Back in February the idea popped into my brain that I needed to make corned beef. I cannot actually remember which came first, the thought, as March was rapidly and somehow the idea of corned beef and cabbage was floating around the world, or seeing the brisket in the store. I suspect the brisket came first, and although I grew up occasionally eating a “New England Boiled Dinner”, corned beef and cabbage is not really a part of my culinary lexicon, although I like both corned beef and cabbage separately.
Whatever the origin of the idea, the idea of corning my own beef was not new. I cured my first corned beef in my late 20s, after George and I were married, when we could get really good corned beef and pastrami in NYC but not really up in Poughkeepsie. Perhaps I was also a bit of an overachiever, but making corned beef is not difficult, and I make corned beef a couple of times a year for 30 years or so, until George got sick, I got overwhelmed, and I simply stopped. I have no idea why I wanted to start again, but I suspect it was more about wanting corned beef hash than anything else.
So I bought the brisket and had to order some Prague powder, which arrived in a day or two and started brining the brisket using a traditional wet brine, in a pot in my fridge, much the way I have always brined a brisket. After two weeks I cooked the brisket and absolutely loved the final corned beef. And then, just this past week I did it all again.
Truthfully, the repeat process began before I even finished cooking the first brisket. I started on a whim, doing something known and true, something that had worked well for me, but it has been a decade since I last made brisket, and I have learned things in the intervening years, changed things, and have become perhaps even more curious, even more of a nerd in the kitchen than I was in my youth, even though as a single older woman I indulge those nerdy kitchen impulses less frequently than when I was feeding others.
Sometime while that first batch was in the brine, but before cooking, a notice popped up in my inbox, an old post from Serious Eats about making corned beef by Kenji Lopez-Alt, probably simply an annual St. Patrick’s Day marketing ploy. But this year I had corned-beef on the brain, even though I tend to think of corned beef as it was adapted my the American Jewish culture rather than Irish American culture. Either way though, corned beef is corned beef.
Reading the article, I noticed that Kenji compared the traditional wet-brine with a dry brine technique and I was intrigued by this, but my meat was already in the brine so it was a little late for that. When it came to cooking he recommended a slow braise in a low oven or cooking the meat sous-vide. Well, that did intrigue me. Initially I had boiled my corned beef simply because that was how i knew to do it, but somewhere along the line I had stopped boiling it and started cooking my corned beef in a low (200°F) oven for somewhere between 8 and 12 hours. The change occurred mostly because I had tried another recipe for brisket that cooked it in a slow oven braise and liked the results, so I adapted the technique for my semi-annual briskets with good results. I did not indulge in rigorous testing, but was tickled that Kenji liked the slow braise, and also that he recommended cooking the brisket sous-vide. I had never thought about cooking a corned beef sous-vide although I could not think of a reason not to do so. I have been cooking sous-vide for about a decade now, although I actually had not made a corned beef during that time. It was time therefore to try something new. I removed the first brisket from the brine, rinsed, and cooked it sous-vide at 180° for 10 hours, the time Kenji said he preferred.
And I loved that brisket. It was perhaps a little less firm, with a more shredded texture than some might prefer, but reading the article I was wondering if this was as much due to the wet brine as opposed to the dry brine. I have always liked my corned beef to be soft, fork-tender, and ready to fall apart, and am not fond of it with too much bite. In his article you can see a photo of the difference in the meat between dry and wet brine techniques, and looking at that photo I see much the same result I as found in the two brining techniques, shown above (first) and below (second). The cut, grade, and source of the meat was the same, the cooking time was the same, only the brining was different. In the second brisket I used the dry-brine technique in a vacuum-sealed bag in the refrigerator for 1 week. This is certainly more convenient in terms of timing, although that ay be more adaptable, and space, since beef in a sealed plastic bag takes less space and is easier to turn than a big hunk of meat sitting in a large bucket or pot in the refrigerator.
And the final brisket was also good (sorry for the smaller picture here, I ate most of that serving before remembering to take the picture). You can see the difference in the texture of the meat. The second batch is firmer, meatier, and holds together better. This is also what is shown at the top of this post, although that photo was taken cold, before steaming the meat, which does soften it up further.
The problem is that although I see advantages, I am not convinced that I like the second batch better. I can admit that perhaps the texture of the first batch was a little far to the falling-apart side of things, but the second batch was perhaps a little too firm and dry for my taste. It is possible that this is simply a question of cooking time. The second batch may perhaps have needed to be cooked longer, at a lower temperature, the first batch for a slightly shorter time. These are minor points and I can play with them. At the moment however, I am wondering if, the next time I simply need to simultaneously cook two briskets, wet-brined, and dry-brined, assume that the final cooking time might be different for each simply based on the effects of the brining process on the texture of the meat, and work side-by-side from there. I am also wondering if I can wet-brine in a vacuum sealed bag. Perhaps I am just getting too much in my own head.
I did like the second corned beef, seared briefly in a hot skillet for breakfast, kind of hybrid, corned-beef/bacon texture and flavor. Not traditional perhaps but who cares. In fact, this second corned beef is making me think about pastrami more than corned beef, about the idea of using the dry brine on a pastrami. I’ve never made pastrami. I don’t have a smoker. That doesn’t mean that it might not be time to start thinking about it a little more seriously.
