Fall-Apart Dry Cure Corned Beef

Mix everything but the steaks and the pickling spices in a medium-size bowl. Mix well, so there aren’t any clumps of any single ingredient left. It should be grainy and a bit lumpy, since the powders will coat the bits of garlic (and ginger, if you grated it fresh). This mix will magically turn plain ol’ meat into corned beef.

Rub the curing mix all over the steaks. Give ‘em a good thorough massage with the stuff, and try to coat every nook and cranny with it.

Place in a sealed container (either a tight-sealing dish or bowl, or a 1 gallon Ziploc bag—the less airspace, the better), and place in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

After 24 hours, take steaks out of your container and “rework” them (that’s what I’ve heard it called–basically, you give the steaks another massage to work the now-soggy curing mix into the surface better). Then put them back in the container, and leave them in the fridge for another 48 hours.

After the 72 total hours is up, take them out and put them in either a pressure cooker, crock pot, or big stovetop pot (see cooking times below) just covered with water, with your tablespoon of pickling spices.

Cooking times:
Cook for 45 minutes in a pressure cooker.
Boil gently for 3 hours on the stovetop.
Cook in the crock pot for 8-10 hours on low heat.

When it’s all done, you’ll have to remove the meat from the pot with a big spoon or a strainer, because it will be falling-apart tender, and totally irresistible. Although the recipe says this will serve 6, when I cook it I never invite more than three people over, because we somehow eat it all ourselves.

Note: Store-bought corned beef briskets are wet-cured, and if that’s what you’re used to (or home-made wet-cure for that matter), dry cure corned beef will have a stronger flavor. To make the finished dish a bit milder and less salty, you can rinse the steaks off before putting them in the pot to cook.