I blame Adam Richman from Man Vs. Food. Oh and then Guy Fieri from Diners, Drive Ins and Dives. It’s all their fault. If they hadn’t featured brisket on their shows, SO MANY times, then I wouldn’t have an obsession with trying to cook the perfect one. They have also made No 1 Husband lust after a smoker. See? ALL THEIR FAULT. Totally.

I’ve cooked beef short ribs in the slow cooker, and then made barbecue beans as well so that the liquor from the ribs didn’t go to waste. They were very good, and I will most definitely make them again. I’ve cooked shoulders of pork in the oven, long and slow, and they were okay, but they were never quite what I was looking for. Perhaps I don’t really know what it is I’m looking for. Maybe it’s some ideal that TV shows have created, one that I can never achieve because I don’t have an industrial smoker running 24 hours a day on oak chips and pecan shells, looked after by a large Southern man who’s been barbecuing for 40 years and whose skin is perfectly wrinkle free, dark and shiny from all the pork  and beef fat that’s in the air.

I’d quite like to have those things, but I don’t, so I have to make do.

I found a 1.5kg piece of rolled brisket in the Co-op on special offer, so I nabbed it. Remembering how we liked the flavour of the beef short ribs that I cooked, I used the same basic cooking liquid.

1 x 1.5kg piece of rolled brisket

2 cups pressed apple juice (I used Ringden Hall farm juice as that’s what we always have)

1 cup barbecue sauce of your choice (I used Kraft Chick’n Rib because that’s what I had)

1 wee tub of that Knorr beef stock

2 tsp Spanish smoked paprika

1 tsp garlic salt

1 tsp onion granules

This is so easy.

Put beef in the slow cooker. Pour over the juice and sauce. It should come just over halfway up the joint. If not, add a bit more of each.

Add all the other ingredients in to the liquid, mix well. You can add a finely chopped onion to this too if you fancy. It just adds another layer of flavour.

Cook on HIGH for 2 hours, then on LOW for another 4.5 – 5 hours.

Hoik the meat out, wrap in foil to keep warm while you set about reducing the sauce to a thicker consistency in a saucepan on a medium boil.

We just had the meat with plain boiled rice, but with the thickened sauce spooned over the meat, and the thinner one from the slow cooker served on the rice.

The recipe definitely worked. The meat was tender, and it happily pulled apart with a fork and some tongs. No carving required.

We have enough meat and thickened sauce left over that I think I’ll stuff it into tortilla wraps with cheese and salad for dinner this evening.