This is an experiment, and with the price of beef there is no way I am doing an experiment on a beef roast! So I’m testing it on this boneless pork rib roast:
I’ve halved the amounts of normal brine recipes I found, and added the seasonings I wanted.
Brine
- 5 cups water
- 3/4 cups kosher salt
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 onion roughly chopped
- 3 cloves smashed garlic
- 1 tsp dehydrated ginger
Palmfuls, or whatever amount you fancy of:
- Peppercorns
- Brown and yellow mustard seed
- Corriander seed
- Celery ceed
- 4 all spice berries
- 8 or so cloves
Add water, bring to a boil, remove from heat, dump in about 6 ice cubes from freezer, then cool.
After the brine was cooked it definitely smelled like pastrami in the kitchen.
Pour the brine over the meat in a ziploc bag, seal, place in container to avoid leaks, and leave in the fridge for 5 to 7 days. I read somewhere that rather than using the chemical additive that gives the bright pink colour on corned beef (sodium nitrite I think) you can use beet juice.
I don’t terribly care if the meat is pink or grey if it tastes good, but I just made cranberry concentrate from a bunch of frozen cranberries, so I threw 1/4 cup or so in with the brine.
My brine was already a golden colour from the onion skins, so this is the colour I ended up with. I threw out about 1 1/2 or so cups of the brine that I didn’t need to cover the roast.
Updates to follow…..
Laurie Cooks 