Brisket in Spain: What It Is Called, How to Order It and How to Cook It

Brisket in Spanish: pecho, sometimes aleta

Brisket is the lower chest of the animal, below the chuck (aguja). In Spain it is pecho, and some shops label the same piece aleta, so say both and make clear you want the whole brisket. It is a hard-working muscle full of connective tissue: tough when cooked fast, tender once the collagen has had hours to turn into gelatine. A whole brisket has a long, leaner end (the flat) and a thicker, fattier end (the point), joined by a seam of fat. More Spanish names are in our guide to beef cuts in Spanish.

How to order brisket in Spain

In Spanish home cooking, pecho mostly goes into the pot, for stews, stock and cocido (chickpea and meat stew), so many counters sell it in chunks. A whole piece usually has to be ordered in advance, por encargo. Give the butcher a few days and describe the piece rather than the dish.

Or order it from us: a whole brisket of retinto, the native cattle of south-west Spain raised outdoors on the dehesa (open oak pastureland). It comes in one piece with its fat cap, approx. 4 kg, vacuum-packed and chilled. Measure your oven first. If the piece will not lie flat in your roasting tin (US: roasting pan), cut it in two and freeze one half, tightly wrapped.

Before it goes in: trim and season

• Trim. Leave about half a centimetre of fat on the cap and cut away hard, waxy lumps, which do not melt.
• Salt early. A piece this thick can be salted up to 12 hours ahead (see when to salt steak). Coarse salt (sal gruesa) and coarse black pepper in equal parts is the Texas way; at low heat the pepper does not burn.
• A local touch. A spoonful of pimentón de la Vera, smoked Spanish paprika, gives an oven brisket some of the smoke it lacks.

How to cook brisket in the oven

1. Heat the oven to 120–135 °C (250–275 °F), the lower end if you use a fan oven (US: convection oven). Spanish recipes call top and bottom heat calor arriba y abajo.
2. Uncovered first. Fat side up, on a rack over a roasting tin, until the outside is dark and firm: about 4–5 hours for a whole piece, 3–4 for a half.
3. Then wrapped. Wrap it tightly in a double layer of kitchen foil (papel de aluminio) and put it back in.
4. Test, do not time. It is done when a probe goes into the thickest part with no resistance, usually at around 93–95 °C (199–203 °F).
5. Rest. Still in its foil, wrapped in a towel inside an empty cool box (US: cooler), for one to two hours. The twenty-minute limit in our guide to resting meat is for steaks and quick roasts, not brisket.
6. Slice across the grain, about as thick as a pencil. The flat and the point have grains running in different directions: separate them at the fat seam first.

In a smoker or a covered barbecue

On a smoker or a covered barbecue (US: grill), the method is the same, with indirect heat at 110–120 °C (230–250 °F). Holm oak charcoal (carbón de encina) is easy to find in Spain and burns steadily; a chunk or two of oak or olive wood gives the smoke. Build a small fire as in how to light a charcoal barbecue and keep the lid closed.

The stall

A few hours in, the core temperature stops rising, often at around 70 °C (158 °F), because moisture evaporating from the surface cools the meat. The foil in step 3 gets it moving again; turning up the heat mostly dries out the outside.

Times are a guide: thickness matters more than weight. Plan the day backwards from dinner, rest included.