Moo...

There’s a cow in my fridge! Well, not a whole cow, but the largest piece of beef that I’ve ever worked with.

One of my favorite restaurants serves a really good Texas Brisket. The meat is lean and tender and very tasty.

I’ve found several recipes for slow-cooked brisket, and I wanted to try cooking some on my own. But when I asked at the local grocery, which has a pretty good meat department, they told me that they didn’t get regular brisket from their supplier, only the corned beef variety. I needed to check with an actual butcher shop.

Now there is a meat market in the next town, but I would either forget to stop, or only remember about it when they were closed. And I figured it would be kind of pricey, so I put it out of my mind.

But it’s Farmer’s Market season here in Wisconsin, and one of the local beef farmers comes to our weekly event in the park. I was surprised to find brisket on their price list, so I asked them to bring some. Yesterday I picked it up, and I had a choice of three different sizes. The biggest package looked the trimmest, so that’s what I got – one big six pound brisket! It’s in the fridge thawing right now, and it’s even too big for the 9X13 cakepan lid.

I’m going to cut it in half and try one recipe this weekend, and then refreeze the other part for the next time I have a chance to cook. Some of the recipes I’ve found do actually call for a six pound brisket, but I’m just a little leery of cooking the much meat all at once. It might just fit in my large roasting pan, but that’s way too much meat for just me! It might be great for a party, but I’m not planning a party any time soon. Plus if the recipe I try is no good, then I’ve wasted it all. Besides, I don’t generally “light the oven” when it’s hot enough to run the air conditioning.

“Light the oven” is a hand-me-down phrase from my mom. We never had a gas stove or oven, but she had one back in her Pittsburgh days, so even when she pre-heated our electric oven it was “lit”.

I’m going to try my first recipe in the crockpot and see how it turns out. If it’s even half as good as what I've had while dining out, I’ll be happy!