Good morning all!

Welcome back.

As has now become tradition, today I will be bringing you the 4th iteration of Sunday Gravy Saint Patrick’s Day dinner.

Yep, we’ve done this fucker before. Remember back?

The first episode was the traditional Irish/American Saint Patrick’s Day feast.

The second year we made a traditional Irish stew. Along with the rest of the standard trappings.

Last year we made a shepherds pie.

That one also had the traditional corned beef, some homemade Irish soda bread and the ubiquitous Guinness and Jameson.

All three of those meals featured corned beef that was purchased in the bag and prepared at home.

So what to do this year? I mean, shit, I’ve still got to stick with tradition but we’re running out of things to make for a Sunday Gravy feature while still remaining loyal to right family tradition.

Then?

An epiphany!

What if?

Stay with me here, what if we made the corned beef…

FROM SCRATCH!

Fucking A man! Buy us a goddamn brisket and corn that motherfucker ourselves!

See that banner image up there?

Yessir. From scratch.

Now compare that photo to this one.

Store bought, bagged corned beef.

VS.

The made from scratch shit.

Hell yes I did.

That pizza box you see was used to transport my granddaughters Irish soda bread. Trust me I wouldn’t order Little Caesar’s if I was dying of starvation.

If you are serious about giving this dish a try at home I should warn you. This “corned” or brined in my refrigerator for?

Eight fucking days!

Seriously!

Here’s when I started the process to the exact second.

This was served as the finished meal on March 17th, Saint Patrick’s Day itself.

C’mon! You have room in your refrigerator for a 4 pound brisket that’s soaking in a brine for 8 days don’t you?

You’re going to have to find some if you want to do this. Do you really need all that FOOD in there? Fuck no you don’t. This takes priority dammit.

If you do decide to take on this endeavor, you’ve got to procure a few, let’s call them “unusual” items. Get on the Googles and get yourself some of this shit.

That pink looking shit on the left is pink curing salt and the reason it’s colored pink is so you won’t confuse it with regular salt. And NO it’s not pink Himalayan salt. I can’t tell you how many people asked me that question when I told them I was making this recipe. Pink curing salt is 93.75% table salt and 6.25% sodium nitrate and eating it on it’s own is considered a really bad fucking idea. This shit is toxic. The reason we are using it is because this recipe calls for an 8-10 day brine and we’re gonna kill any little bacteria beasties that are going to try and fuck with our corned beef. The sodium nitrate will do that for us. Store the unused pink salt way the fuck out of the way of the reach of children.

This has been your warning about pink curing salt.

The item on the right is pickling spice mix. You could make this at home with some mustard seed, cloves, cinnamon sticks, dill seeds, allspice berries, coriander seeds, black peppercorns, dried chile de arbol, bay leaves and ground ginger but I decided since I’m ordering pink fucking curing salt online I may as well get the pickling spices too.

There may be additional pickled things in the future. The wheels in my brain are spinning with ideas as we speak.

You’re also gonna need one of these bad boys.

That’s a four pound slab of fresh beef brisket.

Let me tell you a fun story.

A couple of weeks before Saint Patrick’s Day I decided that I was going to do this crazy corned beef from scratch shit so I did my research and planned accordingly. On one of my regular weekly visits to my regular grocery store, Ralph’s, I spoke with a butcher. “Butcher”, I says, “Do you normally carry brisket?”

“Not normally” he said, “But with Saint Patrick’s Day and Passover coming up we usually have some this time of year.”

“Can I pre-order a 5 pound brisket from you?” I inquired.

“Yes you can,” was the rejoinder “Just give us a call 2 days in advance and we will take care of it for you.”

Cool.

On Thursday March 7th I called the store and spoke with the meat and seafood department. The person I spoke with said “Of course we can have a five pound brisket for you this Saturday. Just come to the butcher counter and we’ll take care of you.”

I specifically asked “Should I leave my name?”

“Nah, that’s fine. We’ll have it in back for you.”

I went to the store on Saturday, rolled my cart to the meat counter and said “Hi. I called in on Thursday and I’m here to pick up my five pound brisket.”

The butcher looked something like this.

“Looks like I owe you a brisket.” He said as I administered the self applied face palm.

“There was a woman who came in and asked for a brisket just 30 minutes ago, hopefully one that was about 5 pounds and I thought…”

“I specifically asked you if you wanted to take my name down.” I said through gritted teeth.

Another butcher said “Maybe it was your wife!”

I responded “That would be quite the trick since I’ve been divorced for over 20 years.” As much as I wanted to add the word “Motherfucker” to the end of that sentence I did not.

They tried the old “Let me check tomorrow’s delivery order. Maybe I can come in early tomorrow and grab one from another store for you…” and blah blah blah.

“No thanks. I’ll figure this out.” And I finished the rest of my shopping.

This is when I loaded the groceries into my car, closed the door and yelled “FUCK!”

