On Corning Beef

The technique of preserving beef brisket that makes the most popular Irish American meal

Last week

Lou Tamposi

and I brined and cooked a locally sourced beef brisket to experience first-hand the making of a corned beef dinner. Lou is the creator of the newsletter Cow we Doin’ and he writes about living radically, which he defines as “living your life with your eyes wide open, being more connected to how you experience the world”. He is also a highly responsible meat-eater and I am very happy we connected through Substack so I can learn more from his knowledge.

This newsletter today was fabricated in my kitchen near Boston, and most of the ingredients used came from nearby farms, including the humanly raised grass-fed beef.

Our corned beef

A meal that may be more American than Irish

Saint Patrick’s Day is around the corner and many Irish American families may have kept a big pot of brine in the fridge as I did last week. Corned beef is the traditional meal eaten to celebrate the day and even if it’s not really a thing in Ireland, it got famous there and was imported to the States by the English.

“It’s hard to think of St. Patrick’s Day without glittered shamrocks, green beer, leprechauns and, of course, corned beef and cabbage. Yet, if you went to Ireland on St. Paddy’s Day, you would not find any of these things except maybe the glittered shamrocks. To begin with, leprechauns are not jolly, friendly cereal box characters but mischievous, nasty little fellows. And, just as much as the Irish would not pollute their beer with green dye, they would not eat corned beef, especially on St. Patrick’s Day.”

Shaylyn Esposito, Smithsonian Magazine

In January I wrote about the New England version of this dish, which is called Boiled Dinner, and it consists of almost the same elements: corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions and beets. You can also add turnips and other root vegetables. It is very much a New England dish as around the time of the American Independence and throughout the 19th century, it was pretty much all the locals ate.

In Ireland, they had been corning beef since the Middle Ages. They didn’t call it corned beef, though, as the term was given by the English in the 17th century —“corn” being an English word for something small, in this case salt crystals—, but just spiced beef, and it was not even the preferred source of protein. Cattle was not so used for their meat but for their strength as working animals, and salted beef was only eaten by kings and aristocracy, as it was expensive to kill a healthy working animal for food.

It was with the English conquest of most of the territory in the 16th century that things started to change. The neighbouring country had a beef-eating culture and was interested in the underutilised herds of Irish cattle.

“Herds of cattle were exported by the tens of thousands each year from Ireland to England. But the Cattle Acts of 1663 and 1667 were what fueled the Irish corned beef industry. These acts prohibited the export of live cattle to England, which drastically flooded the Irish market and lowered the cost of meat available for salted beef production.”

Shaylyn Esposito, Smithsonian Magazine

Seeing this preserved beef as a good and inexpensive source of protein, they exported it to the American continent as cheap food for sailers and slaves. But the ones producing it, the Irish, didn’t have much chance to eat it themselves. The English had confiscated lands and what the locals had to rely on was mostly potatoes and with some luck, salt pork.

By the end of the 18th century, the demand for corned beef declined as Americans began making their own. The Great Famine, caused by a potato disease in 1845, led to the deaths of about a million Irish, with another million immigrating to the U.S. These migrants scraped by but still had more means than back home. They could afford to buy some meat, and the cheapest option was corned beef, which ironically had once made their country famous centuries earlier.

They started celebrating their national day with a meal that locals had been eating for decades: spiced boiled corned beef with root vegetables.

Corning beef at home

When I was researching for the article on Boiled Dinner, I tried to make it at home, failing miserably as I couldn’t find real corned beef ready to cook, resulting in sad frayed-brown meat. Lou came to the rescue saying he could show me how to corn a beef brisket from scratch if I wanted to try again.

Making the brine

We met in my kitchen on a Monday morning and started the process of making the brine where the brisket he brought from a local Trustee Farm would live for a week. “The flavorings are to each person’s taste, as they give a subtle note to the meat, but the amount of salt is the important part”, said Lou.

