TracyFood

Corned beef adventures with Greg. 30 March 2010 10:36 am

Posted by Tracy in : not even vegetarian,people,photos,pictures , trackback

So, something I forgot to mention in my comments about Roger Horowitz’ Putting Meat on the American Table yesterday is that any and all mentions of corned beef made me grin hugely. You see, a few weeks ago at a Wednesday night dinner, I said to Greg, “We should make corned beef for Saint Patrick’s Day!” but he maintains that I was more subtle about it than that, because he thought it was his idea. In any case, whee-ha, right? The only problem was that the recipe we wanted to use called for the meat to sit in its spice rub for five to seven days (rotated once a day for more or less even penetration of deliciousness) and Greg had plans to be out of town for the weekend before St. Pat’s. Hmmmm….

The instructions (in The New Best Recipe) also mentioned they’d reduced their prep time by merely rinsing the meat before cooking, instead of soaking it in a few changes of fresh water for a day or three, to leach out a little extra salt. Well now, if we put that step back in we’d be brought up to before Greg’s trip! So the plan was hatched: we’d get the meat started marinating on Monday night, and I would visit it for those daily rotations while Greg was out of town, and when he got back, the meat would be ready for its water baths. Eleven pounds of brisket later, here’s pictures of the spice rub prep.

Greg and I met up before my Monday night class in an effort to secure brisket at the Union Square Greenmarket, but no dice. The biggest piece available was less than three pounds, and we wanted to double a recipe that called for five or six pounds of beef. So after we finally found plastic bags big enough for that much meat, I went off to class and Greg continued to Ottomanelli and Sons in the West Village, where he was hooked up with a truly ridiculous quantity of brisket:

That’s not all of it. There was another piece, albeit a slightly smaller one.

Next up, piercing the meat in many places so the spice rub would be absorbed more deeply:

Greg’s using the probe from his instant-read digital thermometer, because we didn’t have any metal skewers handy.

And then, lots of spicy goodness! (Kosher salt, black pepper, allspice, and bay leaves, to name a few of the seasonings involved.)

Whee!

Why did Tracy only take pictures? you may be wondering. Well, embarrassing as this is to admit, I was wearing a white turtleneck and I didn’t want to risk having to free it of meat juice and spice if I did anything clumsy. So it was all Greg here. (Later, he made dinner, so I didn’t have to! It was great.)

At last, the spice-rubbed meat was bagged and fridged.

I didn’t get pictures of the next step, which was to top the meat with a cookie sheet weighted with — well, almost everything else in Greg’s fridge: a six-pack of beer, cans of tonic water, tubs of yogurt, and many more which all blurred together over the course of the days in which it was my job to visit Greg’s apartment, pull all that stuff off the beef, turn it over, and then put everything back on again. It was silly.

But the results? Completely and awesomely delicious, both in their original corned beef and cabbage form, and then again as the hash finale to my macaron ride. Yay!