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Corned Venison
Meathead Goldwyn, the head poobah at AmazingRibs.com, has a famous quote:
“There should be no rules in the bedroom or kitchen. The exception is curing meats. The rules for this process are rigid.” Funny, but not a joke. Creating a great cured meat product is not hard but requires a little care and precision. Please read “The Rules” in the notes section below the recipe before you get started. |
Servings |
7lbs meat |
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Corned meat freezes very well, and like any cured meat lasts a long time in the fridge. Serving suggestions: Corned venison and cabbage, corned venison hash, or venison Reuben sandwiches. Om nom nom!
Pastrami is a fantastic cousin of traditional corned meat. Instead of cooking in water the roasts are first smoked then steamed. It is always rubbed prior to smoking. Here’s a good recipe from “The Meat Eater“
Some EXCELLENT sauces to accompany this wonderful meat:
The Rules: Curing meats has specific rules. I recommend you read this section, then use the calculator mentioned towards the end to determine the correct amount of cure and the time needed to properly brine your roasts. The defaults in the recipe may not fit. This is extra important if you have a large, thick roast in your batch.
The recipe uses a wet “equilibrium curing” process for boneless meat. #1 cure is 1/16th Sodium nitrite (with an “i”) mixed with 15/16ths salt, tinted pink to avoid confusing it with plain salt. It’s called Instacure #1, Prague Powder #1, and several other names. Though some just call it “pink salt”, don’t confuse it with Himalayan pink salt, which is NOT a cure. There is also a #2 cure, based on nitrate (with an a), which is used for things like long-term curing of dried salamis. #1 and #2 are NOT, repeat NOT interchangeable.
It is important to be accurate when measuring cure. Weight is the safest repeatable measurement. If you don’t have a precise digital kitchen scale, get one. They are like ten bucks on Amazon, tend to take typical kitchen abuse without failing, and work great.
The goal is to infuse the meat throughout with the quantity of salt and sodium nitrite sufficient to inhibit pathogens and produce the unique flavors and textures associated with cured whole meats like corned beef brisket.
This default recipe is based on 7lbs of boneless trimmed venison roasts brined in a gallon of water.
If you adjust the weight of the meat in the recipe to something other than 7lbs, make note of the amount of water the recipe now calls for. Then head over to this handy on-line calculator created by food scientist Professor Greg Blonder: genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/nitritecuringcalculator.html.
Set the step 1 slider to 200ppm for venison, or 150ppm if you’re slumming it with beef or some other domestic meat. Prof. Blonder says “Venison has a more minerally flavor than beef, so a bit more curing salt is needed to reveal its characteristic ‘hammy’ notes.” Enter the weight of your batch of meat in step 2. Enter the new water amount in step 3. Make a note of the amount of cure now called for.
Then scroll up and, using the thickness and shape of the thickest roast in your batch, enter those values. Make note of the resulting number of days you need to brine to assure proper diffusion of the goodies. If it’s more days than you care to wait, read Prof. Blonder’s note right below the results. Injecting the brine is a safe and effective shortcut. Or you could just cut the thickest roast into thinner pieces and re-compute.
The calculator accounts for how long it will take the cure to diffuse sufficiently through the cuts of meat for food safety and for the wonderful flavor magic to happen. Scroll up a bit more to see a link to a youtube video Prof. Blonder has created to illustrate how that diffusion really happens.