Whole Corned Beef Brisket questions

I do a soak-out on all corned beef, store-bought or home cured. When I make corned beef I add Penzey's Corned Beef seasoning, which is basically a pickling spice. For pastrami I use a mix of my garlic pepper seasoning and pastrami seasoning.

For cooking, I have nothing against braising a corned beef but I have better control by using a pressure cooker. Of course a pastrami gets smoked first, and again my favorite finish is a pressure finish, next would be a steam finish. If you are into sous vide, I cook corned brisket flats at 145° for 45 hours. No, that is not a typo. :shocked:

Have you decided to cook the entire brisket one way? If not, why not cut it in half lengthwise (so you have point and flat on each half) and cook one as corned beef and one as pastrami?

The store bought ones I soak out 6 or 7 hours changing the water 3 times.

I thought about making my own this year when I saw how all the store bought meat was injected, and very expensive. Always was great info here! :thumb:

ZILLA said:

I thought about making my own this year when I saw how all the store bought meat was injected, and very expensive. Always was great info here! :thumb:

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The processors inject and immerse (in giant vats) to save time, well actually 'curing time' which speeds up their turnover. They also use a stronger brine, which also reduces curing time. And... when they package the corned beef there is still some residual brine (or slime depending on how you look at it) in the packages. They don't tell you how long the process takes but I bet it's just a number of days.

On the other side of the spectrum, using a weaker brine and maybe injecting it as well if you have thicker meats, will let you brine cure for 10 or more days, and your product is not as harsh as some store bought corned meats. When I brine cure I like Pop's Brine for this reason. It has a 10 to 20 day range for briskets.