Visiting my parents a few weeks ago I was thumbing through some hand written recipes in an old wooden box that my mother kept from my Grandma after she passed. They’re old Swedish recipes rewritten in English for the most part and a lot of pickling and preserving recipies. One that caught my eye was corned pork. I can’t eat beef anymore thanks to a tick bite - yes, a tick. It’s been about five years now since I’ve had any beef. One of the meals I most looked forward to as a child was my mother’s homemade corned beef. Just the smell alone brings a smile. So corned pork... hmmm. Sounds good. Recipe is pretty simple. And seems pretty much like corned beef. The recipe calls for the cheapest cut of pork available. I work part time as a butcher to fill in these days and we had pork shoulder and pork butt on hand the day I was planning to buy the meat. Decided to go with the pork butt. Deboned it, seamed it down the main muscle, butterflied it and then tied the pieces cut off back into it. Basically a meat stuffed pork butt roast. From there the meat gets placed in a crock that holds your brine. The brine is simple. Just a lot of individual spices. Next time I’ll probably just buy a little jar of the premixed pickling spices at the store and give that a try to see if it’s any different. Her brine recipe calls for enough cold water to cover the pork in the crock and add 1 lb of pickling salt and the spices. For the spice mix she wrote, “mix together and save enough for final boil.” So I mixed it all together - Three bay leaves, crushed up and then no official measurements on anything else, just a heavy handful of whole black peppercorns, a hearty amount of coarse ground black pepper, a handful of juniper berries, handful of whole cloves, sprinkle of minced cloves, handful of crushed red pepper, handful of whole mustard seed, handful of whole coriander seed. Ok that’s easy. I saved about 1/4 of it to use for actually cooking it and put the rest into the cold water and mixed it all up. Then the meat sits in the brine in the bottom back of the fridge for 10 days. Ugh... Has it been 10 days yet? After one week I took the crock out of the fridge to take a look at it. Man did it smell good even at that point. I don’t know why but I thought to cut the strings off to check the center of the roast and I’m glad I did - the center wasn’t corning. Tied it up too tight. The center meat was still good and had no bad smell to it so I decided to slice up the meat into about 2 inch thick slices and then I put it all back into the crock. Next time I make this I will just cut the pork butt up like this from the start. No need to tie it up. So it’s now 10 days later ... Take the meat out of the brine, rinse it under cold water and let it sit in a pot in cold water for one hour. Discard the brine. After one hour, take the meat out of the water, dump that water and add enough new, fresh cold water to cover the meat in the boiling pot. Add a quartered onion and a carrot to the water. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer for one hour. After the hour is up, dump that water and add fresh hot water, again enough to cover the meat. Add in potatoes and carrots (I also added in a head of cabbage hoping this would be somewhat similar to my moms corned beef), put spices in cheese cloth and hang in water from side of pot (we didn’t have any cheese cloth so I just threw the spices in the water - I don’t mind picking through them as I eat) and bring back to a boil then turn down and simmer for another hour to hour and a half. Add fresh water to top off as needed to keep it all covered. When done, drain the water, cut meat into slices and serve with the veggies. Let me just say, this is food heaven!! Came out so tender and flavorful. Next time I plan to dial back on the boil time by about 15 minutes. Just a touch over done. If you like corned beef and don’t mind waiting the 10 days I highly recommend giving this a try. I’m sure it’d work with any meat really. Corning is a pretty basic process. I never thought to try it on anything besides beef until now. Glad I did! And I’m not so sure there is anything necessarily Swedish about this. But that’s what I’m calling the recipe. Happy eating! One of the thicker slices came out a bit more juicy. So maybe 3” thick slices into the brine next time around.
This sounds delicious, I'm going to have to give it a try! I'm glad you added the cabbage. Somehow, nowadays, it seems folks don't eat much boiled cabbage but I sure like it!
Great thread and thank you for sharing the important details!!!! Looks absolutely delicious! Bravo Woodsman
I look forward to trying this! I think I'll try it with some of the boneless "ribs" that they sell cheap. Pork is amazingly affordable these days.
Looks great! I use a meat injector syringe to get the brine deep into the meat. A little Cure in the brine will keep the pork a nice pink colour too. I do this while doing pulled pork.
I think a lot of people have forgotten what food really is. Give me a boiled head of cabbage to complement some pickled meat any day over some of the garbage food that’s out there. There is so much flavor out there just naturally. So many people are picky though. And they always want to processed, fake flavored garbage. Just can’t beat real, quality food. I’m an adventurous foodie, though. So I’m a little biased. Still, picky eaters should sit at the kids table, in my opinion.
That’d be a perfect cut for it! I’m sure it’ll come out great. If you try it out, post up a pic or two here.
We are starting this today! One quick question, we are starting with about 1.7 lbs of the boneless ribs, so a pound of salt seems like way too much. Any advice on this? Thanks!
I use this recipe as a base from smokingmeatforums for my strami. (I hope its ok to post the link, if not, i understand) (spaces need to be removed.) https:// www.smokingmeatforums.com. /threads/pops6927s-wet-curing-brine. 110799/ If you read thru the thread, you will find that the salt can be altered to taste or dietary restriction. I typically use less salt and it still comes out great.
I read somewhere that a pound of salt would be good for a 5-6 lb brisket, so I was thinking about a 1/4 lb of salt. Comes to just a little more than 1/3 cup of salt. I think I'll try that.
