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To Boil Corned Beef
Mrs. J. Beaty.
Put the beef in water enough to cover it, and let it heat slowly, and boil slowly, and be careful to take off the grease. Many think it much improved by boiling potatoes, turnips, and cabbages with it. In this case the vegetable must be pealed and all the grease carefully skimmed as fast as it rises. Allow about twenty minutes of boiling for each pound of meat.
A plain nineteenth-century boiled dinner, written for cooks who knew corned beef by heart. Two things need adjusting: the temperature and the clock.
- Never actually boil itThe instruction to "boil slowly" means what we would call a bare simmer, 180-190F, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you stringy, dry meat no matter how long you cook it.
- Twenty minutes a pound is not enoughTwenty minutes a pound is likely short -- for the thick brisket usually sold today, allow 45 to 60 minutes per pound at a simmer, and judge by feel rather than clock: a skewer should slide into the thickest part with no resistance. A 4 lb brisket usually takes 3 to 3 1/2 hours.
- Taste the water firstCommercial corned beef varies enormously in salt. Simmer a scrap for a few minutes and taste the broth; if it is harsh, drain after the first half hour and start again with fresh hot water, or soak the raw meat in cold water for a few hours beforehand.
- Vegetables go in latePeeled potatoes, turnips and cabbage cooked for the full three hours collapse into the broth. Add turnips and potatoes about 30 minutes before the meat is done, cabbage wedges in the last 15.
- The skimming mattersCorned brisket renders a good deal of fat, and with vegetables in the pot there is nothing to catch it. Skim steadily as the recipe says, or lift the meat out, chill the broth, and lift the set fat off before finishing the vegetables in it.
- Rest and slice across the grainLet the meat stand 15 minutes in a little of its liquid, then find the direction of the fibres and cut straight across them. Sliced lengthwise, even properly cooked brisket eats tough.
- YieldFigure about half a pound of raw corned beef per person; a 4 lb piece with vegetables serves six to eight, with enough left for hash.
"Corned" has nothing to do with maize: it refers to the coarse grains, or corns, of salt rubbed into beef to preserve it, a usage that goes back to the days when every household with a barrel put down meat for the winter. Boiled corned beef with root vegetables and cabbage was a common cheap dinner in Canada and the northern United States in the 1870s, when The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto from recipes it presents as contributed by named local women -- one of the first community cookbooks of its kind, sold to raise money for the Hospital for Sick Children. The brevity here is typical of the genre: Mrs. Beaty is not teaching a stranger to cook, she is recording her own proportions for neighbours who already owned the pot and knew the cut. The one-pot method survives as the New England boiled dinner and, by way of Irish-American kitchens, as the corned beef and cabbage now eaten on St. Patrick's Day.