Home-cured Corned Beef

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine garlic, bay leaves, cloves, coriander seeds, peppercorns, and
mustard seed in blender.  Blend until coarsly chopped.  Add brown
sugar. Set aside.  Trim roast (venison, beef, etc.), weigh and measure
1 level  Tablespoon of curing salt per pound.  Add measured curing salt
to  spice mixture you set aside.  Rub spice mixture into roast,
pressing in well. Measure roast at  thickest point.  Place into heavy
freezing bag and close securely.  Place in shallow pan in refrigerator.
Cure 5 days per inch of  measured thickness, turning bag daily.  At end
of curing time wrap and freeze.  To cook:  Drain juices, if desired
rinse thoroughly under cold running  water to remove extra salt and
spice pieces, wrap in foil and bake  sealed at 300 degrees 2 to 3 hours
or until tender.  Or use in any  corned beef recipe.  Dorothy's
comments: This recipe has been tested by my whole family on  both beef
and venison with the results that if I do not have one  either in
process or residing in the freezer ready for instant  cooking I
certainly hear about my oversight!  It has become the most  requested
top of the list for both Birthday and Christmas giftlists.  For ease in
converting the ratio of meat to spices I have set my  serving size to
the most often used size of roast by my family.  I  have used this on
several different cuts of meat, however, our  favorite is bottom round.
Recently I became lazy and instead of  grinding the spices in my
blender I left them whole. The result was  exactly the same in flavor
and since I hate to bite into a spice by  mistake and rinse them off
before I cook the corned beef, it made the  rinsing task a whole lot
easier! I haven't tried using brisket  myself, however since that seems
to be the only cut of meat that you  can get as corned beef in the
supermarkets around where I live, I  imagine it would work fine.
Actually, avoiding brisket was one reason  I decided to corn all my own
meat at home! IMHO briskets "might" make  good doorstops! Seriously
though, the main reason we don't care for  brisket is only because
mostly it has a high amount of fat. The  corning process does such a
good job of tenderizing that there is no  problem with the toughness.
Our favorite cut of meat to corn is the  bottom round since it seems to
be a leaner cut of meat. Usually I  just cook the corned beef in the
oven with a few potatoes, carrots  and celery with it. Or my husband
likes to wrap it in foil and cook  it on the barbecue grill, unwrapping
and browning it the last 15 to  20 minutes of the cooking time.
Sylvia's comments: on brisket, it produced a very flavorful corned
beef, usable after about 12 hours in the crockpot.  I substituted 4  tb
pickling spice for 3 bay leaves, 2 tb coriander seeds, and 1 tb
mustard seed. I also used whole spices without grinding them.  Brought
to you by Sylvia Steiger  Posted to MM-Recipes Digest  by "Rfm"
<[email protected]> on Sep  26, 98

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