On Saint Patrick's day of this year, I hoped that leprechauns or J won't pinch me even though I wasn't wearing anything green because I made corned beef with vegetables by scratch. It was my
second home-corned beef. Since I remembered that the container to corn the beef for six days last year wasn't deep enough and I spilled some brine when I tried to carry the container to the refrigerator and got panicked. Lessons learned: I got a larger and deeper container. It securely held nearly 5 pound beef brisket, which made me happy first and then suddenly worried about whether the wide and deep container could fit in the refrigerator. No problem after all. I managed to create a space for the container in the refrigerator.
After six day curing, the beef was slow-cooked for three hours in the oven (275F).
The beef cut still had a thick fat layer although I trimmed a lot before brining. When I sliced the brisket, it was easy to remove the fat layer and present the beautiful rosy color of the corned beef on the plate. Apparently the
mysterious pink salt did a great job again.
Served with our favorite French mustard, the home-corned beef tasted pretty good. It was nicely salted and spiced. J seemed to be happy with the result. On the other hand, like the last year, the cooked vegetables were my favorite part of the meal. They were very tasty! The recipe from Cook's Illustrated is a keeper.
Of course, J paired the dish with Irish stout for perfection. Cheers!
