It has been a fun week of St. Patrick’s Day-themed food prep at our house. As I’ve chopped and cooked, hustling from one recipe to another and digging into the history of the foods associated with Ireland, I’ve felt an almost spiritual connection to the Irish people. Theirs is a rich and layered culture, and my background music of choice, the Springsteen album Live in Dublin, gave me additional inspiration. Here’s a taste, for your listening pleasure as you tag along for the rest of my corned beef adventure.
It has been a deliciously rich week, too. We’ve shared these tasty recipes, including two versions of mashed potatoes, a no-yeast bread, a no-bake dessert and some bangin’ sausages. By the time we finish the leftovers, I expect I will have sweet Irish butter flowing through my veins. Wow!
The Irish food party started last week, when I detailed our adventures with making our own corned beef. Whether or not you jumped on the DIY wagon with us, I thought you may appreciate seeing the end result. As mentioned, we avoid meats processed with nitrates and nitrites, so I certainly do not go out of my way to find or use them in our homemade version of this St. Patrick’s Day classic. The ingredients we do use to brine our grass-fed brisket—kosher salt, pickling spices, brown sugar, Irish ale, celery juice and sauerkraut brine—add layers of flavor, and we don’t care about the pinkish color the added nitrates would have otherwise lent.
Let’s pick up where we left off, from the point of pouring the brine over the briskets and sending them to the refrigerator for a nice, long nap. I noted that we would finally make good on our goal of making pastrami from one of the briskets, and we have done that (I’ll share it tomorrow), but corned beef is the guest of honor this week, and the post-brine process is very simple. I turned the briskets each day to help them brine evenly, and the corned beef got an extra day’s soak on Sunday—a total of eight days, which is about right for a nearly 6-pound hunk of meat. I rinsed it thoroughly, nestled it into the slow cooker on top of celery and onion chunks, and sprinkled it with about half a bottle of fresh pickling spices. We have done corned beef nearly the same way for several years, so I decided to try a twist that I saw in my news feed, though I cannot for the life of me remember the source. Anyway, the suggestion was to use white wine in the brining liquid. This makes perfect sense to me, given that I use wine to roast so many other meats, so I tried it. This will become a new standard for us.
This may well be the best batch of homemade corned beef we have ever made. The meat is perfectly tender and easy to slice, and the flavors are richly entwined with every fiber of the meat. The flavor is richer and more complex than any store-bought corned beef I’ve had, and my husband, Les, suggested that it rivaled the delicious corned beef we enjoyed a few years ago at Katz’s delicatessen in New York!
Instructions
After eight days in the flavorful brine, our brisket is ready to be cooked. You can cook it stovetop, or follow my lead and use the slow cooker. 
I don’t intend to serve the onions and celery, and I’ve only used enough to keep the brisket off the bottom of the slow cooker. 
My brisket is longer than the slow cooker, so I’ve tucked one end under to make it fit. 
I’ve talked to several people this week who had trouble finding the pickling spice. Isn’t it strange, how the pandemic has interrupted the supply chain for such specific things? Anyway, I sprinkled half the bottle over the brisket. 
Secret weapon: dry white wine! I found this tip online and it makes sense. I used 1/2 cup of pinot grigio, plus enough water to cover the brisket. 
Despite my efforts to keep the brisket submerged, it kept floating up! No worries, I turned it over and it came out completely tender. 
Corned beef, meet your BFF, cabbage and carrots. I boiled them in a couple of ladles of the brisket’s cooking broth. 
It always startles me to see how much a brisket shrinks when you cook it. This corned beef is not pink like the grocery store version, but it packs a ton of terrific flavor! 
I cut this point piece along the fat line, to remove it from the “flat” part of the brisket (see next slide). 
These two pieces are sometimes sold individually at the meat counter. Both are delicious as corned beef. 
For best results, and a tender bite, you want to pay attention to the “grain” of the meat and cut against it. Here, my knife is pointed along the same direction as the meat fibers. These slices would be tough. 
Here, my knife is angled to cut across the meat fibers, and my thin slices will be tender and easy to eat. 
Even without the added nitrates, there is a slight pink color to my corned beef. It’s completely moist and tender, and so yummy! 
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
- Remove brisket from brine and brush away as much of the picking spice mixture as possible. Discard the brine, and I’d recommend that you pour it through a colander to strain out the seeds, berries, bay leaves, and chunky solids that might otherwise clog your kitchen drain.
- Rinse the brisket. Cut up a whole yellow onion and a few stalks of celery. Scatter the aromatic vegetables into the bottom of a large pot or slow cooker. Place the brisket, fat side-up, on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle about half a bottle of fresh pickling spices over the brisket.
- Pour in 1/2 cup dry white wine, and enough water into the pot to completely cover the meat. Bring pot to a slight boil, then reduce heat and simmer about one hour per pound of meat, until brisket is desired tenderness.
- Carefully remove brisket from the cooking liquid and rest on a cutting board for 15 minutes before cutting.
- If you are cooking cabbage and carrots to accompany the corned beef, but them on to boil now, and use the brisket braising liquid to echo the corned beef flavors.
- Slice brisket against the grain—opposite the direction of the meat fibers.
- You’ll find that the corned beef slices particularly well after chilling. To reheat slices of corned beef, place slices in a steamer basket over simmering water. Or, strain more of the braising liquid into a jar and keep it in the fridge for steaming the leftovers. Why waste that flavor? 🙂
Comfort du Jour 
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