I love cooking and everything about creating great meals. Especially, trying new things. I consider myself very lucky. My wife has the same love of food and teaches cooking. You often see in my pictures and videos rows of books. 90% are my wife’s going on 1400 cookbooks. She regularly uses me as her recipe and menu tester, not a bad job!
Recently, I have become interested in creating one of the iconic meats, in our case corned Elk.
The recipe is for corned beef, but in this case we used Elk. When there are only two of you in the house and you harvest an Elk, you give away hundreds of pounds to your kids and friends. And you still end up with Elk two years later. To make sure none of it is wasted, and it just sounded fun, we applied a corned beef recipe to an Elk roast.
So, what is corning? It's a centuries-old preservation method that used salt to cure beef before the invention of refrigeration. The name came from the corn kernel-sized grains of salt in which the meat would be packed and stored.
Corned Elk/Beef Brine
1 cup kosher salt1/2 cup sugar3 teaspoons pink curing salt, such as Prague Powder1 teaspoon mustard seeds1 teaspoon black peppercorns10 whole cloves10 allspice berries10 juniper berries2 bay leaves3 pounds Elk roast or beef brisket
Add 2 cups water, salt, sugar, curing salt, mustard seeds, black peppercorns, cloves, allspice berries, juniper berries and bay leaves into small saucepot over medium heat. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to simmer, stirring occasionally, until the salt and sugar have dissolved. Pour into a large bowl and add 4 cups of ice water. The brine mixture should be cool to the touch. Place the brisket into a large zip-top bag and pour the brine mixture into the bag. Seal the top, carefully removing as much air as possible.
Refrigerate for at least five days, and up to seven, flipping over and rotating it every day.
Rinse thoroughly under cool water before cooking. We soaked the meat for 2hrs after tasting how salty it was knowing the cooking process would draw out additional salt.
We cooked the Elk for 2:45hrs at a simmer, then let cool before slicing across the grain to your desired thickness (we like it very thin)