Corned Beef
This recipe is in two parts. Part 1,
Brining the Meat, is instructions on how to turn a beef brisket into
brined, raw corned beef. Part 2, Cooking Corned Beef, is how to cook
the raw corned beef, whether you brined it yourself or bought it
already soaking in brine.
Corned Beef Part 1: Brining a Beef
Brisket
Corned beef is an inexpensive cut of
meat, beef brisket, which is then soaked in salty water, called
brine. Historically, beef was “corned” in order to preserve it
and ship it without refrigeration. The word “corn” is an old
word for grains of salt.
Corned beef brine also historically
used saltpeter as an ingredient. Saltpeter is a chemical used in the
making of gunpowder, and it is not particularly good for you.
Because we have no need to preserve meat for months in a barrel
without refrigeration, this recipe does not include saltpeter.
Saltpeter adds no flavor to the meat. Aside from preserving the
meat, the only other thing it does is cause the meat to have an odd
pink color. Without the saltpeter, your corned beef will be gray.
This is just fine.
You will need the following:
1 beef brisket
2 quarts water
1 cup salt
To this, you can add any number of
different spices. The following is just one possibility. If you
don't have everything on this list, don't worry about it! And if you
happen to have ground spices instead of whole, you can use that
instead.
1 tsp whole peppercorns
½ tsp whole cloves
8 bay leaves, crumbled
1 cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
½ tsp allspice berries
1 tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp ground ginger
And have on hand:
2 trays of ice
1 2-gallon ziploc bag, or a 2-gallon
plastic container (preferably with a lid), or a glass or enamel
container large enough to hold the meat and the brine.
In a pot on the stove, heat the water,
salt, and spices, stirring until the salt dissolves. Add the ice to
the water to cool it. This is your brine. If necessary, refrigerate
the brine in order to chill it. Then put the meat into the brining
container, and pour in as much of the brine as will fit. Try to
completely submerge the meat in the brine; but if it doesn't fit
entirely, you can turn it over occasionally over the next ten days.
Now put the container in the
refrigerator. The meat needs to soak in the brine for about ten days
to get that proper corned-beef flavor, but you can pull it out a few
days sooner or a few days later. If the beef isn't entirely
submerged in the brine, turn it over every few days. This is a handy
recipe for feeding visiting relatives, because you can get it ready a
week in advance, and then there it is, on hand, and ready to cook at
your convenience.
Corned Beef Part 2: Boiled Dinner
“Boiled Dinner” is a New England
meal consisting of boiled corned beef, and potato, carrots, and
cabbage, all cooked in the corned beef cooking water. You can use
this with a corned beef that you have brined yourself, or you can use
a raw corned beef from the grocery store.
As an aside, you can boil a corned beef
without the vegetables – but why waste that delicious cooking
water? At the very least, you should save the cooking water in the
refrigerator to cook some vegetables in later. The cooking water
from corned beef imparts an amazingly delicious flavor on cabbage.
1 raw corned beef
1 cabbage (or less, if it's a really
big one)
a few potatoes
a few carrots (or rutabaga, parsnip, or
turnip)
an onion or two
Rinse the corned beef thoroughly and
discard the brine. Then put the beef in a large pot, and cover it
with water by about an inch. Bring this to a boil over high heat;
then reduce the heat to low, put the lid on, and let the pot simmer
for 2 ½ to 3 hours, or until the meat is “fork tender”. Remove
the corned beef from the pot and slice it thinly against the grain.
Now, have those vegetables ready to go
into the pot. The root vegetables should be scrubbed and cut into
bite-sized pieces. Peel the onion and cut it into quarters. Cut the
cabbage into wedges. (You can stick toothpicks through the cabbage
wedges to keep them together.) These all go into the corned beef
water, and get boiled until they are tender.
Then return the sliced corned beef to
the pot, and serve it up like a soup or a stew. And be sure to save
that leftover corned beef for sandwiches!
