I cook my corned beef in the oven. With the store-bought product I soak the meat in a pot of cold water for an hour. I dump the water, refill and soak the meat for another hour to remove much of the salt before cooking. Does Meathead's method produce a very salty product? Will it require less soak time before cooking?
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It does produce a salty product. I generally soak for 4-8 hours. However, it is waaaay better than any store bought. Especially if you are your own fresh pickling spices. -
I generally soak for more like 4 days in 2-3 changes of water then cook/smoke at 180F on a pellet smoker for several hours until it gets to about 150F. Before serving I steam it for about an hour or more depending on when it softens. Neither of us, my wife especially, like very salty meat so long soaking.
We eat most of this fried like bacon for breakfast.
I've got several corned beef points soaking right now and will be cooking them tomorrow. My plan is to do these more like brisket. Slow smoke for several hours to about 150F, increase the temp to about 275F and wrap until about 190F then unwrap and go to around 200F to get very tender but not falling apart meat. I'm not planning on steaming these. We'll see.
I'll report back.Comment
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I smoked 4 points yesterday starting at 3:30PM, finishing at 9PM. I did one in my usual way, slow smoke to 150F then steam for about 1 1/2 hours till tender. The others I wrapped at 150F and upped the smoker to 275F. I finally went to about 209F internal temp because that's when it became tender. That's higher than I'd usually cook meat to, but at 200F it was very resistant to a fork.
It wound up taking just about the same time for both methods. Since wrapping is essentially steaming, I guess that's not too surprising. When I unwrapped them, there was a LOT of juice expelled, but they were still very moist inside.
We had slices of both techniques side by side and both thought that the wrapped meat had more flavor but also was a bit chewier than the steamed. They both were similarly moist, but steamed had a distinctive succulent texture while the wrapped was typical well cooked meat texture.
Overall we liked the texture of the steamed and the flavor of the wrapped. I'm going to try steaming some of the wrapped to see what happens.
Both were excellent, we're just splitting hairs, as is our wont.Comment
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NCARalph would you mind sharing how you steam them? I mean, like on a rack in a deep pan with water and covered? I’ve never done it, so just looking for the method. Thanks.
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I just have an aluminum steamer insert for one of our big tall pots. I think it was originally for steaming corn.Comment
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