St. Patrick’s Day just doesn’t feel like St. Patrick’s Day without corned beef, cabbage, and lots of beer and / or whiskey. I didn’t feel like seeing Souskey –we had done that before– but the super moist, low and slow cooking method seemed perfect for the hardened, salty meat platter.
As you probably already know, the “corned” in corn beef has nothing to do with yellow kernels – it’s just another word for hardening or pickling. “Pickled beef” doesn’t quite sound the same, though, so let’s stick with the corn.
To get an idea of how strong my Anova would work on our pickled brisket, I bought three pieces of cow: two that were prepackaged and already cured, and one untreated brisket (the flat-cut part) to harden at home.
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Using Meathead Goldwyn’s healing recipeI whipped a mixture of salt Prague powder Pickle (sodium nitrate), brown sugar, spices and garlic. Then I realized that the only container I had big enough to hold such a situation was my product drawer, and so I presented my very impressive collection of fruits and vegetables (three clementines and a sad head Romaine) on a shelf. Then I scrubbed the drawer thoroughly with the hottest and soapy water, rinsed it well, and filled it with meat and salty-sweet water.
Then I covered the drawer with plastic wrap, closed it, and let it live there rent free for a week. After seven days, I removed the meat, patted it dry, and rubbed it with a mixture of herbs and spices.
To make the mix I followed ChefStep’s friction recipe from (mostly) this piece, but I didn’t have any coriander (I used caraway seeds) and not enough black pepper that “85 grams” became “as much as I have in this little jar”. “Dill Seed” also became “Straight Up Dill” because I had Straight Up Dill and wanted to use it up.
Whatever. I rubbed my unique spice blend all over the beef and then sealed it in a vacuum bag. Then I grabbed one of the cattle I had bought in the store, sprinkled it in the spice pack, and sealed it in its own vacuum bag. As I did so, I noticed that the store-bought copy had a slimy, gelatinous feel that somehow startled me. (It just didn’t feel like meat.) This was likely due to the fact that it was treated with Papain, a tenderizing enzyme that has all kinds of uses. Both cattle went into a 145-degree bath, where they stayed for a total of 48 hours.
About seven hours before the sous vide cattle came out, I grabbed the other store-bought corned beef and tossed it into the slow cooker along with half a cup of water and the condiment packet as instructed. (Did I trust these instructions? No, but this corned beef was more of a control than anything.) After everyone was in their cooking vessels for the appropriate amount of time, we were ready to try.
I started by comparing the two prepackaged parts. As you can see in the photo above, the beef cooked in the slow cooker has shrunk into a claw-like shape. It was also pretty dry and not super fragrant.
However, the texture of the sous vide sample was so delicate that it practically self-shredded and began to fall apart as it was moved from the bag to the cutting board.
The meat was super pliable – almost too pliable – and it had the store-bought corned beef flavor, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was as good as a cheap grocery corned beef could hope for, I say, although you could cut the time to 36 hours if you want slices that hold their shape a little better.
I had weighed each piece of meat before and after it was cooked and was surprised that they had lost fairly comparable amounts of weight (roughly two pounds).
Then I turned to the beef that I had cured myself.
While this didn’t fall apart like the papain treated brisket, it was still tender and juicy, and tasted better, slightly sweeter, and meatier thanks to Meathead and ChefStep’s respective recipes. Instead of falling apart with a look in his direction, this beef ate more like a super tender steak if that steak had been pickled. The only shortcoming were small gray strips of not fully hardened beef that had nothing to do with the sous vide circulator and could be fixed in just a few days in the salt bath.
Whether you buy a pre-hardened brisket plate or corn yourself, the submerged circulator is your friend. For store-bought beef that has been tenderized (like papain), cook it at 145 ° C for 36 hours. If you cure the beef yourself, increase the cook time to 48 hours. Don’t you have that long Don’t fret: using a store-bought corned beef, you can raise the temperature to 180 ° C and cut the time to 10 hours. (I haven’t tested this cooking time and temperature with homemade corned beef, but you can always try 10 and go longer if needed.) The beef has a slightly different, “braised” texture but is still tender, juicy, and most importantly Corned.
This story was originally published in March 2017. It was updated on March 16, 2021 to reflect Lifehacker’s current style guidelines.
