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Making your own homemade corned beef from scratch is so much fun, and a healthier and less expensive option than purchasing it from the grocery store. We raise our own beef, and I enjoy making corned beef every spring around St. Patrick’s Day. If I don’t have brisket, I just use roast and it makes a delicious corned beef. Follow this step-by-step guide to learn how to brine and cook your own homemade corned beef.

Corned beef is made by brining beef, typically a brisket in a salty brine with some pickling spice for added flavor for a few days. It gets its name “corn” from an old English word for grain, or small pieces of hard things the size of grain, such as salt. Brining the meat produces an amazing pink meat that has a distinctive flavor.

It’s traditionally boiled with onions, potatoes and carrots for corned beef and cabbage, but it’s also delicious sliced in reuben sandwiches with sauerkraut and swiss cheese, or fried and made into corned beef hash. Once you see how easy it is to make your own corned beef, you’ll be adding this to your menu quite often.

Steps For Making Corned Beef

Put a brisket or roast in a brine
Let it set a few days in the refrigerator.
Cook it up low and slow with some veggies for an amazing meal.

Curing Salt

Corned beef is traditionally a salt-cured meat, and it usually contains pink curing salt or saltpeter (not to be confused with kosher salt, pink Himalayan salt, or table salt). The pink salt helps to cure the meat and prevents the growth of bacteria in the meat while it brines for a long time. It also gives corned beef brisket it’s pink color. Some people prefer not to use pink curing salt because it contains sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, which has been linked to some health issues like diabetes and heart disease. However, the small amount you use in this recipe is not going to hurt you, and we certainly don’t eat corned beef everyday so I’m comfortable using it.

I’ve also made this recipe without the pink salt many times, and it’s always turned out fine. The meat is in the refrigerator the entire time it’s in the brine which is full of salt and sugar, so it doesn’t bother me not to use the pink salt. In my opinion the health risks from eating cured meat are more of a problem if you eat salt-cured meat like bacon, pastrami or ham everyday. So all that to say that you can make this corned beef recipe with or without the pink salt, but I just wanted you to be aware of the potential health risks of using pink salt and not using it. You can decide for yourself which works best for you. Remember that if you don’t use the pink salt, your corned beef will be more brown than pink, like a typical brisket or roast might be when cooked. I’ve actually used tender quick which is also a curing salt in this recipe as well.

Why You’ll Love This Homemade Corned Beef Recipe

Easy – you probably have the ingredients for brining this corned beef in your pantry, and it doesn’t take very long to make the brine and start soaking the meat.

Flexible – if you don’t have all the brining ingredients, just make it anyway. It will still be delicious.

Simple – when it’s time to cook the corned beef, you can just put it in your slow cooker with some potatoes, cabbage, onions and carrots and you’ll a delicious, effortless meal in no time.

Flavorful – the ingredients in this recipe give the meat such a good flavor compared to the spice blend that comes with store-bought corned beef.

Healthy – making your own corned beef means you know exactly what’s in the meat and the brine, which is a much healthier alternative to the junk in the grocery store.

Tips

You can make corned beef out of a brisket, or a roast. The brisket will have a more distinct grain which is typical of a corned beef, but the roast turns out almost the same. You can even brine tough cuts of roast, and they will turn out nice and tender after being brined.
If using a roast wrapped in butchers twine, leave the twine intact until after the cooking is complete.
You can make your corned beef and cabbage in a crock pot, a large pot on the stove top, or baked in the oven in a dutch oven pot at 350 degrees for about 3 hours. Cooking a corned beef is very similar to cooking a roast.
To make instant pot corned beef and cabbage, just cook the corned beef in water in the instant pot for 90 minutes on high pressure. Then add the veggies and cook on high pressure for another 4-5 minutes.
Leftover corned beef can be made into reuben sandwiches, reuben pizza, or I like to fry up the leftover meat and veggies in a cast iron skillet. If you add some beets to the skillet, it’s called red flannel hash. SO good!
Corned beef and cabbage is the traditional meal for st. patrick’s day and we make it every spring.

Beef Brine Ingredients

Beef Brisket Or Roast – you can get a brisket from local butcher shops, or use any kind of roast
Water
Course salt – regular salt is also fine – I usually use Redmond Salt
Sugar
Garlic cloves
Black peppercorns
Mustard Seeds
Juniper berries or juniper essential oil
Curing salt/prague powder, optional (protects against any botulism during the brining process)
Thyme
Ginger
Allspice berries
Bay leaves
Cinnamon stick

Corned Beef & Cabbage Ingredients

Corned beef – brined brisket or roast
Onion
Garlic
Mustard seeds
Bay leaves
Allspice berries
Black pepper
Salt
Water
Potatoes
Carrots
Cabbage

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How To Make Corned Beef

Brining The Beef

Place all of the brine ingredients except for the beef in a large stockpot and bring to a gentle simmer.

Once the salt and sugar are dissolved, remove from heat and allow to cool completely.

Place the entire brisket or roast in a large non-reactive container and cover with the cooled brine. Add more water if necessary so that the beef is under the water. As a general rule you want 1 cup of salt per 2 quarts of water. Increase the salt amount if you add more than 2 quarts of water. I usually weigh my beef down with a plate so it stays under the water.

Cover the brine and place it in the refrigerator for 5-10 days. The longer you brine the meat, the better the flavor will be.

Cook in a slow cooker (see below instructions). I like to add the veggies to make corned beef and cabbage. The vegetables take on the flavor of the corned beef and are very tasty.

How To Cook Corned Beef

Rinse the beef under water to remove any excess brine. This prevents the meat from being too salty.

Put the onions and garlic on the bottom of a slow cooker.

adding garlic and onion to the slow cooker

Place the beef on the top of the onions and garlic, fat side up if it’s a brisket.

Add the mustard seeds, bay leaves, allspice, pepper, & salt. Fill the slow cooker up with water until it almost covers the beef.

Cook on low for 5 hours or until beef is fork tender.

Then add the potatoes and carrots on top of the beef if desired. Cook for another 2 hours.

adding carrots to corned beef in crock pot

Then if you’re making corned beef and cabbage, you can add cabbage on top of the potatoes and carrots and cook for one more hour or until all the veggies are tender.

Thinly slice the corned beef on a cutting board and serve with the veggies.

Use the leftover corned beef to make corned beef sandwiches or reuben pizza with homemade sauerkraut.