pickled brisket, a.k.a. corned beef

I made my own corned beef for this past shabbos. muse send me an email today that the 18th edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival is coming up, so I figured I will let you know how to make great corned beef, a.k.a. pickled brisket.

Here is my recipe.

Caveat: My recipes are not exact. I do not follow them to a "t". They are just guidelines. I usually add much more of each ingredient than called for, so caveat emptor. I will add, that it came out amazing.

The only other time I have put up a recipe on this blog, and submitted to KCC, can be seen here. That was my "meat and hummous" recipe. People found it pretty amusing.

So here goes:
ingredients:

• 1 cow/bull
• slaughtering knife/chalaf
• (at least) 1 bag koshering salt
• lots of water
• slotted board/table
• butchering knives
• ziploc bag
• 2 cups koshering salt (in addition to bags above)
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pickling spices
• 2-3 Bay Leaves
• 10 cloves
• 1tbs whole peppercorn
• 1tbs whole Allspice
• a bunch of garlic cloves
• 1 tspn of ground mustard

Instructions:

1. slaughter cow/bull
2. butcher and kasher cow/bull meat or at minimum the brisket (cut from the chest of the cow)
3. take 5 pounds of brisket (or more of you want more corned beef) and trim some of fat
4. take ziploc bag and throw in the pickling ingredients, including, 2c kosher salt, brown sugar, peppercorn, allspice, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, mustard and pickling spices.
5. Mix it up well
6. put brisket into ziploc bag, rubbing the spice mix all over the brisket.
7. squeeze air out of bag and seal
8. store in cool place (back of fridge works for me), preferably with something heavy (like a brick) on top.
9. Store for 1.5 - 2 weeks.
10. every 4 days or so, open bag rotate meat rubbing spices over meat, squeeze out air and reseal.

Mazel tov! You now have a pickled brisket (corned beef) that is completely inedible.
To make it edible: Boil brisket in water on low flame for about 1.5 hours. Repeat this three times, changing water each time.
You now have an edible corned beef.
For extra flavor, mix in separate pot: 2 spoons ketchup, 1 spoon mustard, some vinegar, 1 cup brown sugar. Bring to low boil.
Take a bunch more cloves. Stick them into the meat in various places.
Pour mixture over brisket. Stick brisket in oven and bake for 10 minutes covered and ten minutes uncovered at a normal temperature (whatever temp you normally bake things at - I have no idea what temp that is).
Remove cloves stuck into meat.
Dig in!