Lessons Learning: Learning to Corn Beef

I don't know if it's because you get older, you don't have it for a while or you CAN'T have it, but it seems that living in China really changes the thing that you like to eat. Before moving here my husband didn't like things like spicy food, tuna, mayonnaise and cream cheese, but now he loves them! Growing up I don't remember disliking Corned Beef & Cabbage, but it definitely wasn't something I ever asked my mom to make. I'm not really sure when it happened, but now whenever I head back to the States I always request a meal of Corned Beef & Cabbage. I just can't get enough.

Last year during St. Patrick's day I was pregnant and I was really craving corned beef. I searched online for a recipe so I could corn some beef so I could then make corned beef (we don't have the luxury of just going to the grocery store and buying it all packaged up). For whatever reason, probably because I'm terrible at searching for things on the internet, I couldn't find anything. I was just going to have to live without. This year, St. Patrick's day rolled around again and I was talking about corned beef. A friend of mine had said that a friend of hers had made corned beef here in China before! I was thrilled and ready to try it. I searched again online, this time with success!

The part that I dreaded the most was to special order the meat. I had to go to the meat market and ask them to cut me the right size piece of meat. The meat is usually pre-cut into small chunks because people here usually just eat meat cut up really small and stir fried with vegetables. I was all prepared to put up a fight for them to cut me a piece big enough, but when I asked they said ok and ended up giving me about twice as much meat than I really needed. It was much simpler than I imagined, not hard at all - the hardest part was over in my mind.

Next I had to make the brine. Brine is water that is saturated, or nearly saturated with salt and used in the brineing process. The brining process is when meat is soaked, or marinated in brine to preserve it. It causes the meat to be more moist. To make the brine solution I added salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves to water and heated it on the stove to dissolve all the salt.

Next I put the meat and the brine together in ziplock bags and let it soak for two weeks in my refrigerator.

The time had come to cook it! I rinsed the meat, threw out the brine and placed the meat in the largest pot I had. Filled it 2/3 way full with water and an onion and some spices and turned it on. It started to smell yummy almost immediately!

The meat didn't really look like my mother's corned beef as I cut. I didn't use saltpeter which preserves the redness. But it tasted just like my moms! It was so yummy. I couldn't stop sampling it while I carved it up!

Since I had so much meat I decided to make a party out of this feast and invited a bunch of friends over to enjoy this meal together. The meat would probably have been better if I had cooked it a little bit longer but company was coming! We had 9 adults, 6 children and 2 babies in our small little apartment. but the meal was delicious! Everybody had seconds and thirds! I could have made a third head of cabbage because we ran out.