Corned Beef At Home: Recipes, Tips, etc.

[gfweb]

I bought some uncooked corned beef brisket at the supermarket yesterday and cooked it according to instructions. Absolutely vile fatty junkmeat. Barely even fit for hash.

So I want to corn my own. From what I read there are a lot of variables...

Saltpeter or not? I can't imagine brown corned beef but some recipes eliminate it.

What cut? Brisket is traditional, but is such an iffy cut in my experience. At least the stuff my local market has is iffy. How about london broil or chuck or round. Boars Head uses top round in some products.

After curing must it be boiled/simmered or can it be baked at higher temp than 212 F with spices rubbed in? That might be too salty, so could one soak it for a couple hours and then bake?

Edited February 12, 2011 by gfweb (log)

[thampik]

Just in the process of making salt beef (corned beef) for the very first time - inspired by this article in The Guardian.

I have a 1.7 Kg of rolled brisket that has been in a cure for the last 5 days. I am planning on cooking it on the stove for between 2.5 to 4 hrs tomorrow.

The total curing time I am using is about half the time specified in the Guardian recipe, but seems sufficient from comments upthread and in other salt beef recipes. Is there were a rule-of-thumb that specifies curing time required for each Kg of beef?

Will post how it turned out.

[gfweb]

My first batch of corned beef (top round) tasted and looked right, but was so lean that it was too dry. Perhaps it was over-simmered as well.

I may sous vide the next batch.

[patris]

I did a (pre-corned, Wegmans brand) brisket sous vide last weekend - about 16 hours at 175 degrees. Wonderfully tender, as moist as corned beef is likely to be, and absolutely delicious.

[gfweb]

New batch of corned beef is just out of the sv and is vastly better than its simmered cousin. I did 60 degrees for 48 hours on a top round that had been cured for a week. It is tender and moist and flavorful. Thick slices can still be bitten through easily. I am really happy with this.

[mgaretz]

I make my corned beef in the slow cooker. I start with commercial corned beef (usually Shenson's). The night before, open the package and remove and set the spice packet aside. Rinse all the goo off the meat, then I trim as much fat as I can from it. Next it goes into the pot with clear cold water and into the fridge for an overnight soak. This reduces the saltiness. In the morning pour off all the water and remove the beef. Sprinkle the spice packet contents on the bottom of the pot then put the beef back in, trapping most of the spice underneath. If I want carrots and/or potatoes with the corned beef these go in now and then fill the pot with cool water to just above the beef. Cook on low for 8 hours. For the last hour of the 8 I add in the cabbage. If the beef is good quality to start with, this method never fails to please.

[qrn]

I make my corned beef in the slow cooker. I start with commercial corned beef (usually Shenson's). The night before, open the package and remove and set the spice packet aside. Rinse all the goo off the meat, then I trim as much fat as I can from it. Next it goes into the pot with clear cold water and into the fridge for an overnight soak. This reduces the saltiness. In the morning pour off all the water and remove the beef. Sprinkle the spice packet contents on the bottom of the pot then put the beef back in, trapping most of the spice underneath. If I want carrots and/or potatoes with the corned beef these go in now and then fill the pot with cool water to just above the beef. Cook on low for 8 hours. For the last hour of the 8 I add in the cabbage. If the beef is good quality to start with, this method never fails to please.

wonder what your altitude is? recipe sounds really good,but water boils here at 202deg,so would have to make appropriate changes in times...

Bud

[mgaretz]

I make my corned beef in the slow cooker. I start with commercial corned beef (usually Shenson's). The night before, open the package and remove and set the spice packet aside. Rinse all the goo off the meat, then I trim as much fat as I can from it. Next it goes into the pot with clear cold water and into the fridge for an overnight soak. This reduces the saltiness. In the morning pour off all the water and remove the beef. Sprinkle the spice packet contents on the bottom of the pot then put the beef back in, trapping most of the spice underneath. If I want carrots and/or potatoes with the corned beef these go in now and then fill the pot with cool water to just above the beef. Cook on low for 8 hours. For the last hour of the 8 I add in the cabbage. If the beef is good quality to start with, this method never fails to please.

wonder what your altitude is? recipe sounds really good,but water boils here at 202deg,so would have to make appropriate changes in times...

