Happy Life, Happy Wife

Recipe adapted from: Betty Crocker

In my lifetime I’ve made exactly two corned beefs.  The first one: Amazing!  The second one: Disgusting!  It was so bad that I haven’t been able to bring myself to try it again… until now.  I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong because I used the exact same recipe.

This time I did a little bit of research beforehand.  Corned beef is generally made from the brisket:

Diagram courtesy of: http://www.foodreference.com/

Now normally I don’t like to imagine my meat as coming from an animal.  What actually sparked my interest was finding out that the butt cut on a pig doesn’t actually come from his rear end.  Who knew.  After about 10 minutes of staring at a pig diagram, I moved on to some of the other animals.  It isn’t that I’m concerned about animal rights or have any religious reason to avoid eating meat, it’s just that I prefer to think of my meat as coming straight from the little white plastic container at the meat counter of my grocery store.  Steaks are born at Publix, right?

But back to corned beef — there are two different cuts: point and flat.  A lot of people say the point cut is the way to go because it has a lot more flavor.  While that may be true, it just isn’t worth the risk to me.  Flavor comes from fat, and the point cut has way too much fat in my opinion!  Who wants to cook something for 8 hours only to have it turn out inedible?  So I will play it safe and only go with the flat cut from now on.

And that, my friends, is all of the disgusting fat I trimmed off before being left with a gorgeous looking piece of meat.

The ground red pepper adds just the right amount of kick that my previous recipe was lacking.

  This picture didn’t come out clear, but you get the idea.

Ingredients:

• 1 corned beef brisket, flat cut.  (3-3½ lbs)  Discard seasoning packet.
• 3/4 tsp ground red pepper
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth.

Required Equipment:

• Slow cooker

Directions:

1. Trim most of the visible fat off the outside of your corned beef.  Place in slow cooker.
2. Sprinkle the red pepper on top.
3. In a small bowl, mix Worcestershire sauce and chicken broth.  Pour into slow cooker over beef.
4. Cover and cook on low for 8-9 hours, until beef is cooked and tender.
5. Remove beef from slow cooker and transfer to a serving platter.  Discard cooking juices.  Cut beef across the grain into thin slices.

I don’t like cabbage, so I just served mine alongside some new potatoes.  (My favorite!)