Domini Kemp’s year of healthy eating: beef it up with brisket

As with other areas of our lives, maximising efficiencies at home, especially in the kitchen, takes a little ingenuity, or as my grandmother Hillie would call it, “common sense, darling”.

The tricky question of how to make things go further on the home-cooking front (your budget, your energy, your successes) tends to raise its ugly head on a weekly basis, because that’s how many of us shop, plan and even think.

Let’s face it, it’s either a working week or a school week and for many of us it’s both.

While Sundays are a day of rest for many – at least in theory – I find it’s often the best day to cook up a batch of something, or slow cook that less expensive, needs-a-ton-of-time cut of meat I’ve been meaning to try out for a while.

This means I can relax a bit at the start of the week, knowing there is something in the fridge to please at least some of those who will descend on it like vultures after work, school, or a workout.

If you like meat – and I do, though we go veggie most days – I think it’s worthwhile cooking a versatile cut that will produce tender shards that can then be used over the following days in salads, wraps, curries or stews.

Shoulder of lamb is great for this, but as your granny (or mine) might have told you, a decent bit of beef brisket can go a very long way.

Brisket is muscle, so it is full of connective tissue which, when broken down by long, slow cooking, produces the most meltingly tender meat that can be pulled apart easily with just your fingers.

So, what’s the best cooking method? Well, it can be braised, but I think oven cooking coaxes out better flavour.

For the beef in the chilli recipe here, I took a 2kg joint of brisket, salted it a little and sat it in a shallow bath of stock, covered it with parchment and baked it for hours until it was all nicely falling apart.

I then used half of it for the chilli, while the other half got raided for an Asian-type salad, with a sharp, salty dressing and plenty of raw or blanched veggies. Lean, healthy and very, very tasty.

Food cooked and styled by Domini Kemp and Gillian Fallon Photographs: Dara Mac Dónaill

dkemp@irishtimes.com