How to Cook Corned Beef: Make a Great Corned Brisket from Scratch

Depending on how much time you have, you can prepare corned beef from raw meat or from already brined meat. Look at brined meat as pre-treated. With brined meat, you only do the actual cooking of the corned beef. Otherwise, you need to brine the meat first (which may take 6-7 days) and then cook the corned beef.

What is Corned Beef?

Corning is a traditional method of food preservation. Before the advent of refrigeration or freezing, food preservation was made mainly done using salt. Corning was named so because the salt used was of a “corn” size. Traditional corning was actually a process of dry curing, in which water was removed from meat by the salt. Today, corning is done in brines, which are solutions with high salt concentrations. In addition to salt, different spices are added to the meat to add flavor.

How to Brine a Brisket?

A brisket is a specific type of meat cut. It comes from the front limbs of the animal, thus, it comes from a highly exercised muscle. This makes brisket a tough cut of meat. However, brisket can be made a very tender and juicy cut of meat if brined and cooked properly. The brine for corned beef is made of by mixing water, salt, vinegar, sugar and spices. Then, the meat is “marinated”in this mix for six to seven days. Here are more specific details about how to brine a brisket.

1. Take two quarts of water (1.89 liters) and put them in a cooking pot. Add one cup of salt, half a cup of white vinegar, four tablespoons of sugar, some bay leaves, one and one-half tablespoons of pepper corns, and half a tablespoon of mustard seeds. Boil the whole mix and let it cool in the refrigerator.

2. Take a brisket and put in a zip lock bag big enough to contain the meat cut plus the brine. Add garlic cut in big chunks, some ground pepper, and the previously made brine. Remove all the air from the bag and close it.

3. Put the bag in a cooking pot and keep in the refrigerator for six to seven days. Once a day, take the bag and move it around so the brine moves around and cover parts of the cut that may have not been covered the day before.

How to Cook Corned Beef?

Now you that you have corned the beef, you need to cook it. If you bought brined brisket at the supermarket, then start your cooking here.

Take the brined brisket from the bag and rinse with water to remove excess brine. Place it in a big pot. Cover with water, and add peppercorns, and bay leaves, and then cook it slowly. The exact time of cooking depends on the size of the meat cut, but as a rule a four-pound cut may take two and one-half to three hours to be ready. You can test if it is done by checking with a fork to see if the center of the meat cut is tender. Some people cook the meat in beer. Enough beer is placed in the pot to cover the meat.

References

International Food Information Service (2009) Dictionary of food science and technology. John Wiley and Sons. (second edition)

Knack Slow Cooking: Hearty & Delicious Meals You Can Prepare Ahead. By Linda Johnson Larsen and Christopher Brown. Globe Pequot, 2009