Smoked Corned Beef

To make a reasonable facsimile of pastrami you first soak fresh corned beef in water for 24-36 hours to rid it of some of the salt. You then coarse grind, in a 5/1 ratio, black pepper/coriander seed, add powdered garlic, onion powder and ground ancho pepper, liberally coat the corned beef with the mixture.

Smoke the corned beef as you would a brisket, though due to the corning process it will only take about half or three quarters as long, and you will be quite pleased with the results. I use full packer cut corned beef, point and flat, with the fat cap still attached. If you use a small corned beef flat without a fat cap make sure to smoke it under something fatty, like pork shoulder or baste often. 

Some wrap the smoked corned beef in foil while still hot and let it stew in its own juices overnight, allowing it to reabsorb the juice and become almost fall apart tender.  I find this step unnecessary using a full packer cut corned beef, plus I prefer my pastrami sliceable.

I have been smoking corned beef for at least two years and it is a favorite. The cracked black pepper/coriander seed/rub/then smoke soaked corned beef recipe came from Garry Howard and Dan Gill, who, I believe, adapted it from a recipe in Rick Thead's Meat Smoking and Curing FAQ. 

http://www.azstarnet.com/~thead/msfaq.html
http://www.velvitoil.com/Curing.HTML

Regards

Smoking in Chicago,
Gary 


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I should quality my 24-36 hour soaking time, I do not use grocery store
corned beef, which tends to be quite salty. I use full packer cut corned
beef, corned in-house by a small producer of corned beef and they are
not as salty as most, though they most definitely need soaking. 


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Ed Slavish wrote:
> 
> I could use a tip or 2 to tell me if I am on the right track. I picked up
2
> Corn Beef Briskets prepackaged including a small packet of spices
yesterday.
> I dropped the meat in cold water over night and planned to change the
water
> today and leave it soaking until, tomorrow. 

So far you are right on the money.......

> then rub with mustard to hold
> the spices then smoke them. 

I use a mustard rub on ribs, briskets etc, but not on smoked corned
beef, though I bet it would be good. 

> They don't have much fat left on them. I am
> wondering about laying a couple strips of bacon on them for basting?? 

If you can't smoke them under something fatty then bacon would be good,
either that or an oil based mop. If they have little or no internal
marbling then the only thing that would help would be larding. If they
are really dry you can do Dan Gill's trick of wrapping them in foil and
letting them reabsorb the juice, this step makes them more tender as
well, he recommends overnight. I do not wrap them as I use the full fat
cap packer cuts and they are quite tender and juicy.

> How
> long should they smoke? They are about 2.5 lbs and 3.5 lbs respectively.
The
> small one is a "Point". Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This is hard to say, corned beef will not take as long to cook as
brisket due to the corning process and will not get to the WaBa WaBa
stage (fall apart tender) no matter how long you smoke it, once again
due to the corning process. My 15 pounders take about 6 or 7, sometimes
8, hours, but I like pastrami sliceable. 

If I have to give a guideline I would say start checking at around 2
hours at 250, and no more than 4, this is a very loose guideline. The
point will get done before the flat. 

Hope this helps a little, it is really hard to give any type of
definitive time frame, especially since I do not know your smoker setup
and can not poke the smoking corned beef myself, guess you just have to
send me a ticket to Hawaii.

Regards

The Happy Leprechaun

Smoking in Chicago,
Gary (who has 73 pounds of corned beef in his refrigerator)

Dan Gill and Rick Thead's sites have good corn beef smoking info
http://www.azstarnet.com/~thead/msfaq.html
http://www.velvitoil.com/Curing.HTML


