Brisket is the cut over the breastbone, and it works for a living. That is the whole problem with it and the whole reason it is the right thing to serve.

Muscle that works is full of collagen, and collagen is the enemy of anybody in a hurry. Below about 160 degrees it stays what it is, which is rope. Somewhere past 190 it gives up and turns to gelatin, and the same fibres that were holding the thing shut are suddenly what makes it rich. There is no way to rush this and no way to fake it. You cannot buy a tender brisket. You can only wait for one.

Which brings me to the calendar, and to why this column exists.

The eighth day is the eighth day. It does not move. You do not get to look at the eighth day and say the eighth day is inconvenient. Everybody in the room has known the date since the first day, and the date has known nothing about your schedule.

And brisket is better the next day. Not slightly. Categorically. Cook it, let it cool in its own liquid, put the whole thing in the refrigerator overnight, and the following afternoon it will slice cleanly instead of shredding, the fat will have set into a cap you can lift off in one piece, and the flavour will have gone somewhere it was not the night before. Every cook who has done this twice knows it and most of them cannot tell you why.

So: the seventh day. That is the kit. That is the only instruction I have.

Cook on the seventh, serve on the eighth, and the hardest thing in the meal takes care of itself while you are busy with everything else. The calendar was already going to do this to you. You may as well let it work in your favour.

Two more things and then I will leave you alone.

Buy the whole packer if you can — the flat and the point together. The flat is what people picture and the point is what they remember. And slice across the grain, which changes direction partway through the cut, so turn the board when it does. A brisket sliced with the grain is a brisket you spent two days ruining at the last second.

I will not be attending.

I want to be clear that this is not about the food. The food is going to be excellent. I have catered this event forty times and I have never once stayed for it, and every year somebody tells me I would enjoy myself, and every year I say I have to get back.

Sit down. Eat. Somebody worked on that for two days.

Bris Kit appears occasionally, and never in the spring.