502844 Wed Mar 26 06:14:36 -0700 2008 4 12 Boston Area 0 3528746 So I was watching Good Eats last night, and on last night's show, Alton Brown was showing how to make corned beef from scratch (and making a complete fool out of himself in the process as usual, God bless him). It got me thinking, is there any restaurant, deli, market, etc., in the Boston area that makes their own corned beef, or is it all simply trucked in from the delis of NYC or the Sysco warehouses? If it's the latter, perhaps I'll make my own, though I must say that I'm not looking forward to asking my pharmacist for a big bottle of saltpeter. :-O Wed Mar 26 06:14:36 -0700 2008 14771 hiddenboston 1 3528833 Hiddenboston there have been several threads on this lately. There are several local packers that cure Corned Beef, including the gray corned beef which is a New England tradition. Most of the Gray Corned Beef in the area I believe comes from the Boston Brisket Company which does this year round and their brisket and ribs can be found regularly at Johnny's and McKinnon's (McKinnon's sometimes cooks it as a dish, but their sliced corned beef is pre-cooked). They also do the red stuff, just don't know who carries it (you could certainly buy a full brisket and during St Pats McKinnon's has it, but Johnny's sells red stuff in croyvac). Pearl does red corned beef and pastrami sold locally for slicing (eg most of it pre-cooked), plus YumYum mentioned finding their gray cb in S&S I think which might be a St Pats thing. Kayem in Chelsea I think also does cure corned beef, but they are a big plant. Lastly the Olde Irish Butcher Shoppe cures back bacon which is the more traditional Irish cut for a boiled dinner. Karl's in Saugus has great smoked products, but I don't recall them doing corned beef (someone else knows). Michaels and the deli in Chelsea that I keep forgetting to cook their own, but don't cure the beef (in a sense freshly made). There was a recent thread of corned beef where several folks suggested markets in Lawrence and Southie that they believe cured their own corned beef. I am usually a skeptic of such reports and there are probably more hounds that cure their own than actual delis, but definitely a couple of promising leads there. Wed Mar 26 06:47:34 -0700 2008 3528746 12962 itaunas 2 3529172 Shaw's (at least the Allston location) carried Pearl's Gray Corned Beef this year too (in very limited quantities). Wed Mar 26 08:18:39 -0700 2008 3528833 66020 po_boy 1 3528856 http://www.chowhound.com/topics/494778 Wed Mar 26 06:54:56 -0700 2008 3528746 12603 ScubaSteve 1 3528870 Thanks, itaunas and ScubaSteve. I've been having trouble with searches of late (crashes my browser for some reason), so it's tough for me to keep up to date on some of these things. Maybe if I do a site:www.chowhound.com search in Google, that might work better for me. Wed Mar 26 06:59:42 -0700 2008 3528746 14771 hiddenboston