cookery: corned beef

Submitted by mivox on 14 January, 2006 - 12:26pm.

Generally, the corned beef recipes I find assume you already have a slab of corned beef lying around, and consist of not much more than, "boil the corned beef until it's done with some pickling spices in the water," more or less.

So how in the hell do you "corn" beef to begin with? After a couple days searching, I found this recipe, and have thoroughly and repeatedly quality tested it. It ain't health food, but it's damn tasty:

Dry Cure Corned Beefcorned beef

  • 6lb beef brisket
  • 1/4c. Morton's Tender Quick
  • 2T brown sugar (I find demerara sugar is fine too)
  • 5cl. minced garlic (I used the pre-minced stuff in a jar)
  • 1t black pepper
  • 1t ground ginger
  • 1/2t ground cloves
  • 1/4t ground nutmeg
  • 1/8t ground cayenne

Mix all the spices & garlic together, take out your brisket and stab the hell out of it with a meat fork, then thoroughly massage the curing mix all over the meat. (Beware if you have a hangnail or anything... that Tender Quick stings like you wouldn't believe!)

Put the brisket into a ziploc bag, tupperware-type container, or something like that, and put it in the fridge. Take it out ~24hrs. later and "rework" it (Which, as far as I can tell, just means "give it another massage." Half the time I forget this step.).

After 72 hours, take the brisket out of the fridge, brush off any 'loose' excess curing mix, and boil it with pickling spices as per all the other recipes... which is to say: 1 hour boiling time per pound, on the stovetop -or- 1/2 hour per pound in a pressure cooker -or- 12 hours on low (6 hours on high) in a crockpot.

NOTE: If you want to "wet cure" your corned beef, you will get a milder-tasting and jucier finished product. Personally, I like the end result from dry curing, but try it both ways and see which you prefer. For wet curing, mix 1 cup Tender Quick and all the other spices into 4 cups water and keep the brisket submerged in the liquid for 72 hours.

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