The White Hat Guide to Corned Beef with White (Hat) Sauce

The first thing to realize about corned beef is that it has probably come from an old bull rather than a young bull. Either that or it has come from a cow who has been around the block a few times and can tell these young heifers a thing or two. “Listen my dear, a delicate veal schnitzel might be able to tantalize for a short time but before you know it they’re so over you and onto the next course. Ah, but corned beef is a different matter. After a corned beef meal people will say ‘that was really satisfying – I don’t need anything else.”

There are a few basic steps:

• Remove the excess salt. This is usually done by some form of simple soaking. There are two reasons for removing the excess salt. The first is that few people enjoy eating really salty meat unless they have grown up within the Arctic Circle. The second reason is that you want the cooking liquid at the end of the process to be useable for other things and this highly unlikely if it is very salty
• Prepare the cooking liquid. Ideally this will contain some acid (vinegar or cider), maybe some sugar, and sturdy vegetables
• Cook. There is no way around this. It is going to take a while
• Add vegetables. Towards the end of the cooking period you can add accompanying vegetable which will take on the flavours of the cooking liquid
• Prepare sauce. This can be as simple of slicing the meat and serving with some mustard on the side, but seeing you’ve got that cooking broth, why not make a mustard sauce?
• Serve. Dah dah!
• The next day(s). What’s left over can be used in varieties of ways in days to come.

So here are our suggestions:

Remove the salt. - If the meat is lightly salted, as is often the case with the corned beef you buy from the butcher’s window or at a market, then it may only take 10 to 15 minutes in bowl of cold water to remove the excess salt. When the bright red colour starts to disappear and is replaced by a duller grey, it indicates that the soaking water is starting to be absorbed into the beef. We prefer to remove it at or before that stage, because we’ve got some more interesting flavours than plain water we want absorbed into the meat.

If the butcher has taken your piece of meat straight out of his pickling barrel it might require several soakings of 15 minutes, changing the water each time. The same may apply with the sort of corned beef you often find in supermarkets enclosed in plastic packaging much of the outside of which is taken up with listing the variety of chemicals that have been added for your protection.

Finally, if the corned beef has come straight out of an unrefrigerated pickling barrel in the outback, you may need to put it in a saucepan of cold water, slowly bring that to the boil, discard the water and you’re ready to start.

Prepare the cooking liquid - Your somewhat desalted meat is now ready to suck up some of broth you are about to lovingly prepare for it. Salted meats work well with acidic liquids. Most kitchens will have white vinegar readily available or, better still, a cider vinegar. This may need some sugar to offset the tartness – it will depend on the vinegar. Our preference is to use an apple cider. Then you want some aromatics. Some bay leaves (fresh or dried) a dozen or so peppercorns and a similar amount of cloves and possibly some bruised allspice. Then some vegetables to add some flavour and goodness to the broth. You are probably not going to eat these so you don’t have to be too fancy. This is a chance to use some of those tired vegetables you have hanging around. Maybe a stalk of celery (leaves and all), and perhaps a carrot and a parsnip that are going limp. If available, we like to take a whole (clean) unpeeled onion, cut it in half, skin and all, and throw that in.

Cook - Having thrown all this stuff into a large saucepan, add the meat then top up with cold water until it is just covering the meat. Cover, bring to the simmer, then turn down the heat so the liquid is just bubbling. From time to time you may need to add more water but remember that later on you are adding more vegetables which will raise the level of the liquid.

Add vegetables - Towards the end of the cooking is the time to add your eating vegetables (as distinct from your flavouring vegetables). Hearty root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, etc work well. If you know your potatoes usually take about 20 minutes, throw them in about 20 minutes before the end. But when is ‘the end’ I hear you ask. Once a sharp knife starts slip easily into the meat then you know the end is approaching.

Prepare sauce – You don’t have to have a sauce but with that stock sitting there it seems a waste not to. In a separate pan melt some butter, add some flour and when that gas started to thicken add some cream or milk, plenty of whole grain mustard while all the time diluting with the cooking stock without letting it get too runny.

Serve – Remove the beef from the liquid and let sit for about ten minutes then carve. The vegetables can be served straight from the put or, if you prefer, can be mashed. There must be a mustard on the side and not one of your delicate Frenchy or German or American ones. You need the sort of hot English mustard that can double as paint stripper.

The next day(s) - Cold meat and salad, corn beef sandwich with mustard, corn beef & potato patties, meat loaf, etc. Anyone who throws out yesterday’s corn beef didn’t deserve to have it in the first place.