No Surprises Here

The brisket I corned myself was way, WAY better than a store-bought corned beef. Typical. Store food really does suck.

Basically, it tasted like beef with nice seasoning, rather than a chemical salt lick. Which means now I will be stuck having to brine my own corned beef forever more*.

Brining our own whole brisket also means that I have a LOT of leftovers. This makes me very happy, because there are few leftovers better than those from a full corned beef dinner. I particularly love the potatoes, which soak up all the yummy flavor and so are basically pre-seasoned.

It also occurs to me that I still have a couple of jars of sauerkraut in the Pit of Despair. You know what that means, don't you? The best Reuben sandwich EVER is within my grasp. I just have to get some Swiss cheese. And make some Thousand Island dressing (essentially mayonnaise, ketchup, and bread and butter pickles, all of which I have on hand). And do those things before we eat all the corned beef up.

I may not manage it. But then I would have an excuse to make another corned beef. I can handle that.

* For Haley, who asked: Nope, I didn't use the sodium nitrite to preserve the red color. Mostly because I didn't care if it was red and I wasn't about to hunt down a special ingredient for a one-time thing. It didn't turn out a nasty gray as I'd expected; it just looked brown, like any braised meat. A. said he kind of wished it was red, but I couldn't care less.