Corned beef
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| Alternative names | Salt beef, bully beef (if canned) |
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| Serving temperature | Hot or cold |
| Main ingredients | Beef, salt |
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Corned beef is a salt-cured beef product. The term comes from the treatment of the meat with large grained rock salt, also called "corns" of salt. It features as an ingredient in many cuisines. Most recipes include nitrates or nitrites, which convert the natural myoglobin in beef to nitroso-myoglobin, giving a pink color. Nitrates and nitrites reduce the risk of dangerous botulism during curing, by inhibiting the growth of Clostridium botulinum spores. Beef cured with salt only has a gray color, and is sometimes called "New England corned beef." Often sugar and spices are also added to recipes for corned beef.
It was popular during both World Wars, when fresh meat was rationed. Corned beef remains popular in the United Kingdom and countries with British culinary traditions and is commonly used in sandwiches, corned beef hash or eaten with chips and pickles. It also remains especially popular in Canada in a variety of dishes, perhaps most prominently Montreal smoked meat.
Although the exact beginnings of corned beef are unknown, it most likely came about when people began preserving meat through salt-curing. Evidence of its legacy is apparent in numerous cultures, including Ancient Europe and the Middle East. The word corn derives from Old English, and is used to describe any small, hard particles or grains. In the case of "corned beef", the word may refer to the coarse granular salts used to cure the beef. The word corned may also refer to the corns of potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter, which were formerly used to preserve the meat.
Although the practice of curing beef was found locally in many cultures, the industrial production of corned beef started in the British Industrial Revolution. Irish corned beef was used and traded extensively from the 17th century to the mid-19th century for British civilian consumption and as provisions for the British naval fleets and North American armies due to its non-perishable nature. The product was also traded to the French for use in Caribbean sugar plantations as sustenance for the colonists and the slave laborers. The 17th-century British industrial processes for corned beef did not distinguish between different cuts of beef beyond the tough and undesirable parts such as the beef necks and shanks. Rather, the grading was done by the weight of the cattle into "small beef", "cargo beef", and "best mess beef", the former being the worst and the latter the best. Much of the undesirable portions and lower grades were traded to the French, while better parts were saved for British consumption or shipped to British colonies.
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