Home Cured Corned Beef

Vibrant pink, salty, and spicy, corned beef is always a welcome meal in our home, whether in a boiled dinner, with cabbage, or in a sandwich with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut. Who knew it was so easy to make?

Corned beef is essentially beef cured in a salt brine, with some pickling spices for added flavor. It gets its name “corn” from an old English word for grain, or small pieces of hard things the size of grain, such as salt.

Over the years, many of my friends have encouraged me to cure my own, insisting that it wasn’t hard to do, and well worth the effort. After finally getting around to it, I’m happy to report that my friends were right! It really is easy; it just takes about 5 days to cure.

Because you get to choose what pickling spices to use, you can make your own distinctively flavored corned beef. You know how BBQ masters have their own favorite homemade dry rubs? It’s sort of like that.

Pretty much every packaged corned beef brisket I’ve bought tastes about the same. The one I home cured? Wonderful and different.

While I researched several online sources for curing your own corned beef, as well as interrogating my colleague Hank, the source I referred to the most was Michael Ruhlman’s brilliant Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing (high recommend). You can also see his instructions on Leite’s Culinaria.

I played around a bit with the spice mix, and kept the garlic out of the brine, but other than that, pretty much followed Michael’s method. I’ve linked to a couple other methods from food bloggers in the links below if you are looking for some recipes with which to compare this one.

Home Cured Corned Beef Recipe

The spice mix with the gallon of brine makes easily enough curing brine for a 5 pound brisket, cured in a somewhat large-ish container. If you were to use a 2-gallon freezer bag or marinating bag, you would likely need just half (or less) of the amount of brine and brine spices.

Ingredients

Pickling spices:

• 1 Tbsp whole allspice berries
• 1 Tbsp whole mustard seeds (brown or yellow)
• 1 Tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 Tbsp red pepper flakes
• 1 Tbsp whole cloves
• 1 Tbsp whole black peppercorns
• 9 whole cardamom pods
• 6 large bay leaves, crumbled
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 stick cinnamon

Brine:

• 1 gallon water
• 2 cups Kosher salt
• 5 teaspoons pink curing salt*
• 3 Tbsp pickling spices
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

*Pink curing salt, or sodium nitrite, goes by many names, such as Prague Powder #1 or DQ Curing Salt #1, and is available online and may be available at your local specialty market or butcher shop. If you don't have it, you can still make corned beef, but it is necessary for that vibrant pink color we associate with corned beef. And it adds flavor too. Without it the corned beef will be a dull grey color.

Brisket:

• 1 4-5 pound beef brisket
• 1 Tbsp pickling spices

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