Few slow-cooked foods are as rewarding as beef brisket, which at its best is tender, juicy, and flavorful. Doing it right takes so long—my favorite recipe is a twelve-hour job—that, at least in my house, a brisket is made only annually, or even less often than that. That’s why I regret that I didn’t make my “discovery” of veal brisket sooner. It had just never occurred to me until recently that you could get a delicious, tender, relatively quick-cooking form of brisket by removing the bones from a breast of veal. Unfortunately, boneless breast of veal—which can also be called veal brisket and, like brisket of beef, is the flap that covers the front part of a cow’s chest—is rarely sold that way. But any butcher (and, yes, this includes virtually every supermarket butcher) can quickly remove the bones from a veal breast and present you with a flat, boneless, relatively compact cut that contains little fat and becomes tender in less than two hours of unattended cooking. Ask the butcher to start with a piece of breast that weighs four to six pounds. The yield is about half that, a piece of boneless meat of two or three pounds that will easily fit in a large skillet. (Consider asking the butcher for the bones, too—you’re paying for them, and they are among the best for stock making.)
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
A savory-hot salsa made with mixed nuts (like the kind dubbed cocktail nuts meant for snacking) gives roast salmon a kaleidoscope of textures and flavors.
Caramelized onions, melty Gruyère, and a deeply savory broth deliver the kind of comfort that doesn’t need improving.
A dash of cocoa powder adds depth and richness to the broth of this easy turkey chili.
This one-pot dinner cooks chicken thighs directly on top of a bed of flavorful cilantro rice studded with black beans for a complete dinner.
Round out these autumn greens with tart pomegranate seeds, crunchy pepitas, and a shower of Parmesan.
Make this versatile caramel at home with our slow-simmered method using milk and sugar—or take one of two sweetened condensed milk shortcuts.
This is the type of soup that, at first glance, might seem a little…unexciting. But you’re underestimating the power of mushrooms, which do the heavy lifting.