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DIY Corned Beef!

Homemade Corned Beef!!!    Why?  Because we can! 
 
This thread is open to anyone making corned beef from scratch.  Please post pics, recipes and results!
 
 
I've been wanting to try making corned beef since seeing an episode of Floyd on Food about 20 years ago.  Love Keith Floyd!  He's a hoot to watch, gets a bit mucky, overfills the cooking pot, he's my inspiration and the original Drunken Chef!  (well, maybe not the first, but in my opinion, the best on TV.  :lol:  ) Through the wonder of YT- here's the original episode.
 
AmazingRibs website has some good information-Quoted from AmazingRibs~
 
"Your first question has to be "Why bother?" And the answer is simple: Homemade corned beef is better.  Why? The commercial stuff, especially the cheap stuff mass marketed for St. Patrick's Day for Irish wannabes, is usually made by taking shortcuts that result in odd flavors and gelatinous textures.
Home made corned beef can also be cheaper. And it's easy. And you can customize it. Once you've had the real deal, you can't go back. It just takes time. So start now.
 
Corned beef has no corn. OK, maybe the steer ate some corn, but no corn is harmed in the process of corning beef. Actually, to be precise, corn was the old British name for grain before corn on the cob was discovered in North America and usurped the name. "A corn of salt" was as common an expression as a "grain of salt" is today. So corned beef is really just another name for salted beef.
So corning has become another name for curing or pickling. Yes, we are pickling this beef. These are ancient processes invented for preserving meat by packing it in salt or soaking it in a concentrated brine, long before refrigerators.
 
In recent years, curing is also done by injecting meat with salt. The process was probably discovered when some ancient hunter speared a deer and it fell into the ocean and washed ashore a couple of weeks later. Surprisingly instead of bloating and turning foul, the meat had been preserved, and tasted pretty good.
Corned beef was a World War II staple among civilians in Great Britain and among the troops in Europe because fresh meats were hard to come by. It came in a can. Sliced corned beef is especially popular in Jewish delicatessens where it is a sandwich staple."
 
 
 
 
Here's my first attempt at making corned beef-
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5# brisket
1 gal distilled water*
8 oz kosher salt by weight
2 tsp Prague powder
1/2 cup pickling spice
 
 
*We have good quality well water, if you are on a municipal water system with fluorides and chlorines, etc, consider using distilled water.
 
 
 
Pickling Spices-
2T black peppercorns
3" cinnamon sticks
2t allspice
 
Put the above spices in a thick plastic bag and smash with a meat mallet, framing hammer, or a heavy can.
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Add to-
2T dill seed
1T red pepper flakes
1T mustard seed
1T coriander seed
1T celery seed
4 bay leaves- broken up
1T dry thyme
1T ginger- not ground unless that's all you have*
1t clove
1 star anise
 
 
Or you could use commercial pickling spices, but I think mine looks better....more goodies in it! 
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*All the other spices are whole or coarse/chunky.  I didn't want to use ground ginger, so out to the Kitch for some dried shredded ginger in the little jar at 11:00 in the picture.
 
 
Heat up 1/2 gallon water, 2tsp prague powder, a heavy 1/2 cup pickling spices, 1 star anise, and 8 oz by weight kosher salt (about 1 1/2 cups) just to dissolve the salt and get everything happy~
 
After it came up to temp I turned off the heat and added 1/2 gallon ice water to cool down the brine.  I know...  in a hurry could of just let it cool.
 
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The butcher shop at Hank's hooked me up with a pretty well trimmed 5# brisket.  I trimmed just a bit more fat off.  I was kinda surprised at the $25 price tag, but then got to thinking that the other slabs of meat purchased in the plastic bags with spices are usually about $12 for 2#.  We'll see how this turns out and hopefully the flavor will trump the price. 
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Into a 2 gal plastic bag, tried to get all the air out so the meat is under the brine.  Flip it daily for 5-7 days.....  off we go!!!
 
