Name: Tongue & Brisket
Address: 199 Wardour St, London, W1F 8JP, GB
Telephone: 020 3784 2273
Price range: €
Rating: 3

United Kingdom

Greater London

Tongue & 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.

Every method rests on the same principle, that brisket needs low heat and many hours for its collagen to turn to gelatin, and that the fat cap should be left on to baste it. The Texas method trims the fat to about six millimetres, seasons with coarse salt and black pepper only, and smokes at around 120°C, fat side up or down depending on the pit, until the internal temperature passes 90°C and a probe slides in without resistance, which takes an hour or more per kilo; the meat is then wrapped and rested for at least an hour, often several, before slicing against the grain in pencil-thick slices. The braised method browns the brisket, buries it in sliced onions with stock, wine or tomato, covers it tightly and cooks it in a low oven for four to five hours, then chills it overnight so it can be sliced cleanly and reheated in its own gravy. Cured brisket is brined for a week or more before being simmered or smoked.

Judge smoked brisket on three things visible before you taste it: a dark, almost black bark of rendered pepper and salt, a thin pink smoke ring under it, and a slice that bends over a finger without breaking but pulls apart with a light tug. The fat should be rendered to softness and taste of smoke, and the flat should be moist, not dry and grey. Mark down meat that falls apart like pulled pork, which was cooked too hot or too long, a slice that is tough and springs back, which was cut too soon or too thick, a bark that tastes of sugar or liquid smoke, fat left in hard white slabs, and a brisket served cold-centre from being held too long. For braised brisket, the test is a slice that holds together, a gravy that has body from the onions and meat rather than from flour, and no dryness at the flat; a brisket that needs a pool of gravy to be eaten was overcooked uncovered.

Brisket

Cooked well! There was mustard and pickles.

The meat itself soft but i couldn’t get any specific taste unfortunately. I was expecting a taste bomb but that wasn’t the case.

Tongue & Brisket

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