Recently my wife bought a huge hunk of brisket. I guess it was 15 pounds or so. I cut it into three pieces and cooked one of those pieces for dinner and another for lunch at Church. The third still awaits its fate.
For the curious: a nice piece of brisket with a good layer of fat can be cooked as follows. Note that for best results this should be started the morning of the day before you want to serve the brisket.
You want a nice flat piece of brisket with a full layer of fat on one side. Do not trim the fat before baking.
- Start about 7am in the morning. If you are a night person, start when you wake up. Pre-heat your oven to 175 degrees. Yes, that is 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Note that your oven will be unavailable for the rest of the day.
- Rub the brisket with your favorite dry rub. I actually have been using Montreal Steak Seasoning as a rub, but feel free to use your choice. Make sure you rub the entire brisket with the rub.
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Place the brisket fat side up in a baking pan that can be covered tightly. The pan should be big enough so the brisket can just sit in the bottom without contacting the sides.
I used a big pan we use to cook our turkeys in. Because I didn’t have a cover for this pan, I placed aluminum foil across the top and then put a cookie sheet on top of that to keep the aluminum foil tight. It worked fine that way.
- Place the pan in the oven. Ignore it for 12 hours or so.
- Take the brisket out of the oven. Put the meat on a platter and put it in the refrigerator overnight.
- The next morning, place the brisket on a cutting board. Slice against the grain as thin as you are able. For best results use a sharp knife.
If you want to re-heat the brisket, you can put the sliced brisket in the oven at 250 degrees until it is the temperature you want. But don’t overdo it so it won’t dry out.
During the process of looking for brisket recipes, I noticed a statement somewhere that said Jewish people cannot cook meat and dairy together. I recalled that this is from the Law. Both Exodus 23:19 and Deuteronomy 14:21 say: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.” The stricture against meat with dairy is a generalization of this command, in line with the principle of “putting a hedge around the Law.”
In the same way, Jewish people do not pronounce the name of God. And instead of writing God, they will write G’d. This again is an attempt to put a hedge around the Law. In this case the Law commands that we not take the name of Yawheh in vain. If you do not pronounce or write the name, you cannot take it in vain — so the thinking goes.
However, ironically this very attempt to hedge the Law violates the Law. Deuteronomy 4:2 says, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.” Note that this command prohibits not only taking away from the Law but adding to it. And so when God says, “Don’t seethe a kid in his mother’s milk,” interpreting that as a law that says, “Don’t cook meat with dairy” actually violates the Law. In the same way, refusing to pronounce the name of God for fear of taking that name in vain actually adds to the Law and so violates it.
The problem is that the “hedge around the Law” approach pushes the Law outward rather than inward. That is, it makes the Law a matter of action instead of heart. And it makes God an adversary. That is, if you can accidentally take the name of the Lord in vain, you shouldn’t say his name at all. And you should not take the chance that you might violate a specific law regarding boiling a kid in his mother’s milk by melting cheese on a roast beef sandwich or putting Parmesan cheese on spaghetti with meat sauce.
What would the alternative be? I see the alternative to be taking the Law seriously as a guide to the kind of person you ought to be. You should be the kind of person who can pronounce God’s name without taking it in vain. I believe this is the kind of thing Jesus meant when he said that our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees.
As far as not seething a kid in his mother’s milk, that should drive a person to meditation. What kind of God is concerned about that? Why does it matter? It is not clear why this law exists. But if you think about it, boiling a kid in his own mother’s milk seems heartless.
Perhaps God is concerned that we not become so callous that we would do such things. Perhaps God wants us to treat animals not just as food-making machines, but as having a dignity of their own. Note that we cannot turn this kind of thing into a new law — that would be making the same mistake over again. But we can, in our own hearts, decide to treat animals with dignity and respect.
Or perhaps there is some reason, obvious to anyone who lives on a farm, why one should not do this. I do not know, since I am like Bilbo Baggins — I get my meat cut up by the butcher, ready to cook. At any rate, for me at least this commandment makes me think about the character of God, that he should be concerned with such things.
As we move into the New Testament, we see that for the early church, the Law became an obstacle to unity. Paul describes the way Peter and other Jewish Christians had full and open table fellowship with Gentile Christians, until some people came “from James” to remind them of the Law. Paul saw this as failing to walk uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel (see Galatians 2:11-14).
Ephesians goes so far as to call the Law “enmity” (Ephesians 2:15-16). Jesus abolishes in his flesh this Law “of commandments and ordinances” that separates Jew and Gentile so that he can make “one new man” and make peace, having “slain the enmity.”
We ourselves are tempted to add to God’s law. We create Christian commandments that tell us what God expects of us. (There is even a popular book called What Jesus Demands from the World, as if the Gospel were a set of demands instead of new possibilities.)
My view is that the Law is never enough. No matter what we do, we will always sense that something is missing. Twice in the Gospels Jesus was asked, “How do I get eternal life.” Both times he replied, “What does the Law say,” and both times the Law was not enough (see Luke 10:25-37 and Luke 18:18-23). That is because interpreting the Law as a guide of behavior does not point you to God. You can “not take the name of the Lord in vain” all your life and never seek God. But if you ask yourself, “How can I be the kind of person who does not take the name of Yahweh in vain,” then you find yourself seeking Him to find out.
And of course Jesus came to show us the kind of person who could please God, as well as the kind of person God himself is. Because that is really what pleases God — people who understand his heart, who are on the same page, who get what he is up to. And, of course, ultimately what he is up to is love. He is love, after all.
As Paul says, “Owe nobody anything except to love one another. For whoever loves the other has fulfilled the Law” (Romans 13:8).