satbuilder 

Years back the local grocery store would have a big sale on corned beef right after St. Patrick's Day. Pennies on the dollar. I would buy at least a half dozen, and make pastrami out of them. All I had to do was grind up black pepper and coriander seed in an old coffee mill, add some garlic powder and paprika, and slap it in the smoker for about 8 hours. Then I'd put it in an aluminum pan, foil it shut, and leave it out there for another couple hours, till it was falling apart. Awesome stuff, and a lot easier than doing the home cure (which I've done as well). Man, that stuff was was awesome.

satbuilder 

Alton specifies saltpeter which is potassium nitrate. Potassium nitrate pretty much has been replaced by either sodium nitrite, or sodium nitrate, depending on what you're curing and for how long. The nitrate cure is usually used for long duration cures, for salamis and other dry cured meats, where the nitrites are used for short term stuff, like corned beef and hot smoked sausage, bacon and the like.

MoAlpha

Ah, yes. The "Old Testament" take on the delicacy: Sliced thin on rye with a nice pickle. Needs coleslaw to be a perfect fress.

Pompiere

This past Tuesday, we went out to our local Irish pub for dinner. They had Reuben Meat Loaf on the menu. It is pretty much what it sounds like, meat loaf made with corned beef and sauerkraut, topped with melted Swiss cheese and drizzled with dressing. It was good, but I prefer a normal Reuben sandwich.

When we went to Alaska on vacation a couple years ago, one of the hotels had corned beef hash on the breakfast buffet. It was made with big, tender chunks of meat and potatoes, instead of the finely chopped stuff you normally see. When I complemented the chef on how good it was, he told me they had more briskets in the oven for the next day, as well as to make Reubens for dinner. When I got my sandwich for supper, instead of thinly sliced deli style meat, it had a 1/2 inch slab of corned beef that melted in your mouth. Washed down with a pint of Alaskan Ale, it was one of the best meals of the trip.

riva

My local joint for corned beef was called Roll&Rye Deli. They shut down and now theres a Panera.. DOH.

Roll ?n Rye - CLOSED - 70 Photos - Delis - Culver City - Culver City, CA - Reviews - Menu - Yelp

Sidney Porter

I use to do the corned beef and cabbage but realized I liked the reubens I made with the left overs better. So I will go straight to reubens. Corn beef hash sat morning.

PeregrineA1 

When in Portland, one must go to Industrial Café in NW. Corned beef made on site and oh so delicious as hash for breakfast after an evening of tasting a few too many of Portland's finest.

Henry III

Born and raised on this stuff. 'Merica! My cousin who never had it before said it looked and tasted like dog food. Heck it may look like relabeled Alpo but my brother and I never questioned my Mom on what she was feeding us.

RobbieTunes

I have eaten my weight in that stuff. Gives you two of the basic food groups for breakfast, the meat and potatoes. Add eggs and coffee, and you're done. Built in "regulator" function, if I recall. Like 20 minutes after breakfast, like clockwork.

In the Marines, the cooks tried to make it out of Spam. Failed, but we ate it.

RobbieTunes

Here, here! A Rueben is one of the best uses for saurkraut if you're out of bratwurst.

stardognine

It does not taste like dog food, it tastes like GREASY dog food. But once you spend half a dozen paper towels on de-greasing it, it's actually pretty good stuff.

Wildwood 

Do not confuse 'sheet on a shingle' with a good reuben or other corned beef delicacy. This is not the military. Thank goodness.

rootboy 

Never thought I'd read a thread like this on C&V.

I'm more of a Pastrami man myself.

Cougrrcj

That canned stuff is greasy - I've had it before, but if that's all you have, eat it and be thankful you have something to eat.

I remember waaaaay back when I was in Boy Scouts, we'd have a winter campout/jamboree we called the Klondike Derby. One of the staple meals of this campout was Red Flannel Hash. Diced Corned Beef, diced potato, diced beets, onion, coarse-ground black pepper, parsley. We'd cook it on a HUGE cast-iron skillet that was probably 2' x 3' by 4" deep. Get that pan nice and hot, throw a stick of butter on it, then dumping the diced stuff on it - browning the meat/potato/beet mix to an almost-blackened state, then we'd add the onion and spices, stirring constantly. Good comfort food!!! Sometimes we'd add some Worchestershire for extra bite.

RobbieTunes

I did not confuse the two. If you really want to see an abomination, the USMC cooks' attempt at SOS, with Spam and powdered milk, was a descent into madness.

The culinary ingenuity of making 3 meals a day, for months, involving Spam should not be confused with any good reuben or other corned beef delicacy, and I don't.

One was making do with what the US decided to feed it's servicemen and women, and the other made one appreciate the finer things once a return to civilization was allowed.

The best corned beef hash I've ever had was made by a cook on a merchant marine oil tanker docked in the Port of New Orleans. It was my floating hotel for a couple of days, and the cook was simply one of the best I've ever seen. That crew was fed, and fed extremely well, by an expert cook who was obviously up to the task. The hash bore little resemblance to the canned variety.

DMC707

What Robbie said about the spam and potatoes he ate in the Corps has me salivating now for some reason