Salt Beef - Corned Beef (with added Prague Powder) Part Two

After about 48 hours in the brine your meat will be ready to cook. First of all rinse the lump under some cold water to remove any excess salt.

Next you want to make your poaching stock. I'm using the same spices etc as the cure, but throwing in the customary stock vegetables. In this case a couple of carrots, an onion, halved and a couple of lengths of celery.

You can add the beef when the stock is just barely bubbling. This is important. If you cook the meat in a raging cauldron it will end up tough. The liquid should present barely a murmur. See vid.

You can leave the beef in there for about 2 hours. Then it'll be falling apart and still pink! Pink, because of the Prague Powder. If you don't have PP you'll end up with grey meat. It'll still be tasty. But it'll be grey.

Next we make the corned beef hash! This is a traditional recipe passed down from my Grandma Griff and shouldn't be tinkered with.

When you take the beef out reserve the flavourful stock. We'll be needing that!

Peel about 2.5kg of spuds and dice 4 medium sized onions. Chuck back into the stock pot and pour the poaching liquid back in so that the spuds and onions are just covered.

Whack the heat up and cook until soft. Next dice your corned beef.

When the spuds are soft put the beef in. Add a few good pinches of black pepper. No need to salt as it's salty enough. Stir in about 3 tablespoons of Bisto and then either mash or wazz-up with a stick blender. It should be about the consistency of molten lava.

You can either eat it now or allow to cool before pie making. I'll be having half for tea tonight and making a pie with the rest.