Beef – Why not corned pork instead of beef

beefpork

I have made a few corned beef with chuck and pot roast cuts. Using salt,sugar nitrite salt , etc: the results have been excellent. I have not used brisket because they are so big. Pork loins and shoulders are so cheap I would like to try corned pork . What could go wrong ?

Best Answer

What could go wrong? Probably not much. The same process that turns beef into corned beef turns pork into corned pork - and if you use another piece and compare recipes, you might recognize the process from curing ham. You might have to compare recipes a bit - curing times ranging from two to ten days depending on the author - and the actual cooking process could require a slightly different timing, but overall, nothing specific to the animal.

And like corned beef, corned pork is sold canned as luncheon meat. The iconic Spam being an (slightly infamous) example.

I even found one writer that claims pork was actually the more „Irish” version for Irish families (beef being more expensive and mostly exported), while using beef became the American-Irish tradition, resorting to the (Jewish) brisket when beef was actually cheaper and easier to get than pork.