Bud

We're a couple of hundred feet above sea level.

[qrn]

I make my corned beef in the slow cooker. I start with commercial corned beef (usually Shenson's). The night before, open the package and remove and set the spice packet aside. Rinse all the goo off the meat, then I trim as much fat as I can from it. Next it goes into the pot with clear cold water and into the fridge for an overnight soak. This reduces the saltiness. In the morning pour off all the water and remove the beef. Sprinkle the spice packet contents on the bottom of the pot then put the beef back in, trapping most of the spice underneath. If I want carrots and/or potatoes with the corned beef these go in now and then fill the pot with cool water to just above the beef. Cook on low for 8 hours. For the last hour of the 8 I add in the cabbage. If the beef is good quality to start with, this method never fails to please.

wonder what your altitude is? recipe sounds really good,but water boils here at 202deg,so would have to make appropriate changes in times...

Bud

We're a couple of hundred feet above sea level.

OK that will make a substantial time increase,right now I do it in the pressure cooker for an hour...

Thanks, Bud

[rob1234]

I'm testing out some short rib corned beef based on the recipe on ruhlman's website. I'm wondering if the amount of prague powder in the brine depends on the amount of water in the brine or the amount meat? The recipe says 4tsp pink salt, 1 gallon water, and 5 lbs meat. I used 1/2 gallon water, 2tsp prague powder, but not much meat. Maybe 1lb or less. Think it'll be ok? I plan to sous vide it after 5 days in the brine. Still deciding between 80C for 10 hours or 56-57C for 48.

[emannths]

If you assume that the meat reaches equilibrium^* with the brine, then you would base your prague powder (and salt, for that matter) quantity based on the total sum of water plus meat. The easy way to do this is to scale everything by the weight of the meat. Ruhlman's recipe is for 5lbs of brisket. So if you have 2.5lbs of boneless shortribs, make half the amount of brine (maintaining the right ratios of water to salt, prague powder, etc) and you should be good.

By cutting the amount of meat to less than 1 lb, you're going to slightly increase the amount of salt and nitrate in the meat, but not by much. A half a gallon of water is 4 lbs. The expected 2.5lbs of meat contributes about 75% of its weight in water, so there's a total of about 5.9lbs of water in the recipe as Ruhlman writes it. By cutting the meat to 1lb, you're only contributing 0.75lb of water to the system, for a total of 4.75lbs. The result is that you're increasing the effective concentration of salt and nitrate in the final product by almost 25%. Since you're cooking the meat sous vide, there won't be a big pot of boiling water to remove some of the salt during cooking, so you might wind up with something that's saltier than expected.

This is all theoretical though. Someone's probably tried it and can report on their results.

^*Of course, assuming equilibrium is a big assumption. But without more data to go on, it's hard to figure out how close to equilibrium we get.

[rob1234]

Thanks for the info. I did a 5% brine for the salt/water ratio (not counting the prague powder) which ruhlman advises if you aren't going to boil the meat (10% brine otherwise). I'll double check the weight of the meat tonight and maybe add some more water. I put the meat in the brine about 12 hours ago.

Edited March 16, 2011 by rob1234 (log)

[OliverB]

I'm not sure I ever ate corned beef warm/fresh before, but reading this thread made me curious. I happened to walk by a display of uncured (scam!) ready to cook corned beef at Trader Joes and got me one, made it last weekend. Without having any reference, it turned out great! Interesting to note, all the spice were in the brine, not in a package. They had permeated the entire piece of meat with a great spiced flavor. I cooked it in the slow cooker on high for 5 hours, could probably have gone a bit shorter. It was falling apart tender, wonderful rosy like a rare steak. Now I'm really tempted to make this again myself! Instructions said nothing about removing foam. The foam looked pretty icky, but once I tried to skim it off I noticed that I'm removing all of the floating spices, so I just left it, figured I won't use the liquid for anything anyway. And it all sank to the bottom! Meat came out nice and clean.

I'd even buy this package again, even if it's not authentic, it tasted really good. And maybe it is authentic, I have no reference and can't just travel across the country to try the NY benchmarks. Nor do I know of a Jewish deli where I'm at.

We got 3 meals out of this meat, two dinner, one lunch. Not bad!

