Hey buddies! We're coming to you from medieval times with yet another sandwich episode. As we spend wooden nickels on our favorite carousel rides we second guess our movie knowledge before letting slip a giant reveal about Mr. Etymology. Then we let listeners in on a live comedy workshopping session before finally succumbing to the meat sleepies.
Matthew's Corned Beef Recipe
Matthew's Now but Wow! - Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:00
Hi, I'm Matthew, and I'm Molly. And this is spilled milk the show, where we cook something delicious. Eat it all, and you can't have any today.
Molly 0:10
We are talking about corned beef sandwiches. Oh, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:13
just got an important message from wattsel. It says There's cookies for Molly in white bag on cookbook shelf. Way ahead of you there, buddy? Yeah, I call my wife buddy.
Molly 0:24
I have accidentally called ash buddy a couple times, been like the biggest boner killer.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:33
It's terrible. Okay, all right, what are we do? We already see what we're talking about today.
Molly 0:39
Yeah? Corned beef sandwich. Beef sandwiches. Yeah. Okay, so, Matthew, why did you suggest this?
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:43
So I think I suggested this because the last time we really talked about corned beef was on Episode Seven, which was called Irish Spring.
Molly 0:51
That was approximately 735 episodes ago or something.
Matthew Amster-Burton 0:57
It was, it was in the it was in the the in medieval times, we recorded episode on location at medieval times. It does still exist, right? I've never been and I bet it's really fun. I have no idea. Okay, I bet it's fantastic. Okay, yeah, oh, it's so it's because I made some homemade corned beef, which I like to do this time of year, which is December when we're recording this. I don't do it that often, because it's kind of a production to get the meat in terms of financial outlay, and like, having to, like, go to Pike Place Market during a busy time of year. What is a brisket cost? These okay, because it is a brisket. Let's get into it. So I got a, I got a whole point cut of brisket, which was about nine pounds, and it was $10 a pound. So it was 90 bucks. And I looked because, because I work for a budgeting software company, I have, like, a record of, like, you know, what did I pay for it last time I did this? I think it was 55 last time, oh, my god, two years earlier. Okay, but still, it nearly doubled, yes, and I got it at local butcher, Don and Joe's, and it was very reasonably priced there, because when I looked at Safeway, they had it also for $19 a pound. Are you kidding? I'm not kidding.
Molly 2:06
Is this just like 2025, pricing, or is this
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:11
yes for the most part, yeah, that's it. I mean, like, it's not going to be less by the time you're hearing this. No. So yes, like, we had a lot of inflation, and especially, especially in the meat in the meat area in the last few years, and also, like in general, like once, once neglected cuts of meat have have pretty much all become hip and expensive, like ox tails being the quintessential example, which went from being, like the cheapest cut of beef to pretty much the most expensive. Wow.
Molly 2:42
So how much would a pound of oxtails be? Right now, I want
Matthew Amster-Burton 2:46
to say a pound of oxtails would be over 10 to $10 and very little of it is meat. Yeah, yeah, it's mostly bone. So that's, that's the thing. Like, I, like, there were times in the past when I made like, an ox tail. I sound like 100 year old man right now, like, I remember when ox tail, where they, you know, they paid you a nickel to take home an ox tail. Well, that was in the Middle Ages, that's right,
Molly 3:12
and nickels, then, what were they made of?
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:15
They were, they were made of, well, walrus horn. There was that Wooden Nickel, that Wooden Nickel. Guy who kept giving out a Wooden Nickel, I got, I accepted the Wooden Nickel so many times before I got finally got wise. I actually did have a Wooden Nickel.
Speaker 1 3:37
I think everybody had, like, a wooden Silver Dollar, right? Like, weren't there more tokens? There were
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:42
more tokens when we were Yeah? Like, whatever happened to tokens? Tokens for all kinds of things, yeah, mostly the arcade. Like, now, nowadays you go to the arcade, you get, like, a card, yeah?
Molly 3:52
That sucks. That sucks. You still need a token at the at some carousels, yeah, that's always fun.
Matthew Amster-Burton 3:58
What are your top five favorite carousel,
Speaker 1 4:02
okay. Number one, the Woodland
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:04
Park, zoo carousel. Number two, West Lake Park. Oh, there's one there seasonally, okay.
