St. Patty's Day! Corn beef brisket.

Simplest way has always been the best - and yummiest - for me.  Put the corned beef in the bottom of a crock pot.  Cover it with cut up cabbage (add some onions if you like).  Sprinkle the seasoning packet that comes with the corned beef over it and about 1/4 cup of sugar.  Then pour 1-1 1/2 cups of water over the whole thing and cook it til done.  It will stink up your house but it will be soooooo good! 

Now that I have my Cookshack smoker I'm getting a lot of practice on brisket - so far using what are called "packers" - a whole beef brisket with a lot of fat left on it. The thing that amazed me when reading thread after thread was that the longer you cook it - we are talking dry slow cooking here, the more fall apart tender it got. I have done four briskets in the last month - the first really amazing and tender one was a 6 lb brisket I smoked 8 hours at 225 in the smoker - took it out and placed in a 13x9 pan in foil, napped this finishing sauce over it, then sealed the foil parcel real tight and into a 300 oven and baked an addition 2 hours -  in about 1/2 hour the house smelled like absolute heaven.

 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup ketchup

1/4 cup orange juice

1/4 cup honey

 

Mix that sauce all together and pour it over the brisket - it created an amazing glaze and "the bark" of this long cooked brisket was to die for. (now this was a brisket I sort of trimmed too lean, so I draped pieces of Smithfield bacon over it and secured them in place with cloves on each end of each slice. That bacon essentially basted the brisket the whole time it was slow smoking and baking.

 

 

So let me share this baking bag corned beef recipe with you, what I like about it is it keeps all the vitamins and flavors in the bag, the vegetables that go in with the brisket are really tasty - it takes all of about 10 minutes to get it prepped and into the oven.  A couple years ago my cousin Dan came out from Chicago to visit and they got lost getting out here, I had time dinner to be out of the oven at 1pm, well they didn't get here till 1:30 or 2:00 and I held the dinner in a warm oven another 2 hours past it's finished time. This corned beef was so tender and tasty and fall apart good that 5 of us ate a 6 lb brisket - now you lose about 30 percent of your go into the bag weight using this method, if you smoke a brisket you lose about 50 percent of your original weight (keeping in mind that meat is about 75 percent water).  DO try this recipe and if you want it fall apart tender and I mean FALL APART cook it at least an hour longer like I did "by necessity".

 

 

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/173521/bigs-baking-bag-corned-beef-dinner

 

Edited by bigmike&nan - 3/11/12 at 6:29am

We cooked ours in the crock pot last year.  It was ok, but we're going back to boiling it this year.  It could have just been the instructions I followed, but I found it a lot more dry than I like.

Turns out we tried something new again this year. Since hubby is in charge of cooking the corned beef, it was up to him to get it started on time. And he lost track of time! So instead of the traditional boil, we used the pressure cooker/canner that my dad gave us this past fall. It turned out tender and delicious, and in about half the time! We cooked the beef first, and while the brisket was resting we cooked the potatoes, carrots, and cabbage in about 10 minutes. The potatoes were perfect and didn't even need any extra salt, and the carrots were tender and sweet without being mushy. I don't like cabbage in pretty much any incarnation (except perhaps when boiled and mashed with potatoes to a homogenous state), but my toddler who wouldn't touch it last time we made cabbage ate it before he would eat the potatoes!

Sorry for the late reply (St. Patty's is over obviously) but my recipe is as follows:

 

Thefatguy's Corned Beef Heaven

 

Slice an entire brown onion into thick slices and line the bottom of a roasting pan.  Add 2 Bay leaves and 2 cloves garlic.  Lay the corned beef brisket (fat side up) on the bed of onions.  Pour the liquid in the brisket bag over the works.  Pour in one full bottle of Guinness stout.  Sprinkle pickling spice from brisket bag over brisket.*  Cover with foil and let it marinate in the fridge for 24 hours. 

 

Remove from fridge and add carrots, potatoes and/or cabbage at this time, if desired.  Recover with foil.  Bake at 350 for 1 hour 15 minutes per pound.  Finally, remove foil cover and turn oven to 375 for another 15 minutes to brown the top.  Remove from oven and let rest for at least ten minutes.  Cut with the grain and serve.

 

We eat this dish about once a month or more.  I've done it in a Crock Pot too but it doesn't come out as good.

 

*(The pickling spice that comes with the brisket is usually of a low quality so I always buy high grade pickling spice at the store and add a little more.  It may be hard to find and is pricey but one jar will last for many corned beefs and also goes great on other meats).

Edited by Thefatguy - 3/29/12 at 12:37am