March 17, 2012 Corned Beef Dinner

[Sundae]

It's just Branston Pickle, not a pickle.
Branston's website.
It's cubed vegetables in a flavoured sauce. It's sweetish, but the little chunks still have a crispy bite. I suppose it's a cross between a relish and a chutney really.

If I ever find a place that does little catering samples I'll swipe one and send it to you.
It comes in glass jars, so postage is a bit on the heavy side otherwise.

ETA - you can buy it in America.
I wouldn't necessarily say go for it though.
It's probably an acquired taste (I grew up with it) and it would be sad to waste a whole jar.

[infinite monkey]

What is corned beef? What makes it 'corned'?

Hell hath no fury like beef corned.

But really. Do you soak it in, like, corn juice?

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by infinite monkey

What is corned beef? What makes it 'corned'?

Hell hath no fury like beef corned.

But really. Do you soak it in, like, corn juice?

In Britain "corn" means many, many things.
In this case it means salt - as in corns of salt.
we, of course, call it "maize" as the goddess intended (Demeter).

[infinite monkey]

lol @ maize.

OK, so salted beef...is that like 'brined'?

How is it different from sauerbraten? (My ex used to make some seriously amazing sauerbraten, and I don't typically like those sorts of food.)

[Trilby]

My understanding is that it is like brined beef.

Or pickled beef? Who knows? Something to soak all the alcohol
up?

[Trilby]

Being a former professional drinker I can say with
some authoritah that McDonalds or Burger King
work very well in the soaking up alcohol races.

[Aliantha]

It's mostly brined beef, but there are other flavours used in the corning process such as peppercorns, mustard, brown sugar, juniper berry, bay leaves. The list goes on. You can really do whatever you like with the flavours.

Commercially manufactured corned beef usually contain nitrates the same as most bacon and ham products, but they're not necessary if you're doing your brining at home and want to avoid that sort of crap.

After you've brined your meat for a few days or even up to a week depending on the size of the piece, you boil it for up to a couple of hours - again, depending on the size of the piece.

You can also roast a piece of brined meat.

One tip for if you're boiling your brined meat. Always make sure the liquid you're going to boil it in is boiling at the time you put the meat in. This will seal the juices in instantly so that you have a juicier cut when you're finished cooking.

[sandypossum]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

One tip for if you're boiling your brined meat. Always make sure the liquid you're going to boil it in is boiling at the time you put the meat in. This will seal the juices in instantly so that you have a juicier cut when you're finished cooking.

I didn't know that. I've always chucked mine into cold water, with the spices, sugar, vinegar etc etc. Mine does always come out very juicy and tender, but I also do mine in a pressure cooker (only takes 40 mins) so maybe it doesn't matter that way.

Originally Posted by GunMaster357

In the French military, it's called a Can of Monkey (literal translation).

In the Netherlands it's called SMAC. Everyone thinks the Dutch are a bunch of drug addicts, but it's just a cultural misunderstanding: they have a lot of smac addicts, but it's just corned beef, peoples! Personally I'm not so keen on the canned stuff but my other half, the Dutchie, like to buy himself a tin of SMAC now and then.

Originally Posted by Sheldonrs

Just an FYI, The Irish gto the corned beef from the Jewish immigrants in New York in the early 20th century. :-)

Yes and no. I was just checking out the Wiki page for corned beef (and EVERYONE knows Wikipedia is faultlessly truthful, yes?) and it says

Mark Kurlansky in his book Salt states that the Irish produced a salted beef around the Middle Ages that was the "forerunner of what today is known as Irish corned beef" and in the seventeenth century the English named the Irish salted beef, corned beef.

and

The Jewish population produced similar koshered cured beef product made from the brisket which the Irish immigrants purchased as corned beef from Jewish butchers. This was likely facilitated by the close cultural interactions and collaboration of these two immigrant cultures.

All this has made me yearn for it. I'm going to get one of them out of our freezer to cook up for dinner tonight. (The mobile butcher made some of thr tough cuts into corned beef - vac sealed in plastic - from the steer he killed for us. So this will be corned Stewie. )

[Aliantha]

I suspect you're right about the pressure cooker sandy. I've never used one, so mine is always the traditional pot on the stove job.

I always used to put the meat into the water when it was cold and bring it to the boil, but then I was doing some reading and also on a cooking show they said make sure the water is hot, so I tried it, and it was true. I don't know if it's just coincidence, or something else I do differently, but these days, we only have lovely, juicy, fall apart corned beef.