Hunk of Meat Monday: Chile Spiked Brisket

Yum, I actually did some more cooking this weekend! Dad gave me a half brisket out of our last fattened calf and decided to see what damage I could do with it. But I'm not exactly one dedicated to laborous cooking (gotta be the quick and easy, nothin wrong with meat and potatoes) so where else to find a good recipe than Twitter! Have to thank Jamie Gunter (Twitter) from Florida for recommending this recipe from About.com. Yeah I would have much prefered a brisket on the grill or smoked, but it's summer, I'm tired, lazy, and won't turn down a great beef crockpot recipe!

Watch out ya'll it's a two-day recipe so you'll have to plan ahead, plus any thaw time if the brisket comes from the freezer.

Ingredients

• 4 to 5 pound beef brisket
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 3 chipotle chiles, minced
• 3/4 cup dark beer
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 to 8 red potatoes, cut in half or quartered if large
• 1.5 cups baby carrots

Preparation
First Day: Place brisket in the crockpot with onions. Mix the next 8 ingredients and pour over brisket. Cover and cook on low 10 to 12 hours.
Second Day: Add potatoes and carrots, cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.
Serves 6 to 8

Now for the Tried and True Changes:

• Don't over do it on the cinnamon or tomato paste (oops!)
• I cut slits in the brisket and placed some garlic in the slits before cooking. Added awesome flavor!
• I really don't like my beef over cooked, so I stuck with 12 hours total cooking on low. Put it on Saturday night a bedtime, perfect for Sunday dinner. Cooked on low it turned out with a pink center and super juicy. Added the potatoes and carrots before I headed out to feed Sunday morning.

Would have brisket been better in the smoker? Yeah, but this is pretty awesome for some crockpot cookin! I'd recommend it. And sorry for the lack of photos. I got a lil excited because it smelled awesome and had eaten and packed it up before I thought about posting this. So we'll just settle for a photo of the cattle who provide our briskets (From Gate to Plate!)

I Heart BEEF

Happy I Heart BEEF month. To celebrate take your loved one out to enjoy some heart healthy, lean beef.

Learn more about Beef and how it fits into a healthy diet at Beef, It's What's For Dinner

The Super Bowl and Texas Agriculture

Ever make the connection between tomorrow's Super Bowl in snowy Dallas? From the footballs used to your favorite snacks, Texas Agriculture gives a big boost to the gridiron game plan. Thanks to the North Texas E-News for these AgFacts!

• Leather is used to make footballs and Texas leads the nation in cattle with more than 13 million head with an annual production value of about $6 billion.

• Texas produced 8 million bales of cotton in 2010, which is enough to make every person on earth a Super Bowl Championship T-shirt - and still have almost a billion shirts left over.

•  Peanuts are a favorite snack at football games, and in Texas we produce more than 700 million pounds - enough to make 7 billion peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

• Hot dogs are a traditional favorite at football games and the Texas pork industry has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $250 million.

• Hot dogs also need hot dog buns. Texas growers produce an average 90 million bushels of wheat annually, enough to make more than 25 billion hot dog buns.

• Texas is a leading dairy state and produces enough milk each year to fill the massive Cowboys Stadium more than six times.

• A football field, including the end zones, is 360 feet long-by-160 feet wide and covers 1.3 acres. The entire Cowboys Stadium site covers 140 acres. By comparison, Texas encompasses 144 million acres of agricultural and rural land, more than any other state in the nation.

• In contrast, the combined areas of the two cities competing in this year’s Super Bowl is about 63,000 acres, and you could fit more than 2,500 of them within Texas’ borders. In fact, you could fit the entire states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin inside Texas more than two-and-a-half times, and still have 9 million acres left over.

• Cornstarch can be used to make a biodegradable plastic for drink cups, utensils and more. Texas growers produced 302 million bushels of corn in 2010.

• How better to celebrate a Super Bowl Championship than with a good steak dinner? Texas produces about 8 billion pounds of beef each year. That's the equivalent of 16 billion 8-ounce steaks or enough to supply 150 steaks to every person watching the game in the United States (according to Nielson estimates, last year's Super Bowl attracted 106.5 million U.S. viewers).

 So while you are enjoying the game and commercials, remember this is just the start of how Agriculture impacts our lives. Remember to Thank A Farmer and Rancher for all the great things we have