Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

I went to school with a guy called ‘Corned Beef’.

At 16 years, he was 110kg of southern ‘silverside’ – a head wider than high, a kind of hammerhead if you get the drift. No forehead, no neck, no waist. A massive set of shoulders wedged into a bum that could have served as a foundation for a new civic centre.

Man of few words. Presence but no personality. Didn’t offer much at all until you squeezed him into the front row of a rugby scrum. A cylinder block in the engine room. There, with his head buried between buttocks and other bits, he was an immense and immoveable force.

Unawares, ‘Corned Beef’ brought respectability, and renown to a cheap cut of meat. But this ‘Corned Beef’ would stay tough and fibrous regardless of how long you slow-cooked him. That was the beast. 

‘Corned Beef’ , the rugby prop, didn’t sweat. He went florid. Red. Very red. Hence ‘Corned Beef’. You would expect his face to explode in a shower of corpuscles. 

‘Bloody hell’ 

But the red was just ‘Corned Beef’ coming to the boil, destroying opposition front rows and reputations on the rugby field. His redness had absolutely nothing to do with addition of sodium nitrate to the curing process of corned beef, which apparently converts natural myoglobin in the meat to a stable, signature, red pigment. Even after cooking.

Just in case you wondered where corned beef got its signature red.  

‘Corned Beef’s’ elective mutism also reminded me of another silent enforcer, the villainous bodyguard ‘Odd Job’ from Ian Fleming’s ‘Goldfinger’. ‘Odd Job’ reeked evil, whereas ‘Corned Beef’s’ real name was Gerald. A bit Nancy-ish, hardly menacing, and would not have worked in a rugby scrum.

It’s also interesting we can now calculate in dollars and cents, the precise value of ‘Corned Beef’, that prime piece of pickled brisket that anchored our high school first XV scrum. Because last week in the supermarket that muck meat, that staple of the working class and downtrodden, was selling for $19.90 a kilogram.

“Bloody hell!” was the reaction when I tested one consumer. “How did corned beef become fine dining?”
Anyhow Gerald – our ‘Corned Beef’ – would have fetched $2189 if he’d been processed, vacuum-packed and placed in the supermarket chiller – 110kg at $19.90 a kilo. He should have been cloned and farmed.

Skunk spray 

Corned beef was soul food in our house – cruel and cold sou’westers would drive in directly off the Antarctic ice, a fire would be hissing and spitting and sparking in the hearth, and we’d be comforted by the divine prospect of corned beef for dinner. For 90 minutes, it had been bobbing and dancing among the onions, carrots, celery, bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns in a pressure cooker.

Everyone’s got their own take – golden syrup instead of honey, old socks and bubblegum, instead of onions carrot and celery – you get the drift? Again? And it can overnight in the crockpot. Long and slow steals the show.

But it pongs like skunk spray. A friend tells how a predilection for corned beef caused a right old stink with the neighbours – literally. He ran a lead from his kitchen to the crockpot on the deck and then closed the ranch slider against the sulfurous stench while it bubbled and brewed all day. How can something that smells so bad while cooking. taste so great? Anyhow, the distinctively eggy clouds wafted into the neighbours. It was like Rotorua coming to your place. They eventually sourced the stink and now he’s forced to crockpot corned beef in his garage. There’s an upside because now you can’t smell his rubbish bin.

Now that ropey old cut of butt beef is all tenderness and about to disintegrate on the plate, smeared with Colman’s Dry, and scoffed. Greedily.           

Add a side of creamy mash with a big blob of butter and steamed cabbage. Carrots in ginger and honey perhaps. Next day, corned beef sandwiches for school and corned beef hash for dinner that night. Enough corned beef until next time.

Saving souls 

All the online posts about corned beef use words like cheap, economical, budget friendly, affordable and cost effective. What a nonsense.

Remember when a lamb chop was also budget friendly, affordable etc? As boys we would have four, or six each at a sitting. Now bony, fatty loin chops are $3 each. We might have to share one. They’re a birthday treat. As is mince.

And like oxtail – from beyond the butt of the beast – now far more expensive because of demand. I paid $46 for two vacuum sealed packs of bone, fat and cartilage – just enough to make a stew. It’s not comfort food when you need a Givealittle account to pay for it.

Did you know that without the curing nitrates or salts in the pickling process, your “uncorned” corned beef would be a dull gray colour. Mustard, relish or ‘dead horse’ wouldn’t save it.

And finally the benediction – ‘Corned – Gerald – Beef’ went on to become a man of the cloth, a man of faith, a Minister. Instead of wrecking souls in a rugby scrum, he was saving them.