St.Patrick , AKA CornedBeef 2018

[kayb]

Thanks. I'm assuming I'll have to cut it at least in two, possibly in three, for it to fit. I'll plan accordingly.

[Tri2Cook]

Last minute plan change. Decided I didn't want the bread and I'm not really feeling the more traditional treatment of the potatoes. So I did my own eGulletized version of the Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole... no convenience products (unless we want to go to the extreme definition, I did not make my own sour cream or cheese) involved. Diced the spuds and steamed them. Made a cheese sauce that I combined with sour cream, lots of finely diced onion and a hefty dose of black pepper. Mixed the sauce and the spuds along with additional cheddar cheese, topped it with even more cheddar cheese and it's in the oven now.

[kayb]

22 minutes ago, Tri2Cook said:

Last minute plan change. Decided I didn't want the bread and I'm not really feeling the more traditional treatment of the potatoes. So I did my own eGulletized version of the Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole... no convenience products (unless we want to go to the extreme definition, I did not make my own sour cream or cheese) involved. Diced the spuds and steamed them. Made a cheese sauce that I combined with sour cream, lots of finely diced onion and a hefty dose of black pepper. Mixed the sauce and the spuds along with additional cheddar cheese, topped it with even more cheddar cheese and it's in the oven now.

 

I could eat my weight in Cracker Barrel hash brown casserole.

 

[curls]

Found some prepared corn beef briskets (flat -- no points available) at Wegmans for $3.99 per pound. Maybe they'll be marked down further this week.

[Smokeydoke]

Pastrami, pastrami, everywhere. For days.

 

eGullet steered me right again, pastrami was the way to go. Delicious!

 

       

 

 Mine was a basic recipe, 6 lbs corned beef, 2 T black pepper, 1T ground coriander, 1T powdered garlic.

 Smoked for 3 hours till internal temp was 155F.

 

It was delicious. So flavorful. I can't wait to make sandwiches and hashes all week. Or I'll just eat it straight from the fridge!

 

My only comment, smoking the meat was not as tender as braising it. It had a chewy quality that I enjoy, kinda like soft bacon. The pastrami had to be cut against the grain and very thin to be palatable in my sandwich. This could be user error, the meat cooked much too fast, most recipes recommend 4-6 hours, I cooked mine in 3. I'll keep a better eye on my smoker next time.

 

Can't beat the flavor. Yum! Feel sorry for people who have to buy the packaged stuff.

Edited March 18, 2018 by Smokeydoke (log)

[FeChef]

37 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

Pastrami, pastrami, everywhere. For days.

 

eGullet steered me right again, pastrami was the way to go. Delicious!

 

       

 

 Mine was a basic recipe, 6 lbs corned beef, 2 T black pepper, 1T ground coriander, 1T powdered garlic.

 Smoked for 3 hours till internal temp was 155F.

 

It was delicious. So flavorful. I can't wait to make sandwiches and hashes all week. Or I'll just eat it straight from the fridge!

 

My only comment, smoking the meat was not as tender as braising it. It had a chewy quality that I enjoy, kinda like soft bacon. The pastrami had to be cut against the grain and very thin to be palatable in my sandwich. This could be user error, the meat cooked much too fast, most recipes recommend 4-6 hours, I cooked mine in 3. I'll keep a better eye on my smoker next time.

 

Can't beat the flavor. Yum! Feel sorry for people who have to buy the packaged stuff.

 

If you have a PC, next time try finishing it off in the PC with a steam rack for 60-90 min. I wrap mine in paper after the bark sets in the smoker and once it reaches 175F IT. Let it rest in the paper overnight in the fridge. Finish it in the PC in the paper. No loss of bark.

[kayb]

21 minutes ago, FeChef said:

If you have a PC, next time try finishing it off in the PC with a steam rack for 60-90 min. I wrap mine in paper after the bark sets in the smoker and once it reaches 175F IT. Let it rest in the paper overnight in the fridge. Finish it in the PC in the paper. No loss of bark.

