Beef Brisket and Parsnip Puree

Over the weekend, since we had a completely rainy/wash-out type Sunday on the agenda, we decided to stay in the house all day to do some crock pot and time-lengthy oven cooking….bbq style. There were several dishes to be made, each leaving us with plenty of leftovers for the week’s lunches and subsequent dinners. The first two recipes I will talk about in this post, and the other two I will address in a second blog later this week.

The Brisket

I found the brisket recipe at foodnetwork.com courtesy of Tyler Florence. He calls it, as he does with most of his stuff, the “ultimate.” You can click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph to see the actual recipe. I am not going to re-type it here this time, like I usually do, because while it was certainly a good brisket, and we also really liked the vegetables that came from it, it was definitely not, in our opinion, the ultimate. The only changes I made from Tyler’s instructions were to use fresh tomatoes instead of canned (halved then hand crushed), garlic that was already peeled (not still in the head), and I used dried thyme, rosemary and parsley. Other than that, I stuck to the recipe exactly. I also decided at the end to make a gravy with the juices that everything was braised in. Here are a few pictures of my process:

Four pounds of raw beef brisket.

The chopped veggies; essentially, an over-sized mirepoix.

Going into the oven.

Coming out of the oven.

Cooked brisket straight out of the braising process.

Veggies and braising liquid right out of the oven.

Drained veggies.

Freshly sliced brisket.

Making the gravy.

The Parsnip Puree

What I really want to focus on today is the parsnip puree that Tyler suggested be served with the brisket. We had never really cooked with parsnips before, and so we thought this would be good experiment in something new. Well, it was fantastic, and quite frankly, hands down our favorite part of this entire dinner. Here is exactly how I did it:

Ingredients

• 1 pound parsnips, peeled and sliced
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and gently smashed
• 1/2 tablespoon dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 stick of butter, cubed

Directions

Place everything except the butter into a pot over medium heat. Bring it to a simmer, and then cook until tender (for mashing, basically). This should take about 10-15 minutes.

Place parsnips and all remaining pan liquids in a food processor with the butter (don't forget to remove the bay leaf at this point), and puree it until the texture of whipped potatoes is achieved.

Serve. You could also (but I didn’t) add more cream and/or milk to achieve a runnier consistency, if desired.

I am sure that it’s mostly due to the butter and cream content that these were so very yummy, but the flavor of the parsnips themselves still shone through strongly. This was a complete success of a side dish that we will undoubtedly use again.