St. Patrick's Day Corned Beef: Flat or Point?

There in your grocer's cooler they sit.

Plastic wrapped slabs of corned beef.

Soon they will simmer and, if done slowly, fall to pieces under the gentle probing of your fork. Kitchens, dining rooms, whole houses will fog with an intoxicating aroma.

The smell strikes a bell in an ancient place in the carnivore's brain, bathing it in cabbage and beef inspired delirium.

But wait. This quest for corned beef nirvana poses a dilemma.

Which slab do you grab: the flat or the point cut?

And how to cook them? After all, corned beef, when it is good, is very good.

And it when it is bad, it is a recipe for a Heimlich Maneuver. Like chewing a mouthguard.

For answers we turned to a local meat department supervisor and a local homecooking maestro — our Patch food blogger Amy Lockerbie Smith.

Both of them kindly supplied answers.

Charlie Genesp, the supervisor of the meat department at Whole Foods Market in Swampsott, said the flat cut of the brisket is the much leaner piece of meat.

The point end of the brisket comes with a lot of fat.

In either case, you want to cook the corned beef slowly.

But it is essential to cook the point cut very slowly, in a crock pot. Otherwise, well, remember the mouthguard.

Whole Foods sells a Wellshire Farms corned beef and a red and a gray corned beef. Each sells for 6.99 a pound.

Typically, point cut corned beef is much less expensive than the flat cut.

And many people prefer one to the other.

Our food blogger, Amy, cooks her corned beef slowly.

Here is what Amy told us:

"Like I say, I like to do mine in the crock pot all day long for a nice slow cooking process so the meat is very tender.  I mean ALL day from very early morning until late evening the day before I use the meat.  Then I have all that wonderful liquid, flavored with whole cloves, whole peppercorns and a bay leaf with which to cook my turnip, cabbage, carrots and potatoes."

Happy St. Patrick's Day.