Kobe corned beef?!?

[Jenise]

Yup. At Costco. Round, not brisket. Of course, corned beef--cooked a long time--and kobe, which is best flash-seared and served rare, don't compute in the same description. So I bought one and cooked it last night.

Pros: less salty than conventional store-bought corned beef. And a lot less fat as a result, though my piece had a nice thin layer of fat cap on it. Cut from the round, you have a wide choice of shapes. I picked one vaguely loaf-shaped, about 3-4 inches high and approximately 9 inches long. Almost no waste.

Cons: less connective tissue which reduces that stretchy/snappy texture I love about corned beef. Too, you CAN overcook it and it gets grainier as it cooks. I ended up with a delay getting dinner served so mine sat in the hot pot liquor for about an hour past where I think it was optimum. Two hours was about perfect.

Worth trying.

Loan me a bottle of Mouton so I can make a kir royale, would you?

[Jenise]

Loan me a bottle of Mouton so I can make a kir royale, would you?

LOL, Jeff. That's perfect.

I thought Krug Clos du Mesnil was traditional for kir royale.

I might have the recipe confused with sant'gria. Not sure.

[Robin Garr]

True Kobe, or American-raised Wagyu? There's a lot of sketchy labeling still going on. Sort of the "Domestic burgundy and chablis" of meat ...

[Jenise]

Oh I'm sure it's American. So much so that I didn't even bother to check the packaging. There wouldn't be enough cows in all of Japan to stock Costco.

[Robin Garr]

Oh I'm sure it's American. So much so that I didn't even bother to check the packaging. There wouldn't be enough cows in all of Japan to stock Costco.

Makes sense. Still, it raises a question that I hadn't thought of before: What DO the Kobe producers do with the "less desirable" cuts? Kobe burgers? Kobe oxtail?

Robin,you may laugh but there is a lot of wagyu (Kobe style) beef around in Oz and we are seeing wagyu burgers, braised cheeks, snags etc I am sure they must appear inJapan and elsewhere

I've seen Kobe burgers for sale in NYC.

[Jenise]

So yesterday Bob, who is retired but consulting on a small project for BP at the moment, sits down to eat his lunch which he'd just microwaved, in the refinery conference room and is joined by another guy who smells Bob's lunch when the lid comes off and, per Bob and demands to know WTF Bob is about to eat. So Bob shows him: five small slices of corned beef tiled over a bulgur wheat pilaf, drizzled with a Spatlese-mustard, with pot-cooked cabbage and some sautéed purple carrots on the side. So the guy's blown away by the plating and a carrot color he's never seen before, when Bob explains that the corned beef is Kobe. And then Bob finishes that and takes out another little container. The guy's eyes got big again, whazzat? Star-anise poached pears. Brown bag lunches just aren't supposed to look like that.

Nice story, but, then again, look at 'the little woman' Bob keeps at home. (ducking in advance of thrown objects)