Right before St. Patricks day, my local supermarket was offering corned beef brisket for a ridiculously low price, so I bought 3 and froze them. Someone in another thread mentioned they didn't freeze well, so I was a little concerned. Oh well... the deed was done.
A few days ago, I defrosted one of the briskets and put it in the crock pot with enough water to make it float. I added the spice packet it came with (because I like mustard seed) and also added some pickling spice that I recently bought from Penzey's specifically for this meat. It took a lot longer than I expected (about 7 hours), but we had it for dinner that night along with some stir fried cabbage. I don't like steamed cabbage, but I really enjoy stir fried with Asian condiments. It was really tasty. My only disappointment came in slicing it. Of course, I sliced across the grain, but several times bits of stringy meat broke off from the slice. It wasn't that big a deal, but I wonder if that had anything to do with it being frozen beforehand? Oh... and how do you all handle the layer of fat? I tried to slice it off, but close to the meat, it got mushy and gross.
Right before St. Patricks day, my local supermarket was offering corned beef brisket for a ridiculously low price, so I bought 3 and froze them. Someone in another thread mentioned they didn't freeze well, so I was a little concerned. Oh well... the deed was done.
Nope, they freeze fine. I buy 8 or 10 of them on sale and bring them out throughout the year, sometimes just cook 'em up for cold sandwiches.
Quoted message said:
I sliced across the grain, but several times bits of stringy meat broke off from the slice. It wasn't that big a deal, but I wonder if that had anything to do with it being frozen beforehand?
Nope. Corned beef is just like that, when it gets tender it practically falls apart. Sometimes I just give up and get a big spoon.
Quoted message said:
Oh... and how do you all handle the layer of fat? I tried to slice it off, but close to the meat, it got mushy and gross.
I pull the brisket out of the water when it is done and put it on a big tray and use the back side of a big knife to scrape the fat off. It is mushy and gross. Just keep scraping. Sometimes you have a layer of fat in between two pieces of meat, it's ok to separate them to get the fat out. Then throw the fat out, put the beef back in the liquid to keep it from drying out, and then when you're ready to serve you pull out a nice lean brisket for the guests to enjoy.
I sliced across the grain, but several times bits of stringy meat broke off from the slice. It wasn't that big a deal, but I wonder if that had anything to do with it being frozen beforehand?
do you have a really sharp knife? i can tell when my knives are getting dull. there's a lot more sawing and a lot less cutting going on.
Interesting. I was just cruising to find out about ways to cook it other than the traditional cabbage. Would like to try to use like Texas BBQ brisket. Found today that the local market had it on sale for 99cents a lb so I bought a bunch and threw in the freezer.
Dawn said:
Ginny Sher said:
Right before St. Patricks day, my local supermarket was offering corned beef brisket for a ridiculously low price, so I bought 3 and froze them. Someone in another thread mentioned they didn't freeze well, so I was a little concerned. Oh well... the deed was done.
Nope, they freeze fine. I buy 8 or 10 of them on sale and bring them out throughout the year, sometimes just cook 'em up for cold sandwiches.
Quoted message said:
I sliced across the grain, but several times bits of stringy meat broke off from the slice. It wasn't that big a deal, but I wonder if that had anything to do with it being frozen beforehand?
Nope. Corned beef is just like that, when it gets tender it practically falls apart. Sometimes I just give up and get a big spoon.
Quoted message said:
Oh... and how do you all handle the layer of fat? I tried to slice it off, but close to the meat, it got mushy and gross.
I pull the brisket out of the water when it is done and put it on a big tray and use the back side of a big knife to scrape the fat off. It is mushy and gross. Just keep scraping. Sometimes you have a layer of fat in between two pieces of meat, it's ok to separate them to get the fat out. Then throw the fat out, put the beef back in the liquid to keep it from drying out, and then when you're ready to serve you pull out a nice lean brisket for the guests to enjoy.
"Jim Davis" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:
Interesting. I was just cruising to find out about ways to cook it other than the traditional cabbage. Would like to try to use like Texas BBQ brisket. Found today that the local market had it on sale for 99cents a lb so I bought a bunch and threw in the freezer.
If you use a corned beef it would be more like Pastrami than bbq brisket as bbq is not cured.
