Andrew Zimmern Cooks: Corned Beef

[Music] being a nice jewish kid from new york one of my favorite recipes to do is a version of my grandmother's corned beef which is why i'm holding this giant plastic container these types of containers are very very handy for home cooks to have but for this dish you're going to want one that is at least half this size and at least half as high because we need to soak this beautiful piece of brisket and let it cure about 10 days but the results are unbelievable first thing that i want to do is trim off some of this extraneous fat don't use a very big knife to trim your meat you're gonna have much more control with a smaller knife six or eight inches that you choke up on it's kind of like uh when you played baseball as a kid and they said if you want back control choke up on it i like knives that i can put my hand up and over so i actually shorten this and i can turn this into a four or five inch pairing knife i want a lot of control over the sharp part of my blade because i don't want to cut myself i want to be very precise so i want to leave some of the fat on here because you know fat is flavor and i want to balance that out with the lean when this eventually cooks a lot of this fat is going to liquidize and wind up in our water that ends up going down the drain but by the same token there's an awful lot of extraneous fat all over this piece of meat so i'm going to take this strip off just because it ends up being the thickest piece and as it comes down to the tail here just be very careful of your fingers you can feel where it's thick i can feel right there i have a nice big thick piece of fat and i'm just going to shave some of this away i can feel with my fingers it's a little thicker here and you see the way i'll pull up a flap and then hold on to it that's just knife safety 101. that way i know i can trim and i'm laying my knife flat against the meat i'd rather go over a section a second time than cut away too much fat or cut myself and then what i'm going to do is i'm going to square this off so that it cures evenly and it cooks evenly this piece of meat isn't even and so this meat some folks like to render beef fat for different uses in the kitchen i always like to take trim like this and while it's in my hand cut it for stew put it in a ziploc bag into my refrigerator one and a half inch squares is pretty good with brisket don't get into analysis paralysis it doesn't come squared off you're going to have some pieces that look different than others but if you do this a couple times you'll wind up with a few pounds of meat that can be beautiful for a beef stew in your house and now we have what is generically considered to be the flat of the beef so i have my trimmed piece of brisket i'm going to put that into my container you can see i left lots of room in there the one thing you don't want to do is cheat yourself on room that's very very important you don't want just barely covered here because air might get in and if air gets in because you're trying to create an anaerobic environment for curing if air gets in you can create molds you want to make sure that it's covered with the curing mixture and i'm just going to grab some cold water okay so i have this covered by about an inch of water which is exactly what i want and i'm just going to slowly add my ingredients and stir them together this is paprika i like to get a nice red color on this and the paprika helps i have brown sugar don't worry about little hard lumps in your brown sugar but i do like to break it up so that it does dissolve in the water efficiently i've got a couple of bay leaves there i've got my allspice my peppercorns some granulated garlic this is conventional pickling mix all the other stuff that's in here is in the pickling mix but i've got some cloves and mustard seed and little bits of chili and fennel and other things in there that helps i'm sort of doctoring up a conventional mix and then this is the most important thing this is called prague powder or butcher salt it's available online in stores online stores all over the net you can also get it now at most specialty food shops because curing meat has become so popular that salt that curing salt has the ability to both cure the meat but also has the ability to keep the meat looking pink and fresh inside and it's used in hams and other cured meat arts all over the world terrines of many kinds use it i'm just turning this a couple times so that i can dissolve all of that sugar and prague powder in there i want to make sure when my hands and i like to use my hands the most important tool in the kitchen uh on this so i can actually feel that there's nothing in the bottom there that's not dissolved don't be fooled the paprika and some of those other seasonings don't dissolve so you'll feel those little grains but you won't feel the sugar and salt in the bottom and i'm just gently moving my brisket back and forth in there just to make sure it's dissolved and then i'm going to leave my brisket fat side up in this curing mixture so at this point and by the way any non-reactive container that you have will do non-reactive things like stainless steel really well glazed china if it has any chips it's not going to be the right environment for your food don't use anything that has aluminum or copper or other soft metals in it cast iron won't work but any kind of food proof plastic is actually really ideal so this goes into your refrigerator and just mark your calendar so through the magic of video we actually have a corned beef that i did over a week ago and so we can go right to the cook-off process and i have some stock here because i like to poach this finished product in stock because i think it adds a lot to the flavor of the corned beef itself you're not going to use that for anything else you can't reduce this can be too salty it's got all the cure in it but cooking in that flavorful stock that we're going to add some aromatics to some cinnamon some mustard seed peppercorns more bay leaf so what i did was if you remember we had that hole flat i cut that flat in half this actually cured in about six days and i want to just rinse that cure off the outside you don't need to soak it it's just that i don't need all of those other curing flavors that actually preserved the meat in the pot that i'm going to cook it in so here we have a nice cleaned half a flat of beautiful brisket and we're going to put that into our pot and we're going to let you know that size three hours it's a very easy test to see if the corned beef is ready technically now that it's cured you could eat it raw nothing would happen to you but we want it cooked through and we want to cook through long enough for the internal temperature to reach