Once you find the right curing method, corning beef requires no work, just time. And the results are superb.
You can make a decent corned beef dinner by buying a corned beef brisket, simmering it in a big pot of water for a few hours, and adding carrots, potatoes, and cabbage at the end of cooking so they soak up some of the seasoned liquid. But you can make a superb corned beef if you skip the commercially made stuff and “corn” the meat yourself. (The Old English term refers to the “corns,” or kernels of salt, used to cure the meat for preservation.) When this curing process is done properly, the meat isn’t just generically salty (or overly salty, as commercial versions often are). It’s seasoned but balanced, with complex flavor thanks to the presence of aromatics and spices. And although the process takes several days, it’s almost entirely hands-off.
I’d never corned beef but had always wanted to try. In addition to having an easy one-dish meal for serving a crowd, I could use the leftover corned beef in sandwiches and hash. The trick would be figuring out just the right curing formula and length of time to produce tender, well-seasoned meat.
In Search of a Cure
I knew I’d be using a flat-cut brisket, the most common cut for corned beef. As for the curing method, I had two options: wet or dry. Wet curing works much like brining: You submerge the meat in a solution of table and curing, or “pink,” salt (more on that later) and water along with seasonings. Over time, the salt penetrates the meat, seasoning it and altering its proteins so that they retain moisture. Dry curing works more like salting: The meat gets rubbed with the salt mixture and seasonings, wrapped in plastic wrap, and weighed down with a heavy plate or pot. As the meat sits, the salt draws water out of it, creating a superconcentrated brine. To expose all of the meat to the brine, the meat is flipped daily. Whichever approach you use, the cured brisket gets simmered in water to break down its abundant collagen, the connective tissue that converts to gelatin during cooking and coats the meat fibers so that they appear more tender and juicy.
I tried both methods, wet-curing one 5-pound flatcut brisket for seven days and dry-curing another for 10, the average length of time for each method that I found in recipes, to see how the flavor of the cured meats would differ. (For now, I left out the pink salt and seasonings.) I placed each in a Dutch oven with water and simmered them for 5 hours, which was a bit fussy since I had to adjust the stove dial to ensure gentle heat. The briskets tasted virtually the same, so I moved ahead with the wet cure, which was considerably faster and easier, with no need for daily flipping.
(Not Just) Pretty in Pink
Now for the pink salt. This specialty product (which is dyed pink to distinguish it from conventional salt) is a mixture of sodium chloride (table salt) and sodium nitrite. Only a small amount, combined with conventional table salt, is needed for curing. Nitrites prevent the oxidation of fats, which would otherwise lead to off-flavors and certain types of bacterial growth, especially Clostridium botulinum. Hence, their preservative effect. They’re also responsible for the attractive pink color of cured meats.
Since I wasn’t relying on the pink salt for preservation, I wanted to confirm that it improved the flavor of the brisket, not just its color. I cured one with pink salt and one without and then offered both up to blindfolded tasters. The results were close, but the majority of tasters preferred the flavor of the pink salt batch. Plus, once the blindfolds came off, every single taster preferred the rosy-hued meat. With that, I knew pink salt was a must.
Finally, the seasonings: garlic cloves, allspice berries, bay leaves, coriander seeds, and brown sugar—the flavors of which truly put the meat a notch above commercial corned beef.
As for how long to cure the meat, I’d been following recipes from my research that called for seven days, but others called for as few as four—and both seemed rather arbitrary. I wanted a more precise method to determine when the meat was thoroughly cured, and I realized that the pink salt could help. I started another batch and removed a sample of the core from the brisket each day, simmering them (the meat’s color only changes when it’s cooked) and looking for the point at which the center of the meat turned distinctly pink. The pink crept inward about ¼ inch per day. For the 2½- to 3-inch briskets I was using, that meant a six-day cure was the answer.
Slow and Steady
I wanted to try simmering the brisket in the oven, a method we often use when braising meat because the heat is more gentle and even. Waiting for the water to come to a boil in the oven would greatly prolong the cooking time, so I added the meat (rinsed first to remove the loose spices) and brought the water to a simmer on the stove before moving the pot to a 275-degree oven.
Three hours later, the brisket was fork-tender, at which point I transferred it to a platter to rest, ladling over some of the cooking liquid to keep it moist. Then I moved the pot back to the stove and cooked the vegetables in the meaty liquid: carrots and red potatoes (added first so they cooked through) as well as cabbage wedges. As they simmered, I sliced the brisket thinly against the grain, which ensures that each bite is tender.
Texturally, the meat and vegetables were spoton, but both components tasted a tad washed-out, so I added a cheesecloth bundle of more garlic and curing spices to the cooking liquid (the cheesecloth meant I didn’t have to pluck out any stray spices). This added subtle but clear depth to the dish, which was as impressive-looking as it had been easy to prepare—and so very worth making from scratch.
