Corned beef how is it made

Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Featured Video. Save It Print. Cook Time 3 hrs. Total Time 3 hrs. Servings 6 to 8. Toast and crush spices:. Make curing brine:. Brine the brisket for days:. Cook the corned beef:.

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Ick, right? However, its preservative powers when added to a brine are amazing. As meat sits in a nitrate-rich brine, certain salt-friendly bacteria will transform nitrates into nitrites a similar molecule with only two oxygen molecules attached instead of three. These nitrites then not only destroy the very bacteria that created them, they also provide flavor advantages to meat. One problem is that this transformation from nitrates to nitrites by bacteria is not easily predictable, meaning that it's difficult to gauge exactly how well a specific concentration of saltpeter will work in a brine.

These days, synthesized nitrites are readily available, and so saltpeter is only rarely used in meat preservation.

Sodium nitrite is what you'll find in so-called "pink salt," a mixture of sodium chloride table salt and sodium nitrite which is dyed pink in order for you to easily distinguish it from regular salt you don't want to accidentally ingest too much sodium nitrite. So how do nitrites work to preserve meat?

First off, they are flavorful. They are what give hams and corned beef their characteristic tang. It also inhibits the growth of the few types of bacteria that are tolerant of salty environments.

Finally, it helps preserve color. We all know that meat turns from red to brown as the main muscle pigment myoglobin oxidizes and turns into metmyoglobin , a reaction catalyzed by free iron atoms in the meat, right?

I mean, who doesn't? Well, when nitrites react with meat, they form nitric oxide that's nitrogen with but a single oxygen molecule , which in turn bonds with the iron, thus preventing the reaction that transforms myoglobin into metmyoglobin, allowing beef or ham to retain its deep pink color, even when fully cooked, like in the photo below. Interestingly enough, this is the exact same reaction that occurs with barbecued meats to form the pink smoke ring around their edges.

But that's neither here nor there. Moral of the story: You can certainly corn beef without the nitrites, but it won't taste the same, last as long, or look the same. Now that we know exactly what corned beef is, how do we cook the darned thing? Here's the deal: brisket is not a tender cut of meat. It contains a ton of connective tissue, all of which must be broken down before it can be easily chewed and digested.

This means applying heat. One of the most important lessons you can learn about cooking meat is that there are two basic types of reactions that occur when heat is applied: fast reactions, and slow reactions. Tender cuts of meat like, say, a strip steak will undergo various physical changes depending on temperature.

These changes are fast reactions, and take place almost instantly. On the other hand, the breakdown of connective tissue—mainly composed of collagen —into soft, succulent gelatin is also temperature dependent, but it takes a long time.

How long? I decided to find out. After cooking, I removed the sealed bags from the water oven and chilled them overnight.

The next day, I opened all the bags together and transferred them to plates. Here's what I saw:. As you can see, the less I cooked the meat, the thinner the liquid exuded from the bag, clearly demonstrating that over the course of time, more and more collagen will get broken down into gelatin, which effectively thickens the cooking liquid. Cutting into and tasting each piece of beef confirmed this: the longer it cooked, the more the connective tissue was broken down, and the more tender it was.

This is the case not just for corned beef, but for any kind of slow-cooked meats, whether its barbecued pork ribs, or duck confit. Of course, time is not the only factor when slow-cooking—temperature can be just as important, if not more so.

Here's what I found:. The amount of time needed to tenderize a piece of meat seems to increase exponentially as the temperature gets lower. So obviously, the best way to cook the beef is to just boil the heck out of it until tender, right? Not so fast. Take a look at the next graph first. In this chart, I plotted the temperature it was cooked at along with the amount of moisture the beef lost. If you remember, moisture getting squeezed out of muscle fibers due to temperature increase is a fast reaction.

That means that whether I boil a piece of beef for 3 hours or 20 hours, it makes little difference to the overall moisture level. The only thing that really matters is temperature.

So really, to retain the maximum amount of moisture, I wanted to cook it at as low a temperature as possible. It just seemed more like the corned beef I was used to. Well, if you've got an immersion circulator , that's your best bet. The term "corned beef" refers to beef that has been preserved through salt-curing; it is especially popular in Irish and Jewish cuisine.

The Jewish form of corned beef usually involves a preparation in which a cut of beef, traditionally the brisket , is cured in a brine solution along with various seasonings and then slowly simmered until the meat is tender and flavorful. Corned beef can also be made from the beef round primal cut. Both the round and the brisket are relatively tough cuts of meat that are best cooked by slow, moist-heat cooking.

Good corned beef is quite tender with a delicious salty flavor. The brine for making corned beef is similar to the brine used for making pickles. Thus, it's fair to say that corned beef is essentially pickled beef. One of the key ingredients in making corned beef is a curing salt called Prague powder , which is what gives the corned beef its distinctive pink color. Prague powder is made of sodium nitrite, a substance that has been the source of some controversy. Sodium nitrite as well as sodium nitrate is a food additive that helps prevent the growth of bacteria that cause spoilage and food poisoning.

The Mayo Clinic notes that:. Nitrates may also affect the way your body uses sugar, making you more likely to develop diabetes. Other sources, though, maintain that sodium nitrite is a harmless material that poses no adverse health risks. This argument points out that more nitrite is ingested by eating vegetables such as spinach, celery, and lettuce than by eating cured meats. These vegetables contain concentrations of sodium nitrite up to ten times higher than in cured meats.