What do you do with all that leftover brisket?
Well one of the things that you can do is make one of my favorite dishes
a hearty meal in a bowl: chili. I don't want to hear arguments:
Does chili have meat in it?
Does it not have meat in it? We can have the honesty /authenticity
/cultural appropriation argument
at some other time. First thing that I want to do:
is I want to get my oil in the pan or pot and start sauteing my onions and get
some color on those. I'm gonna add some bacon couple of slices of lard.
I like that smoky meaty flavor that bacon gives. I'm gonna stick those in there I'm gonna
put some diced poblano peppers, those peppers have light heat.
A little bit of salt to help the onions. -give it a stir- And we're gonna let that caramelize for four or five minutes. Let the fat from the bacon render out. These are two different colors of Tepary beans being grown by a lady in Arizona. Now, we've soaked these,
overnight in water and drained them. Small, very healthy very thin skin twice the
flavor, three times the flavor, four times the flavor of any conventional bean that
you'll find in a supermarket. Our liquid is evaporated, the fat from
the bacon has rendered, the onions and the peppers are starting to take on some light caramel colors, and that's when I'm going to add my garlic, oregano, cumin, ancho chili powder. Why do I like ancho chili powder? It's got a sweeter, deeper, richer, pepper flavor. Let's add some of our cilantro,
these are chipotles in adobo. That means it's a dried jalapeno,
one that's ripened to red: dried, smoked, and then packed into a can or jar with a very light tomato puree. Now a lot of people use chili seasoning mix from somewhere and you might be asking yourself: why am I going to the trouble of doing this? and the reason is because your final product is gonna taste so much more nuanced, so much more flavorful. The flavor of the beans all of that stuff makes your food-life less boring, makes your food taste better, and ultimately gets more buy-in from the
people who are eating the food in your house. So we added our beans and I have
these wonderful canned San Marzano tomatoes I like to use whole tomatoes,
and the reason is that I like crushing them myself so people bite into bigger
pieces of them. Next liquid that we want to add:
dark beer, and chicken stock So we're gonna simmer this for 45-60 minutes:
slowly, uncovered and see what happens... Alright, so this has been simmering
away and as you can see our liquid is just gently thickened. I'm gonna slide in
about a pound of chopped leftover brisket. I'm gonna season this, then you want to make our corn flour slurry: a little bit of water a little bit of fine
corn powder. Conventional wheat flour, you really can't do this with. I mean you can but it's gonna be lumpy. The corn flour doesn't create lumps and it incorporates
and thickens just perfectly so now you want to taste it again... A little bit of beefiness has come out
the salt brought everything to the forefront. So, a little scallion, some fresh
cilantro, a couple pieces of avocado...
I am a creme fraiche guy. And then the last thing:
maybe just a brightness of some fresh lime in there.
This took about two hours to cook
really, really, low and slow. Please make this at home you're gonna
love it! Brisket Week continues tomorrow, another
incredible way to utilize brisket or any meat left-over. And that's part of
anyone's culinary literacy package. you
