Corned Beef (with a side of thermal dynamics)

I had hoped to be writing this post with some fancy pictures and feel like a real cooking blog.  So sorry, that will have to wait for another time it would seem.

The weekend experiment with braising corned beef rather than my usual slow cooker method met with limited success.  The brisket came out firm with a less salty flavor than expected, and was a good consistency for slicing.  However, it was not something I would serve again without the sour cream sauce I made as a makeshift gravy.  Factors that could have contributed to this are:

1. Round Brisket - I chose a Round brisket rather than my usual Flat-Cut brisket for the corned beef.  There was much less fat from what I saw and I was not able to effectively position the fat cap on top during the braising to facilitate having it melt down into the meat during the cooking.  This may justify a future post studying the differences between flat cut and round after identical cooking methods... an idea I do not have a problem with as I love corned beef for so many reasons.
2. Makeshift Braising - I do not own a cooking vessel appropriate for braising that large a cut of meat.  At 4 pounds the brisket was large and I braised the brisket in an ovenproof dish with a tin foil tent to keep everything inside.  The meat was properly cooked, but it just did not have that consistency and flavor that I enjoyed when I slow cooked the meat in beer.

So, while the meat was successfully cooked and was more than edible, it was not the BEST corned beef that I have cooked.

Now for the Yorkshire pudding experiment.

Well... I'm down one Pyrex dish thanks to my incorrect assumption about it's thermal tolerances.  Many notes online said you could make the pudding in all sorts of vessels, but when I started pouring the Yorkshire pudding batter in to the hot oil, I got a shattered Pyrex dish and wet batter all over my stovetop.  It was a very awkward cleanup as my roasted veggies were cooking away in the oven.

The intent was to make a savory rosemary Yorkshire Pudding to go with everything, and what batter still remained I poured into my cast iron skillet with some hot bacon fat I still had.  The end result was not pretty, and I believe this has to do with not enough batter to fat and likely I had not heated the pan and fat up enough to meet optimal puffing.  But the flavors present were nice, enough that that me and my dinner guests wanted to try it again but as a brunch side dish properly cooked in the cast iron.  My take away lesson:  Metal only for Yorkshire Pudding.

I hope my lessons learned will help others, and I welcome comments and questions!  Coming up will be notes on my experiments in infusing alcohol at home, likely to become a multi-part series as I am finding while writing that there is a lot of information.