While the name comes from salt corns, it’s not necessary to use such salt; ordinary table salt works fine. The main thing is you need to also use pink curing salt (Prague Powder). Here’s my recipe:
Dissolve 3/4 cup table salt, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, and 2 tsp curing salt in 4 quarts water in large container. Add brisket, 3 garlic cloves, 4 bay leaves, 5 allspice berries, 1 tablespoon peppercorns, and 1 tbsp coriander seeds to brine. Weigh brisket down with plate, cover, and refrigerate for 6-7 days.
Remove brisket, rinse and cook as usual. I add 3 garlic cloves, 2 bay leaves and 1 tbsp of peppercorns tied in a cheesecloth packet while it cooks.
The corning process does take a week, but it’s just sitting in the fridge; you’re not actively doing anything to it. The only extra work compared to cooking a store-bought package is mixing the brine which takes about 15 minutes.
I sliced the corned beast and put it into the slow cooker with some quartered Yukon Gold potatoes. Missed 06:00 by two minutes. (Not that it matters.) Should be ready by 14 o’clock.
I bought a corned beef brisket last week and put it in the freezer to replace the one I took out to cook for today. When I was shopping I thought of buying some cabbage and potatoes to go with it, but realized that a whole head of cabbage was more than I wanted to cook and eat myself. Of course, I could have only cooked half of it, shredded the rest, and made coleslaw, but I’m trying to empty out my fridge in preparation for a thorough cleaning and I didn’t want to add to what was already in there.
Hey, I’m thinking of making corned beef tomorrow, if i can find a corned beef to buy later today. Any recipe advice? Anyone use an instant pot for this?
You could probably use an instant pot, but I’m not sure how you’d engineer adding different ingredients at different times. You could maybe get just the corned beef started in the instant pot, then take it the stovetop, since the brisket takes the longest.
Here’s how my mom taught me to make it: add corned beef to large pot and fill with just enough water to get to the top of the brisket. Add the little packet of seasonings that comes with the corned beef, and I add extra peppercorns, a bay leaf, and a few smashed cloves of garlic. Bring the water to a gentle simmer, then just let simmer covered for a couple hours (total cook time will be about 4 hours).
After about 2 hours or more, add coarsely chopped celery and carrots, and maybe chopped turnip as well. Bring back to a simmer and leave for another hour or so.
At some point early in the 4th hour, add coarsely chopped potatoes. Then in the final 1/2 hour of the 4 hour cooking time, add chopped cabbage (the pot will be getting pretty full at this point, so I put the cabbage on top, not really directly in the water at first, and let it steam down).
Once the cabbage is done, it’s ready to serve. I slice up the brisket and add it to a large wide bowl with potatoes, veggies, cabbage, and some of the cooking liquid ladled on top.
My brother cures his own corned beef every year. He starts three weeks before St Patrick’s Day and ends up sous viding it for like 24-48 hours before serving. It is wonderful! I’ve made my own corned beef when I lived in Hungary simply with a bucket of water and plenty of salt and spices. I didn’t add nitrate/nitrite as I wasn’t sure where to get it, so it just ended up looking grey instead of red but tasting just like normal corned beef.
Curing salt is the key to the red color. That’s because it contains sodium nitrite which has some associated health concerns. I don’t think the nitrites I consume eating corned beef once a year on St. Pat’s Day has been a problem for me. Not at all in comparison to all the bacon, corned beef, and pastrami I eat year round.
Besides coloring the meat, sodium nitrate is necessary for flavor and safety. According to Cooks Illustrated, “Nitrates prevent the oxidation of fats, which would otherwise lead to off-flavors and certain types of bacterial growth, especially Clostridium botulinum.” So don’t omit the curing salt if you don’t want botulisum. It’s surprising to me that so little curing salt is needed; just 2 teaspoons in a gallon of water. When I bought my curing salt, the smallest package I could get was a pound. I expect it to last the rest of my life and probably the rest of my son’s life when he inherits it.
It’ll work and be safe with straight salt but you need to use a lot more of it than if you use Prague powder or whatnot. After all traditional prosciutto is a salt-only cure.
All these years I’ve just been putting the sealed packages in the freezer, then defrosting them in the fridge before cooking. Before I got a slow cooker I would simmer them in a pot on the stove, adding the cabbage, potatoes, and veggies later. Now I use the slow cooker on low, again adding the other ingredients at the proper time.
Here’s how the recipe i ended up following handled it. It came out great, by the way. I made some small changes, so I’ll write what i actually did, but the basic idea is from the Internet.
2-3 pounds corned beef with spice packet
2 small onions cut into 6 wedges each
2 small cloves garlic, crushed
1.5 cups flavorful liquid. (The recipe called for Guinness, or beef broth. Having neither of those, i used some leftover chicken broth and some sweet cider that had been sitting long enough it might not still have been sweet.)
1.5 pounds baby yellow potatoes
4 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1.5" lengths
1 head of cabbage, cut into 6 wedges
Put the trivet into the instant pot and rest the onion and garlic atop it
Rinse the corned beef, and place atop the aromatics, fat side up.
Sprinkle the seasoning onto the beef
Pour the broth around the beef, do as not to dislodge the spice.
Cook on high pressure for 70 minutes.
Allow to cool 15 min, then release the remaining pressure and open the pot.
Put the beef and 2 cups of liquid into a large casserole. There will still be a lot of liquid in the pot.
Layer the veggies into the pot, with the potatoes resting directly on the trivet, the carrots on the potatoes, and the cabbage on top. It will completely fill the pot, and i had to rearrange the cabbage wedges to get the lid to close. So it’s well above the “max” line, but cabbage doesn’t boil into the vent, so it seems to be okay.
Cook on high pressure for 3 minutes. (This will take more like 15 minutes, because it takes a while before it’s pressurized.)
While the veggies are cooking, slice the beef, removing the strip of fat, first. Then put it back into the casserole with the broth. Then set the table. Hang around, because you want to release the pressure as soon as the vegetables have cooked 3 minutes.
Do a quick release of the veggies, and add to the casserole dish. Strain the remaining broth into the casserole as well, removing the slimy sacrificial onions and garlic.
Serve.
Weirdly, one little potato fell into mush, but the others were perfect. The carrots were soft but held their shape. The cabbage was surprisingly good, too. I think I’ve overcooked it in the past.
Yeah, if I’d thought of it, i might have picked some up. But the cider/broth mix worked better than i feared. I was afraid it would be too sweet, but it was delicious.
No trouble with leftovers, by the way. We ate it for supper Monday, and lunch Tuesday, and i had another serving for Tuesday supper, and threw away one of the 6 cabbage wedges, but nothing else except the slimy onions and the slice of fat i cut out.