BRISKET!

Trust me, the title of this post just HAD to be in all capital letters. Now if you read my intro you know that my husband loves meat. I mean, loves. So for our Memorial Day cook out, complete with 25 plus people in my pefectly clean house (!!) I was convinced that we should have brisket. I let the husband take the reins on this. I can't say I wasn't concerned.

I was, however, quite pleasantly surprised! And I actually didn't really have to do any work. I watched. Gave a few suggestions. And mostly stood back and watched the hubs work his meat magic. We got really good brisket from a local meat shop. We thought 12 pounds would work (or he did, and I was trying to be nice). When I asked for 12 pounds, the butcher brought out a 13-pound piece and I said it would work. After the hubs saw how much meat that was, even he thought we went overboard! He said I should have erred more on the side of 11 pounds, whereas I thought 10 pounds would have more than covered it.

45 minutes after cutting into this thing... we were both wrong. It was gone! I don't even think everyone was there yet. It was truly delicious. Just as meat or as a sandwich. It was a bit of a process, but worth it in the end!

Hot Rod's Brisket

Adapted from... Google? I think he found a couple different recipes just to get ideas, but nothing specific.

For 12-13 pounds of brisket:

1 lb. bacon (browned)

2 small yellow onions, chopped

4-5 cloves of garlic, smashed or sliced

80 oz. barbecue sauce (to taste)

5 oz. apple cider vinegar

bamboo skewers, soaked in water

Slice the brisket down the center lengthwise. Stuff it with bacon, onions, and garlic. Use the skewers to fold the brisket back over and secure it. Mix the barbecue sauce with some apple cider vinegar to thin the sauce a little bit. Pour about half of the barbecue sauce into the bottom of a roasting pan. Place the brisket on top of the sauce, fat side up (we had to cut ours in half to fit it). Cover the brisket with barbecue sauce. Use whatever amount you think will suit your taste. We used the above amounts. The taste was fantastic but we did have a lot of sauce leftover.

Cover the brisket in the roasting pan with foil. Place the brisket on a grill or in an oven on medium heat. Once the meat is going (about half an hour), cut the heat back to low. Continue to cook the brisket for approximately 20 - 25 minutes per pound. We cooked the entire thing for about five hours. Every hour to hour and a half, flip the brisket so that the juices from the fat keep it moist. Continue to baste the brisket with the barbecue sauce throughout this process.

Pull it off the grill... smell... and enjoy!

** We used Sweet Baby Ray's Barbecue Sauce. Ideally I would have loved to make our own, but the hubby's logical side won out and we bought instead. I found it delicious, but I would by no mean call myself a connosieur. Use what you like!