Corned Beef

[mjdeez]

I had been kind of back and forth on how I wanted to make my corned beef for this St. Patrick's day. I found Ruhlman and Polcyn's too salty (intermediate step of my pastrami from December) but I saw BLSH's well written piece on this recipe and how to adjust the salt / sugar here: http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=18833.0.

I ended up taking the somewhat lazy way out, with a dry cure on this website: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/03/homemade-corned-beef-brisket-with-potatoes-cabbage-carrots-recipe.html  I don't remember where I came across it, either on these forums or just searching. The salt calls for kosher. I chose to use my MTQ substitute recipe, and used the correct amount by weight for my 5lb brisket, and adjusted the sugar accordingly (I eyeballed it and only added a little to get brown sugar in there).

My untrimmed brisket:


My trimmed (aka butchered) brisket. Trimmings will go to sausage.


Curing in the fridge now. I'll let you know how it comes out.  I cut this bag way too long, but better than too short.

[La Quinta]

Looks good mjdeez...can't wait to hear how it comes out...

[squirtthecat]

Nice!   I have trouble eyeballing the bags as well..   ;)

[OU812]

Thats gonna be gooood.

[ArnieM]

Home made is ALWAYS better than store-bought.

[mjdeez]

Here are the final pics from the corned beef. We will definitely make this again.  It came out really good, more flavorful than store bought and better consistency.

The recipe was linked in the original post, but I will add that I cured for 8 or 9 days in the fridge, and soaked it for about 4 hours in a large pan of water after rinsing the cure off. I didn't bother with the recipe's suggestion to cook the previous day and reheat and all that. We just put it in the crock pot the day we wanted to eat it, and put the veggies in later so they all got cooked for the right amount of time (~1hr or so).

In the crock pot:


Some potatoes and Irish soda bread:


slicing it up:


All plated up:

[OU812]

Most excellent.

I'd hurt my self by eating to much of that!

[pikeman_95]

That is a very gool looking meal. The corned beef looks great. thanks for the pics

[mjdeez]

Thanks.  I'm getting really hungry for lunch looking at these pics again, and it's only 8:30 AM.  I brought a little corned beef leftovers along w/ some kielbasa so I may take an early lunch.

[OU812]

Come on lunch time!  ;D

[jiggerjams]

I could really go for some of that.....no really!!

[ArnieM]

Yep, I could certainly go for that plate!