Corned Beef the Homemade Way

[eema.gray]

Whenever our favorite grocery has roasts and/or brisket on sale for less than $2/lb, I get tempted to make my own corned beef.  Ranger Daddy loves the stuff.  Well, this weekend, I did.  Rancho Liborio had shoulder roasts for $1.87/lb.  That's WAY too good to pass up.  The one we got was huge too so half the sucker is in the freezer as plain old beef.  The other half got corned.  By the time it came out of the pot last night, we were both looking forward to tonight's dinner.

This is the easy version.  It won't have the pink, classic corned beef look (no saltpeter) but it tastes exactly the way you expect corned beef to taste and has the right texture as well.

Put a couple pounds of meat in a baking dish with plenty of room.  Classic corned beef is made with brisket but you can use any cut, though I'd probably steer away from anything with bones in it still.  Press in a spice mix of your choice.  I used a pre packaged pickling mix combined with a package of tamale seasoning.  It had bay leaf (a lot of that), sesame seeds, little hot peppers, coriander, cloves, allspice, and those are just the ones I could identify.  Classic corned beef usually has juniper in it as well.  Press the spice mix into both sides of the meat, covering liberally.  Cover the dish with foil and place in the fridge with something heavy on top of the foil (I used a couple heads of celery).  Allow to sit in this fashion for 24 hours or so.  

After 24 hours, place in a pot with at least a gallon of water for every pound of meat.  Make sure to scrape in all the spices.  Add 1/3 cup salt per gallon.  If you want the classic pink color, add 1 Tablespoon of saltpeter for every gallon of water.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to keep at a low simmer (this was about 3 on my stove).  Simmer for three to six hours, depending on the amount of meat and how thick it's cut.

When done, remove from the water, wrap tightly in foil, and chill at least overnight.  Or you can freeze it if you don't have immediate plans.  Beef corned in heavily salted water (half cup or more per gallon) and saltpeter will keep, well wrapped, in a cool dry place for a few months but I don't suggest doing that unless you're going to also pack salt all around the meat for storage.  THAT kind of packaging will require quite a bit of soaking to make the meat edible.  But it's good to know for emergency preparedness.  :-D

*****

Also made fruit salad since Yeled loves to snack on fruit but is too impatient to wait for me to prepare it during the day.  A whole cantaloupe, four peaches, five kiwi fruits, a big handful of dry cranberries, generous tablespoon of honey, and a dash of cardamom.  He's already eaten a decent size bowl of the stuff this morning, though he's not sure how he feels about kiwi's.  I probably should have peeled those.

Apparently I have that knowledgable mom look, lol.  The other evening we were at Wal Mart trying to decide which pack of pull ups to get Yeled (we've embarked on hardcore potty training with him this week, without a drop of success so far).  A young woman with a toddler was also looking at the different brands and asked me when a good time to start potty training is.  I told her, whenever the child seems ready.  Her 18 mo old is exhibiting the same readiness Yeled has been, yanking at diapers when they're wet and trailing us into the bathroom.  It was kind of surprising to me to get asked for parenting advice!

I made fabric shopping bags yesterday!  I had a bunch of fabric left over from Yeled's curtains and couldn't figure out what to do with it.  So I made bags.  I love really deep bags with long shoulder straps and this is the kind of shopping bag is nearly impossible to find (I have a couple from a store we used to go to in WI).  I used an existing bag as the template and now have two more deep, heavily constructed bags for grocery shopping.  Goal is to buy or make enough that we can do an entire two weeks shopping blow out without bringing any plastic bags into the house.  I finally even found some loosely woven fabric I like that won't bruise fruit so I'm going to make a big handful of small bags for produce.

The shopping bag project made me realize how easily the same basic design could be used to make cloth storage bins, though I think I'd add wooden dowels along the seams for sturdiness.  Too many ideas, not enough time (or money for fabric)!

[divinity80921]

Sep. 13, 2009 at 1:33 PM

Home-prepared corned beef (I didn't know it was salt peter that caused it to stay pink), fresh fruit salad (yes, I'd have peeled the icky skin off the kiwis), home sewn shopping bags, my, aren't you just the domestic diva right now? A regular Martha Stewart of the Front Range (but better because Martha doesn't really do all that stuff herself - she has staff for that).

Is this a pregnancy thing? Nesting a bit early?

[eema.gray]

Sep. 14, 2009 at 12:49 AM

I wouldn't know, lol.  To my knowledge, I didn't nest at all before my son was born, though there were extraneous factors involved last time around.  I guess it could be nesting . . . my EDD is four weeks from tomorrow.  Intuition says I've got about five weeks left but you never know.  I prefer to think of it either as finally getting into a rythm and being able to balance the house and a toddler (boy has the schedule helped!) or else just having a chance to catch up on things I've been intending to do that got shoved aside by moving, traveling etc.

(Original Poster)