Smoked Corned Beef

I purchased some inexpensive corned beef at the supermarket after St Patrick's Day and thought it might be fun to experiment some more with Cold Smoking.  This is a technique where meat is smoked at a temperature low enough where the meat isn't cooked (below 90 F is the typical limit).  My hope is that this makes a nice meat for use in sandwiches

I have purchased 2 corned beefs for this.  They are about 3 lbs each.  It is very high in salt so I will plan to limit my consumption of it - I will package it in 4 pieces after the smoke but before braising.

I think I will try doing the salting of the meat myself when I try this again

Process details:

• 4/6/25:
• Removed the meat from the package and rinsed with cold water to wash away excess salt
• Covered the meat with pepper and garlic powder

• Moved the meat to the fridge on a wire rack to dry out a bit before the smoking
• 4/8/25 - Smoking the meat - this was a night where it was supposed to get to freezing so the meat should stay relatively cold through the cooking process which helps keep pathogens at bay.  Setup the smoker with hickory chips and smoked the meat for 10 hrs over night

• 4/9/25 - Cut the meat into 4 pieces.  Froze 3 and let one chill in the fridge for a near term meal

• 4/10/25 - Braised one of the pieces over night in beer

• 4/11/25 - Cooled the meat the next day and had a nice sandwich.  The meat is very tender and has a pretty firm smokey flavor even after the braising.  It doesn't have an overly salty flavor - I think the braise ends up pulling a lot of salt out of the meet.  I got 3 sandwiches out of this piece of meat