 

I took @FeChef's advice. Worked like a charm for me. Smoked 3 hours, in the fridge overnight, then IP'd on steam for 45 minutes. Perfect.

[FeChef]

30 minutes ago, kayb said:

 

I took @FeChef's advice. Worked like a charm for me. Smoked 3 hours, in the fridge overnight, then IP'd on steam for 45 minutes. Perfect.

I usually do 30 min in the PC for flats. But i didn't take into consideration how much thicker the point i used was. I had to go 60 in the PC, and if i had to do it over i would have even went 90. Thanksfor the mention, i am glad it worked out well for you.

[Smokeydoke]

I've noticed that beautiful bark on yours, I can't say mine has a "bark". Obviously, this recipe is for amateur homecooks, I'll need to experiment further to get a nice bark.

 

I do have an IP, but why the finish in the PC? Is it to tenderize it further? I've seen a few recipe call for steaming after the smoking. I will try it and report back!

 

 

[scubadoo97]

I smoke my corned beefs after desalinating on an electric smoker

 

steamed after slicing and just prior to serving 

[gfweb]

I cold smoke my corned beefs and then cook SV. 

[FeChef]

2 hours ago, Smokeydoke said:

I've noticed that beautiful bark on yours, I can't say mine has a "bark". Obviously, this recipe is for amateur homecooks, I'll need to experiment further to get a nice bark.

 

I do have an IP, but why the finish in the PC? Is it to tenderize it further? I've seen a few recipe call for steaming after the smoking. I will try it and report back!

 

 

The point of the IP is so that you can do a fast smoke, set the bark, wrap, then steam in the PC to tenderize. Its exactly what the NY deli's like Katz does. They use a commercial pressurized steamer for their pastrami.

[ElsieD]

We had our corned beef dinner last night.  This was cooked sous vide for 48 hours at 140F as per instructions from @rotuts.

I liked how the meat was easy to slice and didn't come out in shreds.  I did think it could have used more time as some bites were a bit tough.  I also made some Irish Soda Bread per a Stella Parks recipe.  I had never made one before and was surprised at how good it was.  Just flour, salt, baking soda and buttermilk. 

[Smithy]

All this talk of different ways to cook corned beef convinced me to try side-by-side experiments: an in-home cook-off, if you will.  We usually boil our brisket - roughly 50 minutes per pound of meat - and add the vegetables around a half hour before the meat is done.  We've been shooting to maintain an internal temperature of around 175F, but going by the fork-tender method and looking at my notes, this time the temperatures were higher and I don't think the meat suffered.

 

I've been very curious to try oven-braising, oven-roasting, and sous vide as cooking methods for corned beef.  The oven-braising method won the first slot, thanks in large part to @Shel_B's writeup of his corned beef cookery starting here. In both cases, the vegetables were potatoes and parsnips.

 

I began with two Kroger's Corned Beef Briskets, Point Cuts, as near to identical as I could get them.  One weighed 2.53 pounds.  The other weighed 2.54 pounds. (They were closer in size than this photo suggests.  I must have not taken this picture from directly above the packages, as I'd thought.)

 

 

One was was flatter than the other, so I chose it for the oven braising method. I soaked it for around an hour, then used a Scottish-style ale (no Guinness in the house) as a braising liquid.  Our oven's lowest setting is 300F, so there was a fair amount of messing around to regulate the temperature at more nearly 275F.  The potatoes and parsnips were added late in the game and cooked until finished.  This also was a slight miscalculation - they should have gone in sooner, if for no other reason than to insulate the meat better - but it all worked. The internal temperature was 90C when the meat felt fork-tender, and I was afraid it would be overcooked.

 

The oven-braising method:

 

The stovetop boiling method got the potatoes in too early.  By the time the meat felt fork-tender the internal temperature was 98C and the potatoes were about to fall apart.

 

It was an interesting test.  On the left is the braised meat.  