[mgaretz]

I'm not sure I ever ate corned beef warm/fresh before, but reading this thread made me curious. I happened to walk by a display of uncured (scam!) ready to cook corned beef at Trader Joes and got me one, made it last weekend.

I must have been at the same Trader Joes. Railroad Ave. in Danville? I also sampled the "uncured" corned beef and it was very similar to the way mine turns out with the overnight soak (with regular corned beef).

Since tomorrow is St. Patty's day, I just now headed down to the kitchen to trim the beef and start the soak.

[dcarch]

I corned my own brisket. No nitrates. Low salt. It's in the water bath. Tomorrow will be 48 hours.

Can't wait. :-)

dcarch

[gfweb]

Just brought out a corned round roast from the sous vide. Tender, tasty, not fatty. It may not last till st Patty's day!

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

[David A. Goldfarb]

One of the great pleasures of making one's own corned beef is the fantastic aroma when opening the bag it's been sealed in before cooking it. After doing this myself for several years I noticed a Freirich corned beef on sale at the supermarket after St. Patrick's Day, and thought, "what the heck, I'll dredge it in pepper, garlic, and coriander and smoke it in the wok, and make a pastrami" as I've occasionally done with my own corned beef, and it is presently smoking on the stovetop, but there was no particular pleasure in opening the bag. It had the aroma of nothing in particular--old wet meat. It will be okay, I'm sure, but I think that's my last store-bought corned beef.

[gfweb]

I find it amazing how great the whole process is. I know it sounds silly to get excited at the transformation, but pulling the corned beef out of the water bath always makes me smile and marvel.

[Anonymous Modernist 14040]

Anyone have a modernist recipe for Corned Beef? MC@H only has two references to corned beef, both derogatory "and if you do this wrong you get corned beef". What if I want to do it intentionally?

The full book set has several mentions to corned beef, but I am not sure if it has any recipes. Could someone share if there is a recipe for it, I only have access to it via the library. Or if someone has their own recipe, I am all eyes.

Only recipes I have found are here:

http://www.cuisinetechnology.com/blog/recipe-sous-vide/contest-winners-sous-vide-corned-beef-recipes-3172012/

Thanks!

[Anonymous Modernist 15013]

We just did one for dinner last night.

We corned a brisket for 5 days using Ruhlman's pickling spice and some potassium nitrate. Although not MC, it is very tasty. We rinsed it off and vac packed it. We had it in the bath at 143f for ~60hours (I ran out of time to keep it in there for 72hours). MC noted for bricket to do 140 for 72h (tender but yielding) or 145 for 72h (tender and flaky). He did the middle and it was quite delicious. Great flavour and texture. I think i'd try 145 next time maybe though.

On a side note, since the bath was at 143 so we plopped in some MC@H meatloaf sandwiches for 30 minutes at lunch time.. also stellar and super easy.

[Anonymous Modernist 14040]

Thanks vinio, good tip there. I suppose corned beef really comes down to a question of how I want to cure it, followed by how I want to cook it.

[Anonymous Modernist 15013]

Yes, I guess that really goes for anything. We chose wet cure because that it was we knew (and it was good last year). We chose sous vide, because I just made the circulator and wanted to do it. That being said, I don't think I would cook it any other way moving forward. It was very good and I am upset that this is my last sandwich today (boo).

I'd like to get a hold of the technique the MC folks use for the sweet onion sauerkraut. Is it just pickled sweet onions or are they fermented? If they are fermented do you add some brine from sauerkraut to introduce the lactic acid required to ferment or do you add cabbage to introduce lactic acid? How much of either should I add?

Can anyone help me on that?

[Judy Wilson]

Do you mean the Braised Sauerkraut? That one has sweet onions sauteed with our other sauerkrauts as well as some other ingredients.

[Anonymous Modernist 15013]

I had read in the blog that pastrami was served with Taki's sweet onion sauerkraut? I assumed this was made and not bought? Perhpas I am overthinking it?

[Judy Wilson]

Ah, yes. Taki is one of our favorite farmer's at the University District Farmers' Market in Seattle. So that's where that part comes from. We still made it, though I'm not sure if it was a new recipe or a variation of a recipe from MC or MCAH.

Edit: Here's a picture of Taki with Max: http://modernistcuisine.com/2011/12/behind-the-scenes-at-a-lab-dinner-part-1/