about 175 degrees so the connective tissue in the collagen that's in the brisket breaks down enough to make it essentially spoon tender but still firm enough that we can slice it that's the key getting it just at that exact moment where it's absolutely perfect this piece that we've just cooked off is the horn or nose of the brisket that has that fatty rise at the end and the reason why that's important and by the way the test for this thing you can put a spoon in and turn it it's nice and done but this fatty rise that's right here some people like to cut it off and just have it for unglazed corned beef sandwiches or chef's nibbles or stuff like that but for me what i am removing it for oh god look at how nice that is is that i have a beautiful piece of corned beef that i can glaze evenly underneath my broiler and so all i'm going to do is combine my molasses a little bit of dry mustard powder some bourbon please use a good one alcohol of any kind as it reduces and you cook with it reveals more of its flaws so you want to start with something that is good the best rule of thumb for cooking with wine or alcohol is that if you wouldn't serve it to your best friend on his birthday or her birthday don't cook with it now i'm stirring here because molasses is notoriously finicky for dissolving in other liquids it's very thick i'm going to add some brown sugar to this now some people like to put hot chilies or mustard or you know ketchup into it and give it a different flavor profile by all means go ahead i i like this more sort of traditional southern approach with the bourbon molasses and brown sugar and i use the dry mustard very specifically so i get some of that mustard flavor without making this too liquidy now i am not stirring to dissolve the brown sugar that i'd be stirring here for a little while where i'd have to heat it i actually want some of that brown sugar to not dissolve because it's going to help stick to this now i will tell you this is easier to glaze if you don't have a hot corned beef my problem is i'm always cooking it and then wanting to serve it right away so i've sort of tackled this problem by making enough glaze and doing this underneath the broiler so that i can come back to my meat two or three times and glaze again and again and again do not get into analysis paralysis about covering this down slope every piece of meat is going to be different and after you get the first layer kind of sticky and tacky this next baste with our our molasses mixture is going to adhere to it a lot better and because this is hot i don't need to roast it in the oven i just stick it underneath the broiler and i've pre-set the broiler about 15 minutes ago so that i'm not putting it into a cold oven with a hot element on top of it my oven is nice and warm so we just slide this in and it's just going to take a couple minutes do not leave the kitchen at this point three hours of simmering sure leave the kitchen don't leave the kitchen while that's underneath the broiler because if you put too much heat you start to burn the sugars in there you're going to get a bitter tasting crust on top of something that you've spent 10 days or at a minimum three or four hours working on so you just stay right here oh you can see that sizzling and that's just been about 60 seconds but i like the glaze so on goes more and you see what i said about not caring about it coming down that down slope you're going to get plenty as we begin to slice this and i'm going to put this back under the broiler for another 30-40 seconds and i'm going to go one more round on this just because that wonderful molasses bourbon mustard trio really plays beautiful counterpoint to the somewhat salty cured meat i wouldn't describe it as overly salty but corned beef definitely has a salt profile i don't care about anything burning on the side here because we're not going to eat that we're just going to eat the stuff that's on top of here that's being insulated remember you cannot burn or scorch or brown food in the presence of moisture so on the top of here this is just staying perfect as long as you keep your eye on it i mean you don't even want to eat it and that brown sugar bourbon molasses glaze is just absolutely fantastic so we lift that out place it on our board don't throw this away while that's resting let's do a couple things first thing if you have soft butter you can spread it right on the bun this bun because i'm going to make a sandwich has a very very delicate crumb so all i'm going to do is stick that in my pan and let that melt and we'll just let those pieces of bread griddle and get warm keep a nice eye on them you don't want them to burn just like with the broiler that's a hot environment beautiful beautiful we don't want those overcooking while that is sitting there i'm going to add my mayonnaise i like russian dressing with this i'm a nice jewish kid from new york a little sweet relish i use heinz chili sauce for this just because i think it has better flavor for russian dressing than ketchup some people call this thousand island i was growing up we called it russian dressing i'm right everyone else is wrong so what i want to do is actually slice it at an angle like this so that by the time i get all the way across it i'm never going with the grain i'm always against the grain makes sense so take a look at the way the two lines of muscles go and then slice in such a way you get it by the way when you see some of the brown sugar fall off like that you actually know you've let it cool enough before we just you know couple minutes but enough so that that wonderful sticky molasses brown sugar mixture almost becomes like savory toffee on top of the corned beef and this is still warm anything that runs hasn't burnt so don't scrape down from the edges pour a little bit of that extra glaze on top of there so let's distribute the fat and the lean appropriately yeah let's do this new york style and make it nice and fat a dollop of russian dressing don't kill your guests don't put three tablespoons on and let it all run all over the place just serve them a nice sandwich like this let them help themselves to whatever size you might put out when it's sandwich time coleslaw potato salad whatever and keep the bowl of russian dressing handy so that if people want more they can add more bourbon molasses glazed corned beef pfg

Channel: Andrew Zimmern

Views: 264,622

Rating: 4.8139319 out of 5

Keywords: andrew, zimmern, Cooking, Culinary, Literacy, Kitchen, instructions, How, to, Yum, delicious, favorite, eating, meal, Travel, Channel, family, azcooks, St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's, Holiday, Corned Beef, Irish

Id: aCFN_mmfUBk

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021