Corned Beef
Corned beef is a homely dish but delightful when properly cooked. As the salt used in curing has hardened the fibre as well as robbed the meat of some of its digestibility, slow cooking is indicated. Should the meat seem unusually salty, it might be well to soak it over night or for a few hours. Cover with cold water, bring slowly to the boil, then drain; cover with fresh boiling water and draw the pot back where the contents will hardly simmer. Allow fully threequarters of an hour for each pound of meat. For those who like the flavor of the meat in the vegetables, it will be best to cook the meat in advance of the meal hour. From the pot take out a portion of the liquor. Skim all fat from it, heat part in a large saucepan ; to this add the cabbage sliced or cut into quarters and boil steadily until done-this will take about forty-five minutes.
Cook the potatoes separately in the remainder of the skimmed liquor. In this way the vegetables are rendered more digestible than when they are cooked in the greasy pot liquor.
The method here is sound — the only things that need adjusting are the vegetable timings and the vocabulary of a coal range. Everything hinges on keeping the pot below a true boil.
- Never let it boil"Draw the pot back where the contents will hardly simmer" meant moving it to the cooler edge of a range top. On a modern burner, hold the water at 180-190F, with an occasional bubble breaking the surface. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you stringy, dry corned beef no matter how long you cook it.
- The first blanchCovering with cold water, bringing it up and draining is a salt-reduction step, not a cooking step. Modern commercially corned brisket is usually milder than barrel-cured beef, so one blanch is generally plenty and the overnight soak is seldom needed.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour per pound is close to right for a slow simmer: a 4 lb brisket runs about 3 hours. Judge by feel rather than the clock — a skewer should slide in and out with almost no resistance, around 200-205F internal, well past the point where a steak would be ruined.
- Cabbage, not forty-five minutesBoiled steadily for three-quarters of an hour, cabbage collapses into sulphurous mush. Quarters need 12-15 minutes in the skimmed liquor, thick slices 8-10. This is the one instruction in the recipe that modern practice has flatly overturned.
- PotatoesPeeled, halved medium potatoes take 20-25 minutes in the reserved liquor. The recipe's real point stands: cooking them apart from the meat pot, in fat-skimmed broth, gives a cleaner result than wallowing them in the greasy liquid.
- SkimmingChilling the reserved liquor briefly lets the fat set on top and lift off in a sheet, which is far more effective than skimming hot. The recipe asks only that the meat be cooked in advance of the meal hour, but if you cook it a day ahead the fat will set in the refrigerator on its own.
- CarvingBrisket has a pronounced grain that changes direction between the flat and the point. Slice thinly across the grain, adjusting the angle as you go, or the meat will eat tough despite hours of gentle cooking.
- YieldA 4 lb piece with cabbage and potatoes serves six to eight, and corned beef loses a good deal of weight in cooking. Leftovers are the traditional basis for hash.
"Corned" has nothing to do with maize: corn in older English meant any grain or hard particle, and beef was corned by packing it in coarse grains of salt. Before refrigeration this was one of the standard ways to keep beef through a winter or a sea voyage, and salt beef in barrels was a staple of ships' provisions and of the Irish export trade for centuries. The pink colour comes from nitrate in a curing salt today rather than from the salt itself. Brisket and plate were among the cheapest cuts on the carcass, and the long slow simmer described here is what makes them worth eating. The pairing with cabbage and potatoes belongs to the same thrift, and survives in both the New England boiled dinner and the Irish-American St. Patrick's Day plate.