The Three Faces of Corned Beef

Corned beef is incredible. Whether you’re boiling it with some vegetables, frying it up it with some potatoes and runny eggs, or stacking it high on bread, you can count me in. Naturally, it’s the third option that’s brought us here today.

There are three types of corned beef you could use to make a sandwich.

1. Canned corned beef.
2. Corned beef deli meat.
3. Slices of meat carved off of a whole brisket.

Are we really going to talk about all three? You bet.

So, what is corned beef, and why do they call it that?

Generally speaking, it’s a cut of beef (usually brisket) that’s either been rubbed or brined with nitrite-filled salt and a mix of delicious spices. A person could use kosher salt alone to salt a hunk of beef, but it won’t come out quite right. Pink salt or other nitrite-rich solutions won’t give your beef the almost too-savory punch or the strange, lovely pink hue of good corned beef.

“But Brian,” you ask “Aren’t nitrites bad for you? I heard they were bad for you.” You know, I’m not sure. But, how often do you eat corned beef anyway? You’re going to be fine. On the other hand, between my love of a good reuben and my almost endless capacity for hot dogs (also nitrate and/or nitrite-filled), I’ve grown to accept that I’ll either die early or take on a charming, ruddy pallor and be preserved longer than you can possibly imagine.

Why call it corned beef if there’s no corn? The idea I’ve read most often is “probably people just thought the big grains of salt looked like corn kernels.” But, food researcher/writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab suggests a much more definitive version of that story. I’ll let Kenji explain:

“Corn” is the old English word for “kernel” (see how similar they sound?). It referred to any kind of small, hard object, like, say, a large grain of salt. Corned beef is called corned beef because of the salt “corns” used to preserve it.”

A quick look at a couple old English resources confirms that he’s right. So, Kenji, I salute you for settling the issue. And, if you’re reading this, I’d gladly study under you in the style of whatever classic movie training montage you would like.

Canned Corned Beef: Really?

Meat in a can just doesn’t do well with people in 21^st century America. I can understand why, but you should give it a chance. If you’ve ever had corned beef hash at a little-hole-in-the-wall diner, you probably ate some. And you probably liked it. I’ve never seen a sandwich made out of the stuff, but I consider myself something of an expert on diner-style breakfast. So, I’ll just apply that technique here.

The key to the best possible canned corned beef is getting a texture that’s full of crisp brown bits.

1. Mash the beef into a single thin layer in your frying pan and brown it without disturbing it (I thoroughly recommend cast iron for this.)
2. Check around the edges after a few minutes. When the meat in contact with the pan looks crispy, push the whole mess back up into a pile and mix it up, and then, flatten it out again. Crisp it up.
3. Give it a few more minutes, then check the edge again. When it’s getting nice and crispy, you’re almost done. This time, use your spatula to divide the beef into sandwich-sized patties, then flip them and finish the other side.

You, my friend, have just taken full advantage of the Maillard reaction.

I griddled my sandwich with some Kerrygold Swiss on white bread with Thomy extra sharp German mustard. As strong as that mustard is, it wasn’t really able to cut through the overwhelming beefiness. I have to admit that I only planned on eating a few cursory bites of this, but I ended up abandoning my dinner plans and eating the whole thing. It was oddly appealing. And the saltiest thing I have eaten in recent memory.

Corned Beef Lunchmeat: A Delicious Paradox

Cold cuts suck, don’t they? Especially turkey, beef, and chicken. Supermarket turkey–mechanically processed and slimy and flavorless–has nothing to do with the sandwich I make at 8:00 p.m. on Thanksgiving, with its glorious tessellation of oddly shaped and textured turkey pieces. I generally avoid the processed stuff.

On the other hand, cured meats like ham, salami, and corned beef actually survive the transformation into supermarket staples. In the case of corned beef in particular, the meat gets saltier, and its flavor deepens. If I had to guess why this is, I’d say that it’s because lunchmeat is chock full of crazy preservatives, which works poorly for turkey or roast beef, but develops a weird chemical synergy with meat that has already been cured.

I hadn’t thought about it before I set out to write this article, but I’d wager a solid 95% of the corned beef sandwiches I’ve ever had were made from deli meat. They’re so simple that it’s almost impossible to have a bad one. Here are my guidelines:

1. Use decent meat (Boar’s Head is good and widely available).
2. Don’t skimp on the meat. You want to be able to describe it as a pile.
3. Rye bread and spicy brown mustard are your friends.

To be safe, I ate one at the Irish bar next to my apartment. It was too dark to get a picture, but I did confirm with the bar’s owner (who is from Ireland) that, in Ireland, they really don’t eat corned beef.

