Beef brisket really is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s inexpensive, full of flavour, and low effort as far as making a mean meal goes. In this recipe, the brisket is slow cooked in stock and tomatoes so the meat is tender enough to pull and can be eaten with pasta as a ragu sauce or on crusty bread, in tacos or with slaw or vegetables.

Ingredients

  • 2 kg beef brisket (some fat trimmed)
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 x 400g can tomato purée
  • 100ml barbecue sauce
  • 2 tbsp honey (optional)
  • 4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 300ml stock (beef is good but any works fine)
  • 2 tsp smoked paprika
  • Fresh parsley, to garnish

Tip: There’s a lot of variation in the quality of barbecue and Worcestershire sauces on the market. Track down some hearty sauces for the best result. We’ve used Beerenberg.

Method

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 150°C.

Step 2

Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan.

Step 3

Place the brisket on a chopping board and season with salt and pepper all over.

Step 4

In your heated frying pan, brown the brisket on all sides. This should only take a couple of minutes. Transfer to a large oven proof dish (ideally with a lid).

Step 5

In your frying pan, cook onions and garlic for a few minutes and then add to the brisket dish.

Step 6

Add the tomato purée, barbecue sauce, honey, Worcestershire sauce, stock and paprika to the brisket dish and bring to the boil.

Step 7

Cover your dish and place it in the oven. Let your beef cook in the oven for up to 5 hours. The result should look something like this:

Beef brisket

Step 8

Transfer the beef to a clean chopping board and cover with foil to let the beef rest for at least 20 minutes.

Step 9

Return your beef to the dish (where the sauce remains) and use forks to pull the meat apart. It should pull quite easily.

Serve with parsley and bread, tacos, slaw or vegetables.