches, beef pot pie, beef and barley soup and so much more!  You can even make a red flannel, roast beef hash with these leftovers and it will be amazing!  Stay tuned to see what I come up with!  I am confident we will be able to get 4 to 6 meals out of this roast.    Not as many as we did from the chicken, but a good number nonetheless.

I hope you give slow roasting a brisket a try and I hope you love it!

Happy Eating!

You can see how I made this in my YouTube video here:

You can find a printable version of this recipe on my website here: http://bit.ly/2kyEuAT

Noreen's Kitchen

Slow Roasted Beef Brisket

Ingredients

1 whole beef brisket 8 to 10 pounds 4 carrots roughly cut 4 stalks of celery roughly cut 1 large onion, thickly sliced

½ cup dry onion soup mix 1 teaspoon dried, crushed rosemary 4 bay leaves 4 cups water

Step by Step Instructions

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Place celery and carrots in the bottom of a deep roasting pan.

Place brisket, fat cup up, on top of the carrots and celery.

Arrange onion slices around the brisket.

Sprinkle onion soup mix generously over the top of the brisket.  Sprinkle rosemary and bay leaves on top as well.

Pour water into the bottom of the roasting pan.

Cover with parchment if desired then double seal the pan with aluminum foil.

Roast for a minimum of 6 hours and check to see if the brisket is done.  If not return it to the oven for an addition hour to hour and a half. 

When brisket is tender all the way through a the thickest part of the meat, remove from oven and allow to rest for two hours before slicing.

When slicing the brisket, you will want to use a sharp carving knife and slice diagonally across the grain of the meat.  When you look at your slice it should not have long strings of meat running horizontally. It should have a short grain that runs vertically across the slice.  Slicing diagonally will achieve this.  Start at the narrow end of the brisket and slice your way back toward the wider end diagonally.  This will give you the perfect, tender, melt in your mouth experience you are going for.

Leftover brisket should be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for no longer than ten days.  It can also be frozen in sealed containers or zip top freezer bags for later use.

ENJOY!

Check me out on social media!

Facebook:    http://on.fb.me/12bdibt

Twitter:         @noreenskitchen

Instagram:    http://bit.ly/12bdqrp

Google +         http://bit.ly/1o5GMYy

Have a question for me?  Send me an email:

info@noreenskitchen.com

Quick and Easy Leftover Makeover: Chicken and Stuffing Casserole!

We are continuing on with our "Budget Buster, Bulk Cooking - Chicken Edition" series and using up some of the leftover chicken we roasted in a previous video!  Today we are making a delicious chicken and stuffing casserole. 

This casserole is quick to make and only uses two cups of chopped, roasted chicken.  I used one thigh, from which I removed the skin and bone and half of a breast.  This made the two cups I needed.  I sauteed some celery, onion and carrot along with a generous 8 ounces of fresh Crimini mushrooms in some butter.  When they were  just a bit soft and the onion was just a bit translucent, I removed it from the heat and added the poultry seasoning, chicken and one can of cream of celery soup along with 1/2 cup of milk.  At this point you can choose to add whatever else you like.  Be it a bag of frozen mixed veggies, some frozen peas or anything you like.  It is up to you.  

*A note about "cream of" soup:* I seldom use canned creamed soups in my recipes.  However there are some that I do use them in.  I prefer to make my cream soup from scratch, however this recipe is intended to be a quick weeknight meal and getting this on the table after a busy day is more important to me than making cream soup from scratch.  You have to pick your battles.  I make no apologies for using this convenience ingredient.  I don't use them often so I am perfectly comfortable using it here or in my tuna casserole or any other number of recipes that can be put on the table quickly.  That being said, If I were going to be doing a month's worth of bulk cooking and were going to need, for instance, cream of mushroom or chicken soup for several recipes, I would indeed make my own and use it for those casseroles to be prepared for freezing.  If I were going to make three of these chicken and stuffing casseroles, along with a few sour cream enchilada casseroles as well as some tuna casseroles then I would make the soup from scratch.  You need to do what is best for you.  I have recipes on my channel for homemade cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, cream of broccoli and cream of celery soups.  You can easily find them by doing a quick search using the search option at the top of my channel page.

When the mixture is well blended it was poured into an 8x8 baking dish.  I topped mine with some leftover stuffing mix that we prepared when we made the chicken.  I made two boxes on purpose so I would have enough leftover for the casserole.  You can make a box of your favorite stuffing mix or if it is after a holiday, you can use your homemade stuffing as a topping for this.  I prefer to use a leftover stuffing because it is much easier to break up and "spread" on top than a hot stuffing.  You use what you have available and just plop it on in little spoon fulls on top of the chicken mixture and it will be fine.  

This was baked, uncovered for about 30 minutes until bubbly and a bit crispy on top.  Then we allowed it to cool for about 5 minutes before serving.  It was delicious!  This recipe is a pretty standard throwback to my youth and many people still enjoy this today in one form or another.  A Thanksgiving leftover meal would not be complete in our house without this dish.

