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Corned Beef (For cold corned beef the plate)
For cold corned beef the plate piece is best, while for hot the brisket is to be preferred. Always have a good layer of fat around it. Place in cold water and bring slowly to a boil and boil for thirty minutes, skimming well the first few minutes. Have cover tightly closed before removing to the cooker, and leave six or eight hours, using one radiator. Cool in stock; press between plates, and serve in thin slices.
This is a fireless-cooker recipe: the meat is brought to the boil on the stove, then transferred to an insulated box with a preheated iron or soapstone disc and left to coast down for hours. Everything in it makes sense once you translate the equipment.
- The hinge: it never simmers againAfter the thirty-minute boil, all the remaining cooking happens on stored heat, which is why the pot must be sealed tight before it goes in the box. Modern equivalent is a covered pot in a 200-225F oven, or a slow cooker on low, for four to six hours until a fork slides in with no resistance.
- "One radiator"The radiators were metal or stone discs heated on the range and packed into the fireless cooker with the food; instructions of the period generally called for one or two depending on the bulk of the food and the length of the hold. There is no modern counterpart, and a home-built insulated box is not worth reproducing: the temperature falls steadily through the hold, and how long it stays safely hot depends on the mass of food and the quality of the insulation.
- Plate piece and brisketThe plate piece is the navel end, sold today as short plate or navel; it is fattier and slices firmer when cold, which is why she recommends it for the cold platter. Brisket is now the default corned beef cut in most markets and will do for both purposes.
- Corned beef in 1918 was saltierCorned beef of this period was saltier — brine-cured beef often wanted rinsing, and sometimes a soak in cold water, before cooking. Supermarket corned beef briskets are more mildly cured; rinse off the pickling spice residue and skip the soak. Taste the cooking liquid before you reduce or reuse it.
- Fat cap"Always have a good layer of fat around it" is not decoration. The fat protects the lean during a long, low cook. Leave the cap on and trim after cooking if you want.
- Cool in stock, press between platesCooling in the liquid keeps the meat moist and lets it reabsorb brine. Pressing means setting the cooked piece between two plates with a weight on top — a filled kettle or a couple of cans — and refrigerating overnight. This compacts the grain so it cuts into thin unbroken slices instead of shredding.
- DonenessCorned beef is done for slicing at about 195-205F internal, well past the safe temperature and into the range where collagen has melted. Under-cooked corned beef is tough rather than dangerous.
- YieldA 4 lb piece serves six to eight hot, and rather more cold if sliced thin for sandwiches. Plan on losing a third of the raw weight.
Fireless cookery was a serious household movement in the 1910s, not a novelty: an insulated box packed with hay, felt or mineral wool, plus a stone or iron disc heated on the range, let a cook start dinner in the morning and leave the kitchen fire out through a hot day. Books of this period, including loose-leaf collections, sometimes carried a fireless section alongside conventional chapters, and the appeal sharpened during the fuel-conservation campaigns of the First World War. The dish itself is older and simpler: "corned" refers to the coarse grains, or corns, of salt used to cure the beef, a preservation method that made barrelled beef a staple of ships, armies and working households long before refrigeration. Slow, gentle cooking suits it because the cuts used — plate and brisket — are tough, well-worked muscle that needs hours to break down, and the fireless cooker happened to be very good at exactly that.