Molly 4:10
Number three, there was one like 25 years ago, like somewhere near Leal in Paris, okay, yeah, yeah, haven't been there for like 25 years. That's definitely a good one. That was a really good one.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:22
Really good one, the one at the Puyallup Fair. Wow. We've come up with four carousels. This is pretty impressive.
Molly 4:27
Okay, okay, hold on, there's got to be more. What about the one? Oh, there's one in Amelie.
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:32
Okay, there you go. I think so, out of five carousels, two of them are in France. So like, like, 40% of all carousels in the world are in France.
Speaker 1 4:39
Okay, where were we going with this? Oh, the meat. You do this
Matthew Amster-Burton 4:43
annually, not really annually. Like, some years I will say I'm gonna do it and not get around to it. And other years, some years I'll be out of town. And then some years, it all comes together. Like, I feel like, you know, I got, I've got a few wooden nickels in my pocket. I'm like, I'm heading down to the market, jingling those wooden. Pickles, or at least clacking them together. And I say, I say, butcher, butcher, butcher. Man, butcher, man, bring me a brisket. You know, it was a woman who trimmed the brisket.
Molly 5:12
I'm sitting here wondering if there actually is a carousel in a baby.
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:19
Wow, the omelet heads are gonna come for you. If there isn't,
Molly 5:24
I do remember that there's a toxic where we're like the the love interest whispers in her ear dressed like a skeleton. Oh, I wonder if I'm confusing, that
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:38
maybe it was like a tunnel of love. That's right. I don't think I've ever been on a tunnel of love. I think what I there was an age where I was like, wouldn't that be nice to go through a tunnel of love and like, you're guaranteed someone will kiss you.
Molly 5:50
That's one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay. Where were we? Okay?
Matthew Amster-Burton 5:56
So, okay, we haven't gotten anywhere. Oh, Memory Lane, right? Oh, corvieve sandwich, memory lane. So we often had corned beef when I was a kid. I don't recall whether I would ever eat it in sandwich form or not. You know, certainly when I went to Katz's Deli for the first time, that was not the first time I'd ever had a corned beef sandwich, but it was certainly the best one I had had up to that point. Katz's Deli being, we'll talk about it in the in the history section, but it's a deli on the Lower East Side in New York famous. It was in the movie When Harry Met Sally Rob Reiner rip Yeah. So went there with Watson, like, probably shortly after we moved to New York. And it's great.
Molly 6:31
The first thing I always think about corned beef is that my mom loves corned beef hash. It's like one of those things, like those bits of trivia I've always kept in the back of my mind, completely useless. My mom loves corned beef hash. Yeah, I love corned beef hash. I've never had corned beef hash. Oh, we should do an episode. Have we done a hash episode? I feel like maybe we have. We've done a hash episode. Maybe, maybe we've even done corned beef hash, and I've eaten it, and I don't remember. I do remember there being a phase in, I don't know, maybe middle school or something. I remember whenever I would go to was
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:06
Rob Reiner, associated with Harry, met Sally or yes, okay, yes, okay. This is
Molly 7:10
driving me nuts. This is our like, are we messing up our movie trivia episode? Yeah, it sure is. Okay, good, okay, let's see what, what other movies we can reference, and then second guess. Okay, great. So I remember a period of time when I would go to the New York bagel shop again in Cassidy square.
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:27
Yep, for doing the spill about bingo, she just said Cassidy square.
Molly 7:31
Sean, Cassidy square is actually, I believe, what's on the bingo card. And I would order a bagel with corned beef and mustard, which seems to me again, a really like old lady thing to order.
Matthew Amster-Burton 7:44
Yeah, I didn't offer you any mustard today, just because I don't like it on my sandwich. But no, it was fabulous without it the other day. You'll be pleased to hear maybe I referenced Sean Cassidy when talking to a young person, and he did know what I meant, or at least pretended
Unknown Speaker 7:59
to that he was pretending, yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:02
I realized that as I'm saying it yep, because he was, like, growing out his hair, and his hair is kind of wavy. I'm like, Are you gonna go full Sean Cassidy? And he was like, yes, yeah.
