Why, hello again.

Most of my personal online writing has moved to social media, but this recipe is too good to hide from the search engines, so I figured this is the right place to park it.

For years, I’d been searching for the best sweet Jewish brisket – a style that my kids used to call “candy meat”. After much experimentation, I have combined ingredients and techniques from three recipes into this masterpiece.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Ingredients

• 5 lbs brisket (first cut or second cut are both fine)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• Two or three onions
• 1 cup honey-garlic sauce (I use VH brand)
• 1 cup barbecue sauce (I like a half cup of Diana original and a half cup of Diana spicy but for a more traditional taste, use no spicy)
• 0.5 cup brown sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Lay out a piece of aluminium foil that will be large enough to wrap all the way around the brisket and have extra foil available for crimping. Heavy-duty foil works best. You may have to use a second piece of foil as a cover over the top of the meat.

Slice the onions and lay them out on the foil as a bed for your meat. Fold up the sides of the foil so that liquid from the meat will not run off.

Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a heavy pan large enough to accommodate the meat. Use two burners and a roasting pan, if necessary. Add the brisket and brown well on both sides, about 10 minutes in total. Transfer the meat to the bed on onion slices and fold up the foil alongside the meat. The goal is to leave as little space as possible but be reasonable about it.

Add the vinegar to the pan and deglaze it, scraping all the browned bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon. Turn off the heat.

Pour the honey-garlic sauce, barbecue sauce, and brown sugar into a large bowl (larger than you think you need). Pour in the vinegar and bits from the pan and stir to mix. Pour this mixture over the brisket in the foil.

Crimp the foil over the meat and sauce and crimp it tightly. The goal is to create an airtight seal so the meat braises as it cooks. If your foil does not reach all the way over the meat, use a second piece of foil as a lid and crimp that to the bottom piece of foil. Make sure the seam is as close to the top as possible to avoid leaks.

Transfer the foil package to a roasting pan (to catch any potential leaks). Heavy-duty foil handles this transfer much better than standard foil.

Cook the brisket for three hours (for five pounds of meat).

When the meat is done, hold the foil package over the large bowl in which you mixed the sauce and cut the foil so that all the liquid runs out of the foil and into the bowl. There will be more liquid than you started with and some onions may fall out. It’s okay. I told you to use a big bowl.

While the meat rests, skim any fat out of the sauce.

Transfer the meat to a cutting board, leaving the onions in the foil, and cut the meat against the grain into slices a quarter-inch thick. Put the slices on a platter, cover them with the onions, and pour a little sauce over that.

Serve, with the rest of the sauce in a gravy boat or sauce pitcher.