Corned Beef

Sheepy made Corned Beef last week. She said she LOVED it. Then she smoked the leftovers and it turned into Pastrami!

She sent me the recipe from here (Michael Ruhlman), asked me to try it and post about it because she looses lots of links--but not mine.

I love corned beef so of course I wanted to give it a try. Son1 loves corned beef, too, and he'll be here for the weekend.

This is a 5 day process, so it's not fast. It will be ready to cook when Son1 is here.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

Here is all the prep work.

Making the Pickling Spice
 I used Michael's recipe, which he posted from a book he co-wrote called: Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (it's on my wish list, now.)

I couldn't find any coriander seeds, mace, or cinnamon sticks at the store. My pickling spice doesn't have coriander or mace, but I added ground cinnamon after I toasted the other spices.

Toasting the spices was easier than I thought and only took about 5 minutes. It smelled wonderful!

Next grind up the toasted spices. My mortar and pestle are small so I did it in three batches. I almost plopped the whole batch in the blender instead and pulsed it, but I decided to grind it by hand so the chunks would be a bit bigger.

Making the Brine

I only found a small roast so I did a half batch of brine. Clockwise from the top: 2 tablespoons pickling spice, 1/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup kosher salt (non-iodized), and 3 garlic cloves crushed (that's twice the amount that the recipe calls for, but we love garlic!)

Add 1/2 gallon of water and bring to a simmer to dissolve the sugar and salt. (I don't have sodium nitrite - pink salt- right now. Hubby is recrystallizing some from the lab so if it gets done in the next day or two, I'll add it to the brine. It isn't a necessary ingredient, so I didn't feel too bad about leaving that one out.)

Let it sit on the counter until the brine is room temperature. I only have one big pot so I transferred the brine into a stoneware bowl.

Put in a beef brisket (I couldn't find one at the store, so I used a roast. Too bad because he said that this works best with cheaper cuts of meat). Put a plate on top to keep the meat submerged. Cover and refrigerate.....

for 5 days!!

It's sitting in the garage fridge right now.

I can hardly wait until Saturday to cook it and see what it tastes like!

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