So we now add one more recipe using our chicken to our budget buster bulk cooking series.  I plan on getting at least three or four more meals out of those two chickens.  I am up to the challenge.  You will be amazed at what you can do with just a little bit of meat!  

I hope you give this chicken and stuffing casserole a try and I hope you consider doing some bulk cooking of your own and I hope you love it!

Happy Eating!

You can get a printable copy of this recipe on my website here: http://bit.ly/2i5WzF7

You can see how I made this in my YouTube video:

Noreen's Kitchen

Budget Buster Bulk Cooking

Chicken & Stuffing Casserole

Ingredients

2 cups cubed, cooked chicken 2 tablespoons butter 1 cup onion, diced 1 cup celery, diced 1 cup carrot, diced 2 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced

1 can cream of celery soup ½ cup milk 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning 3 cups leftover stuffing or 1 box prepared stuffing mix.

Step by Step Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter in a skillet.

Sautee all vegetables until tender crisp and onions are just beginning to turn translucent.

Remove from heat and add chicken and poultry seasoning and stir well to combine.

Add cream of celery soup and milk and stir well, being sure to evenly incorporate into a cohesive mixture.

Pour the chicken and vegetable mixture into an 8x8 inch baking dish/pan.

Top with stuffing.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until bubbly and the stuffing is a bit crispy on top.

Remove from oven and allow to rest for five minutes before serving.

NOTE:  You can use any kind of cream soup that you like.  Cream of mushroom, onion, celery, chicken, chicken and mushroom or chicken an herb would be good choices. 

Start the New Year Off Right! Budget Buster Bulk Cooking! Roasted Chicken!

To start this year off right, I wanted to introduce a new series where we focus on cooking a protein in bulk and then enjoying it for our meal that night, then seeing how many more meals can be made, with the remaining main protein.  This time I am focusing on how to properly roast a spatchcocked chicken, actually two.  We ate this chicken as our main course for dinner the evening we made it then we are planning at least four to five additional meals out of these birds. 

I picked up to rather large roasting chickens at the market.  These were just over $1.00 a pound.  In the video I mentioned that they were 4 to 5 pounds each, however they were actually 6 to 7 pounds each.  These are whoppers.  I chose to spatchcock these birds to shorten the roasting time.  This will ensure a moist and fully cooked bird in just about an hour.

Spatchcocking is a fancy word for cutting out the backbone and laying the bird flat.  You can barbecue chickens this way or you can roast them or even do chicken under a brick this way, however for that I think you need a much smaller chicken for that to work out just right.  These chickens may need a cinder block!  LOL!  

I feel strongly that knowing how to roast a chicken is so easy to do that you really need to know how to do it!  Thus making this a kitchen basic for the channel, however we are also embarking on what I am going to call the "Budget Buster Bulk Cooking" series.  So these chickens are a great start for that.

I plan on getting no less than four meals and hopefully five from these two chickens.  One meal of roasted chicken. then a chicken and stuffing casserole, a sour cream enchilada casserole, a "Big Salad" a la Elaine from Seinfeld with cubed chicken and then the finale, of a roast chicken soup, using all the carcasses, skin, bones and leftover meat to make a delicious, rich broth with chicken, veggies and noodles. 

The intention here is to make four or five meals serving four people.  Not meals that will be planned leftovers because these are the planned leftovers.  I want you to see how far you can stretch two chickens to feed your family.

I also want you to know that if you don't want to roast your own chicken, then just swing by the store and pick up a couple of rotisserie chickens.  Then follow along.  No judgement here.  Maybe some of you are just singles, or couples.  Maybe you are super busy and a cooked chicken is a God send for you.  I say go for it!  Nothing wrong with letting the store do the work for you and when you can buy a cooked chicken for the same price as a raw one or even less!  You do what is best for you!

I plan on doing similar videos for beef brisket or pot roast, pork loin, pork shoulder and hamburger.  I also plan on incorporating some Zaycon Fresh meats in the mix because when I start picking up my monthly deliveries this year I want you to see exactly what I will be doing and hopefully it will help you to not be overwhelmed with all that meat at one time!  I know that can be a daunting thought, but baby steps!  We can do it together and make things easy!

If you are interested in Zaycon Fresh you can sign up for sales and discounts using this link:  http://bit.ly/2glqv2q  For a limited time Zaycon Fresh is offering 20% off your first order for new customers!  Use Promo Code BL20 when signing up and placing your first order!  Offer ends 11:59 pm PST on 3/31/2017. Offer available to new orders only. Cannot be combined with any other offer or promotion. One promo code per order. Limited to one-time usage per household. Offer is non-transferable. Void where prohibited. Offer will be revoked if terms and conditions are not met due to partial cancellation of order.

I hope you will follow along and join me on this journey!  I hope you give this roast chicken a try and I hope you love it!

Happy Eating! 

You can find a printable version of this recipe on my website here:  http://bit.ly/2ix2ff6

Use this link to sign up for more information and sale notifications!  http://bit.ly/2glqv2q Use Promo Code BL20 to get an addtional 20% off your first order through March 31, 2017