Recipe
HOME-CORNED BEEF WITH VEGETABLES
(SERVES 8 TO 10)
Pink curing salt #1, which can be purchased online or in stores specializing in meat curing, is a mixture of table salt and nitrites; it is also called Prague Powder #1, Insta Cure #1, or DQ Curing Salt #1. In addition to the pink salt, we use table salt here. If using Diamond Crystal kosher salt, increase the salt to 1½ cups; if using Morton kosher salt, increase to 1⅛ cups. This recipe requires six days to corn the beef, and you will need cheesecloth. Look for a uniformly thick brisket to ensure that the beef cures evenly. The brisket will look gray after curing but will turn pink once cooked.
Corned Beef
1 (4½- to 5-pound) beef brisket, flat cut
¾ cup salt
½ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons pink curing salt #1
6 garlic cloves, peeled
6 bay leaves
5 allspice berries
2 tablespoons peppercorns
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
Vegetables
6 carrots, peeled, halved crosswise, thick ends halved lengthwise
1½ pounds small red potatoes, unpeeled
1 head green cabbage (2 pounds), uncored, cut into 8 wedges
1. FOR THE CORNED BEEF:
Trim fat on surface of brisket to ⅛ inch. Dissolve salt, sugar, and curing salt in 4 quarts water in large container. Add brisket, 3 garlic cloves, 4 bay leaves, allspice berries, 1 tablespoon peppercorns, and coriander seeds to brine. Weigh brisket down with plate, cover, and refrigerate for 6 days.
2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 275 degrees. Remove brisket from brine, rinse, and pat dry with paper towels. Cut 8-inch square triple thickness of cheesecloth. Place remaining 3 garlic cloves, remaining 2 bay leaves, and remaining 1 tablespoon peppercorns in center of cheesecloth and tie into bundle with kitchen twine. Place brisket, spice bundle, and 2 quarts water in Dutch oven. (Brisket may not lie flat but will shrink slightly as it cooks.)
3. Bring to simmer over high heat, cover, and transfer to oven. Cook until fork inserted into thickest part of brisket slides in and out with ease, 2½ to 3 hours.
4. Remove pot from oven and turn off oven. Transfer brisket to large ovensafe platter, ladle 1 cup of cooking liquid over meat, cover, and return to oven to keep warm.
5. FOR THE VEGETABLES:
Add carrots and potatoes to pot and bring to simmer over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until vegetables begin to soften, 7 to 10 minutes.
6. Add cabbage to pot, increase heat to high, and return to simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until all vegetables are tender, 12 to 15 minutes.
7. While vegetables cook, transfer beef to cutting board and slice ¼ inch thick against grain. Return beef to platter. Using slotted spoon, transfer vegetables to platter with beef. Moisten with additional broth and serve.
WHAT TO DO WITH LEFTOVERS
CORNED BEEF HASH
(SERVES 4)
We like to serve this hash with poached or fried eggs, but any style of egg will work.
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, chopped fine
Salt and pepper
2 pounds russet potatoes, peeled and
cut into ½-inch pieces
2 garlic cloves, minced
¾ cup water
12 ounces cooked corned beef, shredded into bite-size pieces
1 tablespoon hot sauce, plus extra for serving
1. Melt butter in 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion, ¾ teaspoon salt, and ½ teaspoon pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until onion is translucent, about 3 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high; add potatoes, garlic, and water. Cover and cook for 6 minutes. Remove lid and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until potatoes are cooked through and no water remains in skillet, about 6 minutes longer.
2. Remove skillet from heat and, using spatula or wooden spoon, mash approximately one-eighth of potatoes. Stir mashed potatoes into potato pieces until lightly coated. Stir in corned beef and hot sauce and toss until well combined. Press hash into even layer. Return skillet to high heat and cook, without stirring, for 3 minutes. Carefully slide hash onto large plate. Invert hash onto second plate and, using spatula, slide hash back into skillet. Return hash to high heat and cook second side until browned and crisp around edges, about 3 minutes longer. Transfer to platter and serve, passing extra hot sauce.
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Can You Taste the Pink?
Pink salt (a mixture of table salt and sodium nitrite and, depending on the type, also sodium nitrate) has been used since the early 1900s to cure meat and is also what gives the meat its rosy color. (Prior to this, saltpeter, or potassium nitrate, had been used for curing since the Middle Ages.) But does it make the meat taste better?
When we blindfolded tasters and asked them to sample briskets that had been cured with and without pink salt, most preferred the pink salt sample. Its flavor was “cleaner,” whereas the other batch tasted more like plain “boiled beef.”
About the safety of pink salt: Nitrites have gotten a bad rap in recent years for being unhealthy. However, the Centers for Disease Control reports that more than 90 percent of the nitrates we consume (which convert to nitrites in the body) occur naturally in vegetables
and our drinking water.
By Lan Lam in "Cook's Illustrated",USA, number 159, March 2016, excerpts p. 14-15. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.