Ok, so I am planning on having 2 couples over for a holiday dinner. I'm flipping through cook books and magazines for recipes. I see recipes for center cut roast and one for beef brisket. Whats the difference between a regular roast and brisket?????
Confusing, huh? If you need to know, a big, general cookbook will talk about which roasts are interchangeable with each other. The meat cutter guy at the grocery store should also be able to tell you.
Usually a brisket is a tougher cut, though flavorful, often cooked long and slow in a barbecue-type recipe.
A tougher cut doesn't mean it's going to turn out tough in your dish, so don't be scared off by the term. It just means it has to be cooked a certain way in order to overcome the toughness. A recipe for brisket is probably written in such a way to make the most of its flavor and bring out tenderness.
Brisket is usually easy to find in the grocery store, and if not, collar one of the guys in the meat department and tell him you want it by such and such a date. It's a very common cut.
Make what sounds good to you and easy enough to do when you read the recipe.
I like your no-extra-veggie strategy.
Good luck.
Wow RKGal, I am hiring for a cook. Where do you live ???????????
Roxy, you have no idea how much I'd like to cook a big spread for all you guys. What fun that would be.
When I had my first awful flare and couldn't cook it worried me, though I didn't have any appetite to eat either. When I got better enough to work a pepper grinder and chop an onion I was so happy. I'm not a great cook, but cooking feels like the one thing I can Do for people, so if RA took that away it would be bad, bad.
I'm in the deep south, probably closer to Katie than to anyone else. Come down here to dixieland and I'll make you whatever you want to eat.
This will be my first planned party is over a year!! We used to have 5-6 parties a year before I got sick. We like to entertain but I just haven't felt well enough. I tried ti plan a girls afternoon beading party at my house this past spring and ended up having the first guest take me to the ER room!
Lets hope this part turns out better! I am nervous but need to get some sort of a life back! I figure two couples, a prepare ahead of time type of menu and couple of vicodin and hopefully it will turn out just fine!
Cooking is not one of my specialities.
And the desert I made it turned out not so good. They ate and ran. I called them today and they are still alive atleast I didn't kill them.RKGAL, I love to cook when I feel good. I use my crock pot a lot
now that I have this GD disease. I love it because I can put
everything for one or two meals into it in the morning and forget about
it for the whole day. Like this morning I put a beef roast with
potatoes and carrots and then I added a can of cream of mushroom soup
mixed with one envelope of onion soup mix and at meal time you have it
all including gravy. And it is delicious! If I were you, I
would purchase a crock pot recipe book and eat happily ever
after. LOL You can even prepare your veggies the day before
and just pop them in the next morning.
Roxy, this would work for you too. You and Kelsey could take turns and
like I said, there is usually enough for another meal that you can just
heat up in the microwave.
Bon Appetite!
A brisket is usually gonna need to be cooked for 12-14 hours to get it tender. It is juicy cause of all the fat, but if you cook it for a short period of time it will be like meat flavored gum. You can do any roast with the celery, onions, carrots and potatoes in around the meat. You just put it all in the pan, add a cup of beef broth, add salt, pepper, garlic, basil, rosemary and sage...cover with foil and bake according to the instructions on the label for the roast.
One of the best cookbooks is the Better Homes and Gardens Family Cookbook. It has information on tools of the trade, cuts of meat, descriptions of veggies and fruits, even basics on things like how to boil an egg. And the recipes are simple, easy to follow...and call for ingrediants that wont break the bank. My mom had one, and I got one as a bridal shower gift. It is THE cookbook to have for learning how to cook.
Thanks everyone!! I think I'm going to go with a center cut roast and put the veggies in with it. I don't want o chance making brisket for the first time and having it be real tough, I can't chew well anyways with my jaw so that would just be BAD!
We do a lot of crock pot things as well. We got a really nice one for a wedding present. The great thing about the crock pot is that you can buy the cheapest meat and it still turns out tender! And, yep. leftovers for days!!
RKgal, where do you live? I live near Macon, Georgia.Have you guys tried the bake in the bag stuff? They sell it in the seasoning aisle. It's really good and makes a real tender roast in like a couple of hours. It comes with the seasoning. You add your veggies with the meat. The best part is....easy clean up. Just toss the bag in the trash. I went out yesterday and bought a roast cuz' you guys made me hungry!! lolRASara, I'm in Mississippi. Sounds like several of us are in the south, just not close enough to start an RA cooking club. Which could be pretty hilarious.
CinDee, I have used those bag kits before and liked some of them. And I had sort of forgotten about them. I'll have to try one again.
Fix it and forget it recipes, like the bags or crock-pots, are comforting, knowing that something's cooking away and you're not stirring or watching. The smell is great, too, like having the bread machine going. And, as someone suggested, I'm going to pull out my crock pot cookbook and do more of that this season.
My problem, so far, has been that with the fix-it part of fix it and forget it. It seems like if I'm able to do the chopping, pepper grinding, can-opening, and so forth that are required in prep for crock-pots and the like, I can manage just about anything else I really want to make-- with adjustments for carrying heavy pots, standing too much, using scissors to cut packages open, things like that. It seems like I can either cook or I can't, all or nothing.
I know I need to make kitchen adjustments so I don't get stuck in not cooking. I need to get an electric pepper grinder and electric can opener, ergonomic knives, and use the food processor more often instead of chopping everything the way I like to. I need to wrap some kind of rope around the handles of all the heavy kitchen drawers (I have drawers instead of cabinets).
I'm dragging my feet on this, like I drug my feet on getting all my pretty shoes (heels, pointed toes, narrow cuts) out of my closet. These are all small sacrifices in the grand scheme, but I like hanging on to the pieces of the old life as long as I can. Denial is a lovely place, for a while.