Hanukkah Face-Off: Ashkenazi Dish #7

Hanukkah is a time for enjoying Jewish culinary traditions with family and friends, and to that end we present a daily competition between Ashkenazi and Sephardic food, going up around sunset on the first seven days of Hanukkah – and presenting a wrap-up as the sun goes down on the eighth day. Whose food is the most appealing? Help us decide with your comments and social media shares.

If you’re a vegetarian, you should probably stop reading this now.

In Ashkenazi cooking, meat is serious business. To be more specific, it’s all about the brisket.

Every Jewish cook has a recipe for this mass of tender sliced beef. Carrots, ketchup, onions, molasses — they’ve all made appearances at one time or another in the kitchen of many meat eaters. Personally, I can’t imagine ever biting into a piece of meat that is silkier and more inviting than my grandmother’s brisket. But that has less to do with flavor than comfort.

To try another distinctly awesome hunk of meat, visit BrisketLab creator, Daniel Delaney, at his new Williamsburg restaurant, BrisketTown. Delany, whose specialty is Texas-style barbecue, owes the intense woodsiness of his beef to an 18′ smoker that he picked up in Austin. And while his brisket isn’t family-made, it seems like certain critics agree that Delaney knows his meat.

Check out the entire Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic melee!