Molly 8:11
He was just yes anding you, that's right. I mean, it's, it's the same thing I do most Yeah, sure. So Matthew, tell me about the history of corn beef.
Matthew Amster-Burton 8:20
Okay, I don't know if we talked about this on the Irish Spring episode in the year 700 but, but we're doing it again. So corned beef is a truly, a quintessential New York City food that was invented by Jewish immigrants and adopted almost immediately by Irish immigrants, and is, like closely associated now with both traditions, but like in in the US. So corned beef, kind of, like a few things all came together in New York for for it to be born there. So wide availability of inexpensive beef brisket, because, like America is, is beef country, because a lot of lot of grazing land, refrigeration, which we'll get into more in a little bit standardization, and the easy availability of pickling spices. So, like, it was, you know, now, an era where, like, spices were no longer, like an expensive thing. And there was also, like, sort of a general idea of, like, you know, if you're pickling you're gonna get, like, the cloves, the all spice, the black pepper and so on. And the creation of the deli, which was, which was also a thing born, born in it, in the form we know it today, New York City, where meats are sliced and sold for immediate, or pretty soon, consumption. Wow. I did not know any of this either until I started researching. Unless I did know it in the past and forgot, I
Molly 9:32
think I absolutely would have thought that corned beef came from
Matthew Amster-Burton 9:35
Ireland, right? Yeah, I think, I think we did talk about this on on Episode Seven. I don't anyone go back and listen to it. It won't be funny and will sound. Will sound like soporific, which is the opposite of terrific corned beef, like the concept did exist before this, but it was not corned beef as we know it. It was something either canned or heavily salted and preserved so it could like go on a ship. Voyage. And like, you know, be good for months at room temperature, okay? Like, the the corned beef that we enjoy today that's, like, you know, moist and juicy and, like, salty, but not so salty, let you have to, like, dilute it with something that's like a modern refrigeration thing, because it is lightly cured and not meant to sit out at room temperature for days. Okay?
Molly 10:20
And so what? What is the corned part?
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:23
Oh, okay, so it was made using coarse salt, and the word corn used to oh, you know who's here?
Speaker 1 10:30
Oh, oh, wait a minute.
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:33
It's me come in,
Matthew Amster-Burton 10:41
a surprise appearance by Mr. Etymology, who just happened to be passing by. We waved it in. So the word corn used to be a vastly more general word to mean anything that was a grain or shaped like a grain. So, so, like, I think I think this, like, probably, like, if you get a corn on your foot. It is also related to this. So, like, there was never any corn the grain involved in making corned beef, but there were corns of salt, meaning, like, little pieces of, like, coarse salt. Oh, what would we call those? Now, niblets, yeah. Niblets, nuggets, nugget corn, salt, nuggets, corn nuggets, like, yeah. I tried to, I tried to make my homemade corned beef using corn nuts instead of salt. Pretty interesting. That me. That was, that was me. Mr. Etymology. Matthew would never do anything so foolish.
Speaker 1 11:31
No, no. Oh, wait, bye. Mr. Etymology, bye.
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:35
What does I forgot? Is there a leaving catchphrase?
Speaker 1 11:39
Also, I'm trying to remember, I think it was
Matthew Amster-Burton 11:45
close the door. I'm gone. It wasn't that we'll workshop that. Okay, so I was pleased to learn either for the first time or I feel distracted. We have to figure it out. We have to figure out, what the, what the what do you mean? Figure it out. Like, why should we check Mr. Etymology is Wikipedia page? Like it needs to be something.
Speaker 1 12:09
Matthew says one thing Mr. Etymology says the other, but they're both said by the voice.
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:16
Wait a minute. Is that your understanding of the Mr. Etymology greeting? Yes. Oh, I thought Mr. Etymology was saying the whole thing. It's me come in.
Speaker 1 12:25
No, no, he's saying the whole because he's you. It's you saying the whole thing containing your
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:33
I know I like, like, okay, let's pull back the curtain for the listeners. There is no Mr. Etymology. It's just me doing a character that sounds exactly like me, but, but I thought the joke was that Mr. Etymology comes to the door and says it's me come in, which is something only a lunatic would say.