I then went to Whole Foods and paid $10.00 a goddamn pound for a brisket. That’s the one pictured.

Son of a bitch.

Oh yes you will also need a box of these.

Those are (2) turkey size oven bags. You will need both of them. These fucking things are big enough for a turkey, Hell they’re big enough to line your kitchen trash can.

Once you have finally accumulated these items you are ready to get started.

Corned beef FROM SCRATCH!

A fresh beef brisket – oh yeah the one from Whole Foods was just shy of 4 pounds. It was the largest they had.

About half a gallon of water

1 cup of plain salt

2 tablespoons of pink curing salt

1/2 cup of dark brown sugar

4 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup of the pickling spices plus 2 tablespoons more when we cook the corned beef

1/4 cup of mustard for when we cook the brisket.

A lot of goddamn time. Eight to ten days worth.

Here we go.

Let’s get all of the ingredients with the exception of the brisket into a pot over medium high heat.

Get yourself a big bowl or a vessel large enough to hold the meat while it brines.

Double bag those two turkey size oven bags and place the brisket inside the inner bag.

Get the brine just to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar.

Let cool down to room temperature. You could dump a few ice cubes into the mixture to help expedite the cooling. When the brine has cooled, pour over the brisket.

Squeeze out as much air as you can from the inner bag and tie it tightly.

Next we are going to also tie up the outer bag.

This affords us a double layer of protection during the brining process. It’s important that the brisket is completely covered with the brine.

Now all you got to do is sock this fucker into the fridge.

And wait.

And wait.

And wait.

You can check on the brisket daily if you want but as long as it’s completely submerged you’ll be fine.

Look I took a picture after the first 3 days!

See. That doesn’t really tell us shit, does it?

Finally it’s!

Saint Patrick’s Day!

Originally it was starting to look like everyone was going to be working on this day and I had planned to cook for myself. Then as tradition demands, eldest right called in sick, brought along son-in-law, the 2 eldest grand kids and a couple of delightful ladies to the proceedings.

Yes!

In fact this changed my plans so dramatically that I was concerned there wouldn’t be enough food so I actually ended up buying a store bought, bagged corned beef. I figured we could do a comparison.

Let’s cook both of them. I prepared them both the same way.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

If you remember our preferred cooking technique it involves lathering mustard all of the brisket then adding the pickling spice. Here’s the store bought version.

I place the brisket in a greased baking dish and wrap the brisket tightly in foil for baking.

Look it’s wrapped in foil now!

This will go in the preheated oven for about 3 hours.

Curious to see how our scratch made corned beef looks after 8 days of brining?

Here you go.

Nice!

I prepared the brisket the same as the first one. Grease a baking dish, line with foil, set the brisket on the foil, lather both sides with some mustard then sprinkle over about 2 tablespoons of the leftover pickling spice from that jar up there.

Seal tightly in the foil and get in the oven.

FIRST NOTE OF CORRECTION! I cooked both of these at 350 for 3 hours. What was observed is that these should be cooked at different time/temp from each other. The corned beef was fully cooked through but it formed a crust – almost like a barbecue brisket – on one outer edge. Next time I will cook at 300 degrees for 4 hours.

It was still very, damn delicious but it could have been a bit more tender. Oh yeah, a solid rinsing of the brisket prior to applying the mustard would have removed some of the excess salt. Noted for the future.

Let’s see what we look like after the 3 hours at 350 degrees.

Awesomeness. Again it was damn fine eating but with a tweak or two it could have been legendary.

Again. Here’s the homemade version.

Here’s the store bought version.

I was very happy with the coloring of the homemade version. In addition to killing the bacteria, the pink curing salt is where corned beef gets it’s pink color.

Since we had a good group coming over I made another shepherds pie – see last years post for the details.

I wanted to keep everything as authentic as possible so we had some Irish cheddar and some of this.

Real Irish butter. The carrot was for the shepherds pie.

Eldest granddaughter even made homemade Irish soda bread again this year. What’s really fucking outstanding is she does this all on her own initiative now. She doesn’t need to be asked. She intentionally wants to bring something that SHE made to our annual gathering.

How fucking cool is that?

Here’s the whole meal.

Look at the difference between the two corned beefs. The homemade is on the top and the store bought is on the right. The homemade version cuts and eats like a slice of brisket. Like “brisket” brisket while the other is the standard corned beef that you are familiar with.

Check out that soda bread that the granddaughter made. She is killing this recipe! It gets better and better each year.

There were many, many bottles of Guinness consumed, there were many, many shots of Jameson downed and it was a fantastic gathering of the tribe this year.

I will ABSOLUTELY be making corned beef from scratch from this day forward. I will make the noted corrections and you can check the results when I post next year’s Saint Paddy’s Day Sunday Gravy.

It’s good to be Irish.

Thanks for being there folks. I couldn’t do it without you.

Enjoy the rest of the Tournament.

PEACE!