Corned Beef Recipes

September 21, 2005 12:18 PM

Help me corn my beef.

I love corned beef. It is rapidly becoming my favorite comfort food. I want to make my own, however, every recipe I can find at epicurios.com and foodtv.com list 'corned beef brisket' as the primary ingredient. I want to start off with straight beef and corn it myself. Anyone have any recipes for this, or am I misunderstanding the meaning of the term 'corned'?

posted by spicynuts to food & drink (18 comments total)

OK, how hard is it to use google?

I went there and typed "how to make corned beef". And I got this. Which, shockingly, tells me how to make corned beef.

Corned beef is made that way to preserve it. I doubt you can make it cheaper than you can buy it for. Most of the corned beef I get seems to be made in Argentina where the raw ingredients are, relative to the cost of shipping and running a grocery store, free.
posted by GuyZero at 12:27 PM on September 21, 2005

I use the recipe from Julia Child's 'The Way To Cook'.

Essentially, you put a brisket, salt, pepper, juniper berries and other spices into a ziplock bag and put a weight on it (like a couple of bricks or a pot with water in it). Once a day (or so) pull it out, massage it and flip it over. Then put it back under the weight. After 5 to 7 days, cook and enjoy.

It's not pink when you're finished, but it's good.
posted by donpardo at 12:29 PM on September 21, 2005

OK, how hard is it to use google?

It's not hard to use at all. Feel free to use it any time you want. How hard is it for you to STFU and just give me an answer? Do you reallyh have so little to do that you not only take the time to Google my question but then come in and admonish me for it?
posted by spicynuts at 12:43 PM on September 21, 2005

Here's a pretty simple one.

Looks like the spice mix can get a little exotic. From here:

Corned Beef Spices salt free
To marinate beef brisket use 3-5 TB. per 5 lbs, along with salt brine. Hand-mixed from: brown and yellow mustard seeds, coriander, Jamaican allspice, cracked cassia, dill seed, Turkish bay leaves, Zanzibar cloves, China #1 ginger, Tellicherry peppercorns, star anise, juniper, mace, cardamom, red pepper.
posted by Otis at 12:44 PM on September 21, 2005

juniper berries and other spices

So the essential part to corning is not the particular spice but rather the salt curing?
posted by spicynuts at 12:44 PM on September 21, 2005

Well, technically the salt curing part would sort of be brining.
posted by fixedgear at 1:06 PM on September 21, 2005

I am not helping anyone corn anything. And no I will not butter your muffins or cream your twinkies either.

I will however send you to www.recipesource.com, your one stop shop for cooking needs.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:16 PM on September 21, 2005

If you read her request, she's already checked recipe sites. Recipesource.com also lists recipes STARTING with corned beef, rather than the how-to.

Corning beef is more a process than a mere recipe. For instance, one might think that the beef need not be refridgerated since this is essentially a preservation process, but it is refridgerated.

Lots of ask mefi questions can be googled. Sometimes, however, one wants to speak "personally" to someone that can be grilled and questioned again to verify information, or from someone who has done something personally, rather than who knows how to google.
posted by artifarce at 1:30 PM on September 21, 2005

From here (but also talked about in the book Salt by Mark Kurlansky):

"Corning is a form of curing; it has nothing to do with corn. The name comes from Anglo-Saxon times before refrigeration. In those days, the meat was dry-cured in coarse "corns" of salt. Pellets of salt, some the size of kernels of corn, were rubbed into the beef to keep it from spoiling and to preserve it."

So it's called "corned" because of the size of the salt. And no, I guess that doesn't help you with a recipe. Sorry.
posted by bDiddy at 1:31 PM on September 21, 2005

And yes, the "corn" part refers to coarse bits of salt. I don't know how you've prepared it in the past, but when you buy a pre-corned beef, it sometimes includes a spice packet (including the ones Otis listed), but the meat has been pre-brined. Rubbing the spices in to cook is (mildly) pointless at that point.
posted by artifarce at 1:34 PM on September 21, 2005

Thanks bDiddy. I'm thrilled that I can now use the verb "to corn" with full understanding.
posted by leapingsheep at 1:35 PM on September 21, 2005

Recipesource.com also lists recipes STARTING with corned beef, rather than the how-to.

Oh? is that right?
posted by Pollomacho at 1:40 PM on September 21, 2005

You know how sometimes you know you know something, you just feel like you need to share it? This is like that.
posted by bDiddy at 1:44 PM on September 21, 2005

Oh? is that right?

I'm glad that after being challenged, you were glad to oblige and look through 56 recipes for corned beef for the 4 that fit.
posted by artifarce at 2:08 PM on September 21, 2005

If you want to be old school about it, I suggest using kosher salt to be a little closer to the corn-sized salt of yore.
posted by Juliet Banana at 3:18 PM on September 21, 2005

or you could just get some coarse sea salt. Some is available in large chunks.
posted by pmbuko at 4:44 PM on September 21, 2005

"Help me corn my beef."

Do you mean that to sound "suggestive", spicynuts? Or is it just me?

Please let us know how it comes out if you actually do that. I'd especially like to know if it tastes much better than what one finds at the supermarket or deli, and if it does I'd like to be invited to lunch a few times.
posted by davy at 9:26 PM on September 21, 2005

I like my corned beef pink, which only comes from sodium nitrate. On the other hand, the full strength nitrate cure isn't really necessary, so I use half curing salt and half regualr salt.
posted by Good Brain at 11:33 PM on September 23, 2005