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Malarky said:
 
pls excuse me for being too lazy to google but the pink salts/prague powder...is it bad for you? lifestyle choice? low salt diet?
 
Just make sure you use the right amount and you'll be fine. For a lower salt content soak it in water after it's cured to get some of the salt out, I'm not sure if you can start off with less salt and get the proper brine. I'm sure someone here will know.
 
Excellent!!!!!
 
It's that time of year again.


Get yer briskets ON.!!!

Or IN!...The brine...Then On the flame....

I use Prague powder in mine for the pink color. SmokenFire posted his recipe without Prague powder. Use what you have, it will turn out great.

I'll be posting proper prep pics in a day or 2. Let's get corning!




:Dance:
 
Thank-you SL for this thread!
 
My entire family has always liked/eaten the commercial products, especially a local-family owned product.>Old Neighborhood Corned Beef   But making your own has it's advantages - we make our own perogies at x-mas time and our blend of farmers cheese + cream cheese blow Mrs.T's out of the water. So I've put this on my to-do list.
 
So having said this and reading the entire thread, point cut or flat? Seems there are equal numbers of advocates in the culinary world but I've always felt that fatty-marbled meats have a much richer flavor than leaner cuts of meat. You? Any one else?

 
 
The_NorthEast_ChileMan said:
So having said this and reading the entire thread, point cut or flat? Seems there are equal numbers of advocates in the culinary world but I've always felt that fatty-marbled meats have a much richer flavor than leaner cuts of meat. You? Any one else?
 
 
I almost always use flat for corned beef as I find it's more uniform and easier to slice.  But also because I love the point cut on the smoker for burnt ends.  ;)
 
 
2 pieces in the brine bin! Same recipe as the first post so I didn't bother with all that. It was a full piece so I guess that means I have the flat and point?
 

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salsalady said:
It was a full piece so I guess that means I have the flat and point?
 
 
Yea, I left out the whole Brisket as we are only offered the two cuts commercially, flat & point, not a complete Full Packer.  
 
 

Another culinary opinion similar to mine.. Second Cut or Deckle
 
For years, I thought brisket was by nature a somewhat stringy, dry and chewy cut of beef. No matter how exacting the recipe or how careful the cook, the leanness of the meat dictated the texture.
 
Then I tasted something called the second (or the deckle) cut of brisket. For lovers of fatty meat, this is brisket nirvana. It’s juicy, it’s succulent, it falls apart under the fork with barely a nudge. It’s also as tasty as short ribs but less expensive, which is what you want when you’re cooking for a large family dinner.
 
 
 
Thanks, NE~

The butcher pulled a big slab out of the back, trimmed most of the fat off and cut it in half for my convenience in brining.
 
I wouldn't call it cheap, the price is low but you have to buy the whole thing making it as pricey as a rib roast. BUT you have to eat a properly cooked brisket at least once to understand the goodness that most people will never taste. When it comes off the smoker and jiggles like jello you know it's cooked to perfection. Here's one I cooked, I wonder if I can cook a brined brisket the same way. It seems the salt tightens up the meat more.
Jiggle brisket gif.gif
 
There are recipes linked for doing the brined brisket in a smoker. Ithink thats pastrami????

In the regular corned beef recipe the meat is gently simmered for 30 minutes, discard the water, refill and then simmer for along time. Makes it fall apart tender and not too salty. I wouldnt call it jelly tender, like the clip, maybe that is something from the smoker.

I would totally face plant into that jelly brisket!!!!
 
NZ bone in leg of lamb. The brine is salt/brown sugar/rosemary/bay leaves/5 spice/P. Dreadie scotch bonnets. I didn't use any curing salts or nitrites, since my wife is very pregnant right now. I made crosshatch slices through the leg for brine penetration, and so that when I roast this bad boy on Sunday, the fat roasts uniformly, which creates an epicly crispy exterior.
 

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