Cooking with Crosby Roamann: Red Wine Braised Brisket with Onions and Leeks

Red Wine Braised Brisket with Onions and Leeks for Passover

Adapted from Barefoot Contessa, Cooking for Jeffrey

April 23, 2024

What we did here was adapt our original Brisket recipe and gussy it up a bit with some suggestions from Barefoot Contessa – notably, the addition of red wine and leeks. Some things I kept that I thought were important were the ketchup, vinegar, and brown sugar. We made 10.5 pounds of this lovely dish for Passover this year (2024) and it turned out pretty awesome. The 3.5 hour braise at 350F followed by chilling overnight, slicing the meat when cold, flipping it over for service so the fat was on the bottom side, and then reheating it for 1.5 hours at 350F (30 minutues) 300F (30 minutes) and 180F (30 minutes) yielded a nicely soft brisket that was easy enough for guests to cut with somewhat chintzy plastic forks and knives, but still had some good chew to it.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 full brisket, about 6.5 pounds untrimmed
• 2-3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 yellow onion, sliced sliced into ¼ inch semi circles 
• 2 red onions, sliced into ¼ inch semi circles  
• 2 large leeks, mostly the white parts, with some light green parts sliced into ¼ inch semi circles 
• 6 whole cloves garlic
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 jar Ketchup (8 oz?)
• ½ cup water
• ¼ cup light brown sugar
• ¼ cup apple cider vinegar
• 5-7 sprigs fresh whole sprigs of Thyme
• Kosher Salt and freshly cracked black pepper