Red Wine Braised Beef Brisket

Ingredients:
2 T. plus 2 t. olive oil
3 1/2 lbs. beef brisket, cut into 3 inch pieces
coarse salt and pepper
8 shallots, halved
6 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
3 c. dry red wine

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. In a large dutch oven or heavy pot, heat 2 T. oil over med-high. Season brisket with salt and pepper; In batches, cook turning occasionally, until dark brown on all sides, about 20 minutes total.
Transfer brisket to a plate and discard fat from pot. Return pot to heat and add 2 t. oil and shallots; cook, stirring, until shallots are browned, 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring until fragrant, 1 minute.
Add wine and simmer rapidly until reduced by three-fourths, about 15 minutes. Return beef to pot and add just enough water to cover meat (5 to 6 cups). Bring to a boil, cover, then place pot in oven.
Cook until beef is tender, 3 1/2 to 4 hours.

Makes 6 servings. Total time 4 1/2 hours.

Verdict:
For all of you that may be leery of cooking with wine, I did a little reading. Most sources say that alcohol is cooked off once it is boiled. Upon further reading I read that some alcohol needs to be cooked for longer than 2 hours to have no alcohol. (My assumption from reading is that the ones that need to be cooked longer are the ones that have a higher alcohol content.) I don't mind cooking with alcohol as long as it is not heavy liquor and/or boiled. For those of you that don't like cooking with alcohol there are normally substitutes or you can normally omit it all together. This is not one of those recipes.
I won't lie, I felt a little weird asking my sister to pick me up a bottle of wine from the State liquor store. I was a little surprised at how inexpensive it was. The bottle cost no more than 4 dollars. With that said, dinner was so good. It was like a really good pot roast. Although it does have a long cooking time, very little time is spent on prep. I cooked mine the full 4 hours. One more thing. When browning the meat make sure that you don't crowd the pan. It will help the meat brown better instead of boiling it.