Brisket

Brisket is the breast of the steer, the pair of pectoral muscles that sit low on the chest and carry much of the animal's weight, which makes it tough, dense with connective tissue and, once that tissue has been cooked long enough to melt, one of the richest cuts on the carcass. A whole packer brisket weighs five to seven kilos and has two parts, the leaner flat and the fatty point, separated by a seam of fat. It is the cut around which several cuisines have built a signature dish: the smoked brisket of Central Texas, cooked over post oak for twelve hours and sold by weight on butcher paper; the braised brisket of Ashkenazi Jewish cooking, slow-roasted with onions for Rosh Hashanah and Passover; corned beef and pastrami, which are brisket cured in brine; and in Britain and Ireland the pot-roast and the salt beef sandwich. Hong Kong's beef brisket noodles and Korean chadolbaegi, thin-sliced and grilled, use the same cut at opposite ends of the cooking spectrum.