Corned Beef help, 24 lbs of it


 

Brian Merz

TVWBB Member
I have brined Corned Beef many times and got it down, for one brisket at a time that is. I have friends who woulk like one and my question is do I triple my recipe or just use enough brine to cover the meat? If I do just use enough to cover do I need to add more pink salt to compensate for the extra meat? Ruhlman uses 25g of pink salt for 5lbs of brisket in one gallon of water, should I triple the amount to match the amount of meat or go by how much brine I use to cover the meat?
I plan on using enough brine to cover and use pink salt equal to the amount of brine I use but I just would like some advice from the VWB Charcuterie masters out there.
 
You don't need to triple the brine recipe, but just do some math to make sure that the total salt percentage stays the same, and scale from there.
 
What Dave said. You're shooting for a percentage, so it won't necessarily be triple unless you triple everything in the brine and the weight of the meat.
 
Basically, measure how much water you need to cover all that meat, and then calculate the weight of that water (1 L = 1000g). Add that to the weight of your meat, and then use that as the total weight for calculation of your salt percentage. The pink salt percentage is somewhat secondary to this calculation.

If you're happy with Ruhlman's salt proportion then stick with it, otherwise adjust it down or up to your taste.

Here's a note from Ruhlman's blog:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">*A note about the salt. Salt level not hugely critical here because it’s basically boiled and excess salt moves into cooking liquid. You can weigh out 12 ounces here if you feel better using a scale (approximately a 10% brine). Or you can simply make a 5% brine of however much water you need to cover (6.4 ounces per gallon). When you cook it, season the cooking liquid to the level you want your meat seasoned. Another option is wrapping the brisket in foil and cooking it in a 225 degree oven till tender, but only do this if you’ve used the 5% brine. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ruhlman seems to calculate brines based on the concentration of salt in water alone, disregarding the weight of the meat. I disagree with this approach as it falls apart for greater quantities like the ones you're talking about. In my opinion the brine strength needs to be based on the total weight of meat and water, not the water alone, for consistency purposes.
 

 

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