In recent years, we found a few local shops that prepare their own corned beef and began buying locally prepared corned beef rather than mass produced.  But this year we ventured one step further and made our own corned beef.  We were inspired by the recipe in the March issue of Bon Appétit by Bruce Aidells.  In theory, making your own corned beef simply requires brining beef brisket with special spices for about a week, occasional stirring, and then cooking it as you would purchased corned beef.  Of course things don’t always go so smoothly.  In this case, once I got all of the ingredients the actual making of the corned beef really wasn’t much effort but getting those ingredients was a bit of an adventure. 

Getting the ingredients

Corned beef has a distinct color that is a result of a special addition to the brine:  Insta Cure No. 1.  This is optional but the thought of eating grey corned beef didn’t sound too appealing so I decided to use it.  The recipe provided a web source but to make the corned beef I only needed a fraction of the amount they sold.  Since I knew a local butcher that made their own corned beef (and sausages) I decided to get it locally.  At the butcher shop, I innocently asked for “Insta Cure Number 1”.  The owner of the butcher shop immediately came over and started asking me why I wanted it.  At first I thought he just wanted to make sure I got the right stuff but then he kept asking questions such as “how much do you need?”,  “how much beef are you using?”, “what other ingredients go in the recipe?” and on and on.  He was very serious when asking these questions and I was a bit intimidated!  But all I wanted to do was make corned beef and apparently that came through because at some point he said “Sure I can sell you an ounce of that” and he had one of his assistants get it for me. 

I had passed his test.  But what was the test for?  Smiling and friendly now, he explained that Insta Cure Number 1 is made form Sodium Nitrate which can be used for other sinister purposes not related to cooking….  With that explained the butcher was friendly to me and started giving me tips on making the corned beef.  In addition to suggesting a couple of different beef cuts, he advised that I poke the meat with a skewer so that the brine penetrates the meat better.  While I decided to use brisket as the recipe suggested I did follow his suggestion and had some fun poking holes in the meat before brining it.

Once I had the Insta Cure, the next item I needed was “pickling spices”.  These are simple enough to buy at the store so I didn’t have problems, but it seems really odd to me that the recipe simply called for generic pickling spices.  The spices are an integral part of corned beef and it would seem that a specific, finely tuned, blend of spices would be listed rather than generic pickling spices.   Since this was our first time making corned beef I decided to stick with the recipe and bought generic pickling spices, but if we make this again I’d like to blend our own.

Armed with our Insta Cure, pickling spices, a whopping 7 pounds of brisket and other assorted ingredients, including beer, we finally got down to creating the brine.  This really was very easy to do and only took a short while including the additional step of poking holes in the meat.  Once placed in the brine, the brisket simply sat in the fridge for 8 days. The recipe says to stir it after 4 days but we also rotated the brisket every other day because we had two pieces rather than just one.

Let the cooking begin

My expectations were that the actual cooking would be very similar to our traditional process for corned beef.  This recipe had some differences from our traditional recipe though so the prep work was a bit different.  In addition to the traditional carrots and potatoes the recipe included turnips and parsnips.  These are vegetables we’ve been trying to use more in our cooking so this seemed a great addition.  Also, the recipe makes a lot of food and since we had two pieces of brisket I split the cooking into two nights.  This meant that I could fit everything in one pan while cooking and the added bonus was that we had fresh corned beef two nights…

Feasting

As much as we enjoy corned beef, seven pounds is a lot so we bravely invited friends over to enjoy the meal with us.  For the full feast we also made homemade corn muffins which are another part of our corned beef tradition.  And since we had guests I got to make dessert – a delicious carrot cake from Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours. 

Inviting guests over for a previously untried recipe can be dangerous.  Especially when making something like your own brined corned beef.  Nevertheless, the result was great from sight to flavor.  The Insta Cure did its job well and the corned beef was the perfect color of pinkish red.  As for flavor, yup it definitely tasted like corned beef.  Did it taste better than the butcher prepared corned beef?  Honestly, I’m not sure.  Husband thought it was a bit salty but overall I think it was very similar.  Still, we’re looking forward to brining our own again next year.  Why?  It was fun and even if it didn’t taste recognizably better than purchased just the knowing that we made it ourselves made the effort (which really was pretty minimal) well worth it!

And if anyone has a special pickling spice blend let me know for next year….