There are 2 kinds of salt in the preserving brine. One is for flavor and to tenderise the meat — general kosher salt—, and the other one is the curing salt, which inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria and gives the meat the famous brick-color.

Here is what we used (the percentage of curing salt has to be between a 1-2% respect the weight of the brisket):

BRINE INGREDIENTS

• 3.4 lb. (1548g) beef brisket - 100%

• 0.8 oz. (25g) curing salt, pink - 1,5%

• 1 1/2 cup (370g) kosher salt

• 1.35 tsp. (10g) black pepper

• 1.24 tsp. (1g) coriander seed

• 1.24 tsp. (1g) allspice, ground

• 1.4 tsp. (7g) mustard, ground

• 5 bay leaves

• 5 cloves

• 1 cinnamon stick

The brining ingredients and the beef brisket

BRINE INSTRUCTIONS

To prepare the brine you need to mix all this in a big pot filled with water and let it boil. Then, turn the heat off, mix well and cover. We want to help the salt dissolve in the solution and bring the flavors out of the spices. Leave it to cool completely (we added ice cubes to help speed the process) and pour it in a food safe container that is big enough to hold the brisket and the brine. Add the beef in the brine and help it sink with a ceramic trinket if it floats.

I left it in my fridge for a week, checking the color in the middle to see how it changed and mixing the brine a bit more. 7 days later, I cooked the brisket to prepare a now-traditional corned beef meal.

Preparing the brine and letting the brisket cure for a week. The photo with the thongs was taken half-way through the brining week.

Cooking the meal

I followed most of this Bon Appétit recipe, skipping the brine part and reducing the amounts in half as my brisket was much smaller. I also adjusted the cooking time.

INGREDIENTS

• 3.4 lb. (1548 g) beef brisket, corned

• 6 oz. (177 ml) of Guinness

• 2 bay leaves

• 1/4 tbs. (1.42 g) coriander seeds

• 1/4 tbs. (1.42 g) chilly flakes

• 1 whole allspice

• Spice sachet

• 1.5 lb. (680 g) white-skinned or red-skinned potatoes

• 3 medium carrots, peeled

• 1 lb. (453 g) head of cabbage, quartered

The ingredients to make corned beef dinner (the brisket has already been brined).

INSTRUCTIONS

First, remove the brisket from the brine and rinse it with cold water. Then, you want to place it in a large wide pot and fill it with water, the beer and the spice sachets containing the bay leafs, the coriander seeds, the allspice and the chilly flakes. Bring it to boil and then reduce the heat to medium-low and cover. Let it simmer for 3 hours. Then, set the brisket aside (on a baking sheet, for example) and add the vegetables to the liquid in the pot. Cook for 25 minutes, until tender and set aside. You can return the beef to the pot to re-heat it, if you like.

Adding the beer and the spices and letting it simmer for 3 h.

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Lou came back to my kitchen once everything was cooked and he showed me how to best slice the brisket. Against the grain is always better as it helps tenderise the meat a bit further.

The color came out perfect and the flavor was on point. It was difficult to recognise all the spices and ingredients we had added to the brine and later to the cooking liquid, but it all played its part to help build the complex flavor.

Lou slicing the corned beef and us enjoying a great finished meal.

We had the meal together, served with some mustard and horseradish and we talked about the act of creating homemade meals. It hadn’t been complicated at all to corn this beef brisket. In my ignorance, I had imagined chemical concoctions or difficult techniques involving secret ingredients. But it had been very straightforward. The most strange of the ingredients had been the curing salt, and that hadn’t been difficult to find either.

It took us a week, though. Not counting on the extra time of getting the ingredients —locally sourced—, and dedicating a morning and a half to prepare the meal. From making the brine to slow-cooking the brisket.

We were both aware that being able to do so was a privilege. Dedicating our time to not only supporting the local farming community but also gaining an understanding of what’s behind the dish, both historically and technically, was richly rewarded with a flavorful meal that exuded complexity and a newly formed friendship.

Cheering to a great homemade meal!