CORNED BEEF - Diners/Drive-ins/Dives

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q dawg

Smoke Blower
Original poster
Jan 11, 2010
79
10
Anyone else see the show last night...the segment where the guy was making the corned beef.....curing it in large (looked like garbage cans)...using a specially made cure (Just for them)......they used godzillion of these CBs everyday and had tons curing at any one given time....did anyone remember the total curing time...sounded unreal what I remember ?!!!

Also couldn't believe how the one guy was pulling and mushing up his butts....sounded like he sold a ton of it though....who am I to doubt !!!

Q Dawg
 
Just remember, some/many folks out there consider McDonalds a "Burger joint"
 
As I remember, it was the deli guy in the Houston area... 3rd. generation deli operator. 35 days was the total cure time. 10 days in the first brine; 10 days in the 2nd. brine; 10 days in the 3rd. brine and finished for 5 days in the fourth brine. It looked as though he was using 30 gallon garbage cans as brining vessels. He also did his own pastrami and looked like a killer recipe for knishes.

I was more impressed with the family taqueria with the hand made tamales. Gonna have to try that one out when the weather gets a bit warmer and I can smoke a butt.
 
Yep. Saw that too. Guy sold an amazing amount of Corned Beef for a jewish deli in Houston, TX.
I'm pretty sure tortminder is right about the cure times.
 
That many in that size barrel an overhaulin would be bout right fer an old time recipe, plus that be a wet cure which take a bit longer then a dry cure that were used ta fer so many thins. Plus ya gotta remember there boilin them to, so the salt is gonna leave em.

Ever deli man got his own secret recipe an some of em been in the family fer generations.

At least they was rubbermaid garbage cans!
 
The deli is called Kenny and Ziggy's and is the Galleria area of Houston. I went there the night after DDD aired and it was great. Pastrami (homemade of course) was to die for. The Chicken soup could cure anything.

Going back tomorrow. I will ask about the brine cure times, but I remember something like the 30 days that was mentioned. Will let you know if I get any details.
 
30 - 35 days is normal, my dad pickled all his whole-muscle meats 30 days (hams, bacons, shoulders, boned and rolled rib and rump roasts for corned beef, etc.). He did chickens 3 or 4 days and turkeys 7 days, pork hocks, feet, snouts, beef and calf tongues, ears, tails, beef kidneys, oxtails, etc. 5 days, ribend and loinend pork roasts 14 days. He'd cut these up after smoking plus any ham and shoulder ends left over, mix with ingredients and grind for ham loaves (like meat loaves) and sell. We'd have to roll them into loaves, wrap in foil and freeze, then he'd put an ingredient label on them and then seal with sealing plastic and sealing iron (long before COV) and sell, having to weigh and price at the checkout counter (before pricing machines too, lol!).
I remember some of the recipe; when he ground the smoked pork he also ground some onions with it (usually made up 70lbs. at a time, that's what his buckets held) and green peppers, bread crumbs, black pepper (of course it didn't need salt, lol!), eggs and beet juice (for color). They sold very well; he'd cook up a few and sample them out on the meat counter to promote. It was a vehicle to maximize usage of ham ends shank and butt portions after all the centercut slices had been cut off) and ribend and loinend pork roasts that didn't sell, reprofiting from them.
Those were pretty quick to do. But, we'd do the same for beef and pork trim, making up 70lb. buckets of meatball mix. Now that was a chore, standing there with hand meatballers, scooping out and rolling meatballs onto full sheet bakery trays, decorating each one with paprika and parsley flakes, then freezing. Once frozen, we'd package up into foil trays, wrap in foil and seal. Of course, me and my twin brother got conscripted into doing the meatball scooping and rolling after school (got us out of doing beer and soda bottle returns!). One time we were goofing around and every now and then would toss a meatball up and see how long it'd stick on the ceiling (yes, I know.. but we were 13 or 14). My brother had just pasted one up there and in walks Mike, the State Meat Inspector. We're just staring at each other, trying not to look up, scared to death. He went out to the smoke room to check temps and *plop* it fell down onto the meat table. We broke out laughing so hard he came back in and wondered if we were laughing at him (he had a complex or something). Just one of those things you never forget, even 45 years later! Sorry, I digressed!
 
I think I too heard something about 30 days and something about moving from barrell to barrell.

I love that show. Always shows some good looking food and they always demonstrate how they make it. Good stuff. Too bad it's on late at night because it makes me hungry and I don't like to eat that late at night.
 
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