Be Gorrah!
Corning beef has a long, if not particularly savory, history as a means of preserving meat. You can certainly just salt and dry beef much as hams are cured, but soaking the meat (brining it) in a salt solution became popular during the hay-day of the British Navy when it became a staple on ships. According to
Salt: A World History (by Mark Kurlansky) the Irish became particularly known for their beef's longevity and quality. British, German, and French corned beef was regarded as being generally inferior and in fact the British product was called "salt junk" by sailors.. By the way, the "corn" referred to in corning is a reference to the kernels — corns — of salt used in making it.
The standard cut of meat for corning is the brisket, which is a tough muscle with a layer of fat down the center and over the top. Salt breaks down muscle fibers so corning it in a brine that will seep into the meat it a good start on tenderizing it. And salt, through the process of osmosis, also carries the brine's spices into the meat. The brisket is also particularly suitable to the long, slow stewing or braising that is the usual cooking technique.
The Irish became particularly known for their beef's longevity and quality. British, German, and French corned beef was regarded as being generally inferior.
I typically corn at least one brisket a year. I get a small (3 - 3.5 pound) cut and even though that's a lot of meat for one person, I don't mind the leftovers in the least — try corning your own beef for the best reuben you've ever eaten. However, I have this site on Cooking for Two that I manage and although there are lots of foods that are better leftover (corned beef among them) I at least attempt to pay lip service to not cooking enough food to feed four for a week. So I thought about how I might corn a smaller beef.
Buying a brisket and just corning half of it while freezing the rest for another day occurred to me, but right now my freezer is packed so I considered similar cuts of meat and immediately thought of flank steak. Although it comes from the opposite end of the cow, it's also from the belly and shares brisket's long, stringy loosely-spaced muscle fibers. I gave it a try.
It worked beautifully.
Flank steak is long and flat, without the bulk of brisket, so I rolled and tied the steak to produce a piece of meat more similar in shape to a bulky brisket. You can use a commercial pickling spice for flavoring, I always prefer making my own based on a recipe published in Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. Note that if you use the flank steak you still need to slice it across the grain which means slicing with the roll, not across it.
If you have the urge to try corning a beef but don't want to take on a big brisket, this is a great option.
You can find the recipe here and my recipe for corned beef and cabbage here.
By the way, I used to cook corned beef in a big pot on the stove top until a Jewish friend suggested using a Dutch oven in the oven instead. The difference was striking. This was many years ago and I don’t recall the specifics but I do remember that not only was the dish more evenly cooked but the flavors were more mellow. These days I use my 6.5 quart Le Crueset Dutch (or French) oven in the oven. Once hot, the cast iron delivers very uniform and gentle heat throughout the cooking process. I now cook all braises and stews in cast iron in the oven.
Labels: beef, main dish, preserving, recipe
Read more...
