Yeah, it’s going to depend on the corned beef you have. Some are much saltier than others and will require soaking. Try soaking for three (or more) hours, changing out the water every hour next time you try.
WTF is an instant pot?
Just asking.
A brand of electric pressure cooker.
Prague powder #1 (6.25% sodium nitrite, 93.75% sodium chloride) Also called “pink salt”.
The only Prussian powder I could find googling is a blue pigment.
And don’t get Prague powder #2- it has sodium nitrate as its primary active ingredient, and is primarily intended for use in dry cured products that have a very long curing time.
Once you get the prague powder, it’s stupid easy to cure your own corned beef. Everything else is commonplace- salt, sugar, pickling spice, garlic
Here’s the recipe I use:
Home-Cured Corned Beef
1-1/2 cups kosher salt*
½ cup sugar
4 teaspoons pink salt (sodium nitrite), optional
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 tablespoons pickling spice
1 5-pound beef brisket
In pot large enough to hold brisket, combine 1 gallon of water with kosher salt, sugar, sodium nitrite (if using), garlic and 2 tablespoons pickling spice. Bring to a simmer, stirring until salt and sugar are dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled.
Place brisket in brine, weighted with a plate to keep it submerged; cover. Refrigerate for 5 days.
(from here: http://ruhlman.com/2010/03/corned-beef-how-to-cure-your-own)
Cook however you like; Ruhlman suggests putting the cured brisket in just enough water to cover, bringing to a boil, reducing the heat and simmering until tender- about 3 hours.
It’s a pressure cooker that also does slow cooking and yogurt, among other things. It’s a bit expensive, but it’s amazing.
It’s not that bad. The 6-quart one (which is the one I have) is $70, but you don’t have to stick with the Instant Pot brand. The Insignia 6 quart is $50 (though it doesn’t seem to have the yogurt setting, if that’s important to you. It does slow cook and has similar settings otherwise. Plus a high user review rating.)
What’s the advantage vs. separate pressure cookers and slow cookers? As far as I can tell, it’s just a sub-par (lower PSI) pressure cooker combined with a slow cooker.
It changed my life. I hate cooking but love having cooked. I’ve been able to make so many things so easily. Corned beef came up on another forum, I am going to try that tomorrow. The only problem is that I can’t buy less than 3 lbs at my grocery store and I am cooking for one. But I can have it for dinner and lunch the next day and save some for sandwiches. One day with mustard, another day with Russian dressing
It pressure cooks as well as my stovetop pressure cooker has, with much less hassle (just set it and forget it, basically.) That said, I don’t use the slow cooker function of it. I bought it solely for the pressure cooking when my stovetop cooker was getting a bit … iffy.
ETA: It looks like the Instant Pot Max gets up to 15 psi, so if that’s important for you (like in pressure canning), then that’s an option, although it’s a good bit more expensive.
In my house there is only one way to cook this at that is slow simmer for 4 hours at least with cut up carrots, leek (or onion) added bay leaves, peppercorns, malt vinegar and towards the end I add the spuds so they suck up the flavour. Serve with the spuds, cauliflower and some cheese sauce.
I was taught this from my Grandpa and him from is Nanna, old school 5 generation recipe but a classic is a classic for a reason.
But I have learnt something new here, use the broth for bean soup. Gunna try that one out, sounds grouse.
Or just some regular vegetable-type soup, cabbage soup, that sort of thing. Here’s a recent thread on using the broth.
I roast it in the oven at a low temp- I use the Pioneer Woman recipe and use balsalmic reduction on both the meat and the cabbage. I have not made it any other way in 5 years now- it’s incredible. I took two decent sized roasts to my sisters house- about six adults and one tiny child at dinner - and the last scrap was gone within an hour.
I made it this year with my new Anova sous vide, using this recipe. I did the whole trick of sous vide the day before, chill, then use the liquid in the sous vide bag as a base for boiling the vegetables. It came out excellent - the corned beef was moist, didn’t have that chalky dryness you can get from boiling for too long. Cabbage & potatoes & carrots came out great too. Definitely a keeper.
ETA: I used a supermarket corned beef, didn’t cure it myself. Was still great.