Honest-to-God Delicatessen Corned Beef

In order to eat the Platonic ideal of a corned beef sandwich, I decided to get on a plane and make a pilgrimage to Katz’s deli on the lower East side of Manhattan. There are a few iconic delis in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and I looked at several contenders. But Katz’s seemed to have the most character, and my understanding of Carnegie Deli sandwiches is that they’re more or less piles of meat and bread that you assemble yourself. So, I grabbed my hip Manhattanite girlfriend and off to Katz’s I went. Bear with me here, because until we get to the sandwiches, this is going to sound like a bad review.

On your first visit, Katz’s can be a weird, slightly disorienting place to eat. A polite gentleman greeted us at the door gave us a paper menu and two tickets, asked us what we wanted to eat, and then directed us to two separate lines. We were a little flustered. Ultimately, we ended up in line five different times. In three of those lines, I ran into other confused tourists. So, for any of you out-of-towners who end up at Katz’s on a Sunday, here’s the deal:

1. When you walk in the door, everybody gets a ticket. Everything you order goes on that ticket. If you lose one, you owe $50. If you realize that you lost your ticket and tell the cashier what was on your missing ticket for your meal, they’ll charge you for the meal, and the $50 lost ticket fee. It’s The Quirk That Feels Like a Scam™!
2. You’ll need to wait in a series of lines to get all the items you want. Before you get in a line, check out all the signs and figure out what you want. For expediency, I recommend sending one person for all the sandwiches, one person for the hot dogs, etc. Unless somebody wants soup and half a sandwich.
3. If someone in your party is ordering a bowl of soup and a half sandwich, tell the first clerk you’re getting that combo so they write it correctly on your ticket. Otherwise, you risk having the clerk tell you that you can’t have half a sandwich, then acting like you ruined his entire day by making him cross out the soup and write the price for the combo.
4. Gather your stuff, sit down and eat. Then, stand in one last line to pay. The cashier will total your tickets, write the total on one, add sales tax, and then staple the packet together. You turn it in on your way out the door.

I couldn’t believe how many unpleasant people seemed to be working at Katz’s. Nobody should be unhappy around this much beautiful meat! When I got home, I checked around The Internet to see if other people a similar experience. What I found were a) people complaining about the tickets and shoddy service, and b) “Real New Yorkers” claiming that those people must be stupid, then spiraling into misogyny and a dark hatred of everybody from Iowa.

I like quirky restaurants with weird ordering rules. I don’t even mind surly all-business staff; I get it, this place is a madhouse. That’s part of why I’m here. But other than the food, my experience at Katz’s was uncomfortable. If you want to, you can decide I’m another Midwesterner who would never make it in New York. That’s your thing. On the other hand, if you want an example of a classic New York restaurant with endearing-but-disgruntled counter help, go to Shopsin’s and tell the waiter that I sent you. He’ll tell you he doesn’t know who the f*** I am in a way that’s manages to be charming. Actually, please don’t do that. Shopsin’s is my favorite NYC restaurant, and they ban people for life.

Okay, but what about the sandwiches? They are epic and perfect. Just LOOK AT THEM. What can I say about the corned beef (and pastrami) at a place that’s been open for 125 years despite a byzantine ticketing process and lackluster service? The meat was good enough that it all made sense. I’d go back for the meat. The corned beef was tender and pink. It was fatty and stacked in slices that resembled a cross section of the Earth. The pastrami was even better. Probably the best pastrami I have ever had.

When I ordered my corned beef sandwich, the counter guy walked away and came back with a large brisket. He made a series of deft strokes that laid the meat out in even slices. In a few seconds, the bottom slice of rye bread was covered. He grabbed a small paddle like the one that came with my rice cooker and swiped a coating of spicy mustard on the top slice of bread, then handed me my plate. It was beautiful, and all done in a matter of seconds.

The fanned stack of beef slices evenly distributed what was left of the brisket’s fat cap across the sandwich. Even in particularly fatty bites, there was plenty of meaty, salty corned beef to balance it out, and the fat was a nice variation in texture. The meat was tender, but not mushy at all. Where most corned beef I’ve eaten is mushy, the curing process here made the individual muscle fibers cling together, giving the meat a toothy chewiness. The guys making these briskets definitely know what they’re doing. I ate the leftovers cold for dinner while I waited for my flight home, and they were also delicious, but the sandwich was better warm. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, get the pastrami.

The Wrap-Up

I’m going to be fully honest about which corned beef sandwich I prefer. It’s the cold cut version. I’m just as surprised as you are. That’s not to take anything away from the greatness of Katz’s or any other place that brines and slices meat from scratch. That meat is perfect on its own, or in hash. But a pile of thin-sliced stupid on-sale-for-$4.99-a-pound mass-produced corned beef and a squirt of Gulden’s is what I want when I say ‘corned beef sandwich.’ In a way, it’s nice, because it means any time I want my ideal, I don’t have to look very far.