Hold the ham, thanks. Roast brined turkey with gravy and cranberry relish? No thank you! The ginger-cured salmon gravlax is a ‘no' as well.

This a personal and all-encompassing rejection of traditional Christmas table fare, and the fattened porker hasn't even been to the abattoir yet - that happy Christmas place where short curly tails that wallow in mud and snort transmogrify into glazed Christmas hams.

Decision made - I am not going to suffer another ham and turkey hangover again this Christmas. There will be ham on the bone on Christmas Day, followed by a procession of ham salads, ham sandwiches, barbequed ham and eggs for breakfast, ham and cheese brunch bake, antipasto grilled ham and cheese, ham and asparagus bundles, et-bloody-cetera.

In other words, days and weeks until poor old Hermione Hamhock's $100 sugar cured offside hind leg has been reduced to just bone and binned. Until the ham has been used up.

But what could be Hermione's good luck will be some cattle beast's bad luck. Because on Christmas day I plan to hook into the cheapest cut of meat, the toughest cut of meat but perhaps the most flavoursome cut of meat. Brisket.

Okay – there's a bit of research to be done before my brisket is transformed from the consistency of a four ply tyre. It's taken from around the animal's breastbone - basically the chest or pectoral muscle.

The characteristically thick, coarse-grained meat needs a lot of time and low-temperature cooking to break down and tenderise. It's also moderately fatty, but this can work to your advantage because it moisturises and flavours.

That's where I will be venturing this Christmas – flame, wood, smoke and flavor, a relatively new to New Zealand, American style low-and-slow barbeque that demands oodles of time and patience.

It's not your typical flick and switch Kiwi barbeque. It will require research about the best barbeque, the right fuel, the right type of wood, the rub, the temperature and timing - and the investment.

No-one said it would be cheap or easy. But it will be a worthwhile way of destressing Christmas Day in a lazy, blokey kind of way – food, beer and blather.

It seems I won't be alone. The Facebook group New Zealand Barbecue Pitmasters has a following of 9000. There are also competitions like Meatstock, with over 30 teams competing. Then there's the Jack Daniels BBQ Championship.

People are getting serious about brisket, and I'm getting serious about brisket. There's momentum here. There's even a real American barbeque joint in Auckland's flash restaurant strip of Ponsonby Road now.

But this do-it-yourselfer will be seeking out his own Christmas present – a long and low American barbecue – and sourcing a butcher who knows a good rib from just another rib and something called a 'full” brisket. Let the slavering start.

And if it's not too late, the glazed Christmas ham would still look better holding up one corner of the pig.