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I was about to make corned beef brisket again, but I just realized that perhaps brisket is traditionally used only because it used to be the cheapest cut available.
Eye of round for instance is currently half the price of brisket, but it has far less fat and that might significantly change the resulting product.
I'd hate to waste it experimenting, so how should I expect the result to compare with brisket if other cuts are used instead?
I successfully sous vided two 2kg inside rounds:
One I cooked for 36 hours at 160°F, and the other for 10 hours at 180°F.
Slow cooking lost 28% of the weight, while fast cooking lost 36% and made the meat much denser and dryer. (This demonstrates that it's temperature that forces out the juices, not cooking time.)
Because the fat content was much less, even the slow cooked version was much more solid and dryer in texture than with brisket. They were still flaky and delicious though, but definitely needed to be served with mustard, mashed potatoes, or other lubricant.
When cold, it was easy to slice them very thinly for sandwiches without their falling apart.
I'll definitely do this again (slow method only), perhaps with some other cut.
I used to buy bottom round corn beef.(20 years or so ago). Liked it better but I don't see it for sale anymore.
Corning of beef refers not specifically to a cut of beef but to the process of brining beef in a specific pickling spice. Pastrami is also brined beef, but omits the pickling spice altogether. Corned beef is also typically cooked in some sort of liquid, while pastrami is typically a roasted meat.
Typically before Texans brought the delights of briskets in-vogue brisket was a cheap-cut. This was more to with the fact that there really is no easy way to cook it. Even with a modern slow-cooker it still takes me two days to prepare it. A lot of the desireability of cuts was to do with the amount of effort that was required to prepare it, not always the quality of the end product.