 

 

I thought the braised meat looked more appealing, but we couldn't tell any difference in the flavor or texture.  The real surprise was the potatoes and parsnips.  Why I didn't take a picture of them plated, I don't know.  The braised vegetables had much more intense flavor than the boiled, and we liked them better.

 

Whether we thought the flavor difference was enough better to justify the extra work of oven braising is another question.  I think I'd be inclined to try sous vide next, for the better control of the heat.  However, we have a lot of delicious leftovers to get through before we try this again. 

[Smokeydoke]

Everyone's corned beef looks great. I love it.

 

 

[scubadoo97]

25 minutes ago, Smokeydoke said:

Everyone's corned beef looks great. I love it.

 

 

The first time I went to Vegas many years ago,  you could cook a corned beef on the sidewalk and I'm from Florida and thought I could handle heat well

[Smokeydoke]

I wanted to add to Smithy's discussion. So far I've boiled and smoked and smoked won, hands down. The meat was juicy and flavorful, much different than what I'm used to with brisket, which is a tough meat that I've never learned to cook properly. It was chewy, but in a good way, because you could keep chewing and chewing and flavor would squeeze out of every bite. I don't know if it's the smoke or the corning, but this was the most flavorful pastrami I ever had. Even though it was chewy, it was very juicy and tender.

 

I loved boiled too, I followed Suzanne Goin's recipe, and she boils at 325F for 4-4 1/2 hours. They were fall-apart tender but the flavor was different, it wasn't as beefy. They were both delicious but different.

 

Next, I'm going to try sous-vide, as I hope it'll give me the best of both worlds.

Edited March 20, 2018 by Smokeydoke (log)

[Smokeydoke]

11 minutes ago, scubadoo97 said:

The first time I went to Vegas many years ago,  you could cook a corned beef on the sidewalk and I'm from Florida and thought I could handle heat well

 

You probably could! I know people who bake cookies in their car. No really, it's a thing.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2018 by Smokeydoke (log)

[catdaddy]

I really enjoyed my results from SV cooked (160 for 48hrs) corned beef except for the saltiness. Should have soaked that puppy before cooking it.

[Tri2Cook]

9 hours ago, catdaddy said:

I really enjoyed my results from SV cooked (160 for 48hrs) corned beef except for the saltiness. Should have soaked that puppy before cooking it.

That's exactly why I do a 5% brine. Comes out of the sous vide bag not overly salty with no presoaking necessary. I'm considering trying a 3% brine just for comparison purposes but I've been happy with the 5%. Of course, I realize most of the discussion here is revolving around commercial corned beef and varying the salt level of the brine isn't an option.

[FeChef]

Damn @rotuts. This is your thread and you haven't even posted any of your cooks. Surly you cooked at least one of those six hunks of Corned beef?

Edited March 21, 2018 by FeChef (log)

[Kerry Beal]

 

Took the Jewish Corn Rye and a corned brisket from Wegmans that had been sous ved for 16 hours at 79.5º C. 

 

Sandwiches for all. 

 

 

 

[curls]

Not the best picture but this is the best corn beef I've ever made! @rotuts thank you for all your corn beef posts -- I couldn't resist any longer. So, one ~3 pound Wegmans flat cut corn beef brisket was split into thirds, bagged, and sous vide'd for 57 hours at 60C / 140F. Was going for a 48 hour cook but realized that my schedule would not allow for that. Found this post (https://anovaculinary.com/great-corned-beef-experiment/) and decided that pulling the corn beef after work vs. before work would be just fine. Yum!

[Tri2Cook]

Guess I need to take a picture before mine is gone. I ate it with potatoes and cabbage Saturday and again on Sunday. Ate it last night and tonight sliced thin, steamed a bit and piled in a toasted, buttered everything bagel with horseradish mustard but I think I can convince myself to eat it again... strictly for the photo opportunity, of course.

[rotuts]

@curls

 

thanks for that ref.

 

I can't take credit for 140 / 48 

 

many people here on eG do that.   and adding a few hours is always possible.

 

I think

 

@gfweb   does that

 

and possibly 

 

@dcarch