Speaker 1 12:51
It's a way of expressing that like
Matthew Amster-Burton 12:56
I I'm not, I'm not gonna come around to your to your conception of this ever, okay? Listeners, so, okay, we're short on spilled mail. Let's, let's, let's have listeners write in. So they're not gonna get this mail until like April. Okay, never mind. Don't write in. Okay.
Molly 13:14
But wait, hold on. Okay, so it's me come in, yeah, the inverse would be.
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:21
So it's the, it's the come in that that really makes it because like, like, you would never say that if you're the one coming in. So what's the thing you would never say when you were leaving, come back soon?
Speaker 1 13:32
Would you say?
Matthew Amster-Burton 13:34
Like, but that's but come in is a thing we would actually say. And like, Come back soon is not so see you next now, see you next time either either side could say that, see, it's, this is tricky. Yeah, it has to be something that would never actually get said, sure.
Molly 13:51
Okay, it's me come in, yep, because it's like the person is talking from both sides
Unknown Speaker 13:57
of the door. Right, right, exactly.
Molly 13:59
So, oh gosh, okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:02
goodbye, go away. That's how, whenever, whenever anyone leaves my house, I say, go away. Molly. Can vouch get out. I don't. I don't know if we're gonna come, if we're gonna crack this, but also, I think we once had had one and forgot it.
Molly 14:18
Okay, maybe Abby can help us. Yeah,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:20
what about it's me, goodbye. Sound pretty, pretty good, pretty good. Okay, all right, so let's pretend I said that and like the last five minutes didn't happen. You?
Molly 14:44
So we know that corned beef originated in the form that that it has today in New York City, but where exactly,
Matthew Amster-Burton 14:51
okay, so on the Lower East Side, it was a thing that started to appear in delis, like in the late 19th, early 20th. Century, but you may recall, like, I don't know why you would recall, since we haven't talked about them at all yet, that this is the corned beef sandwich episode, not the corned beef episode. Oh, so Katz's Deli is definitely the most famous we can argue about who's the best, but they're definitely the most famous source of corned beef sandwiches in New York City, where corned beef in its mind, where the corned beef sandwich was born. Okay? They were founded as Iceland brothers in 1888 it was two guys named Iceland, like, spelled exactly like the country. But the evidence that I was able to find said probably, like, no one was really serving corned beef sandwiches as we know them, until the teens or 20s. Okay?
Molly 15:38
And when you think of a corned beef sandwich, what do you think of? Oh, okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 15:41
yeah, we probably should have defined the relationship first, yes, okay, so like a bunch of sliced corned beef, usually served warm or hot on rye bread, or another bread with mustard, optionally mustard, and probably not any other toppings.
Molly 15:57
Okay, so you expect it to be on rye bread?
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:00
Yes, although, yeah, when I go to cats, I like the club bread, which is sort of a, like soft, soft, but sturdy enough, white roll. And that's more similar to what I served today, which was some Safeway baguette that I happened to have around,
Molly 16:14
no, and it was really nice, because the outside, I mean, it, as baguettes go, it is not like a French baguette, right? I mean, it's quite soft, and then has this very thin but crackly,
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:25
no, if you tried to take this onto a French carousel, they would, they would, they would throw you off the horse,
Molly 16:30
that's right, they would pummel you with with corns. They would
Matthew Amster-Burton 16:33
probably, they would throw corns at you of many, of many kinds. Yeah, corns of many kinds. Okay, when Katz's serves it just realized Mr. Etymology didn't say anything about the banned corn. That surprises me. That does too maybe we can go back. Not, no, he was heading down the block to an important etymology party.
Molly 16:55
Okay, okay, Matthew, I understand that corned beef has gone to space.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:02
Yes, yes. Wikipedia, quoting from the Discovery Channel says, quote, A contraband corned beef sandwich on rye bread brought aboard the Gemini three spacecraft by John Young, resulted in a minor controversy for the risk posed to the craft and crew by floating crumbs at lingering odors.
Molly 17:19
Wow, the crumbs thing will never stop fascinating. Yeah, right, that a crumb could wreak such havoc.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:28
Oh, yeah. But, like, how do you think he smuggled it aboard? You would think that they would, like, really check over everything.
Molly 17:33
I mean, I bet now they get like, a full body pat down, just in case you're smuggling corned beef. Yeah?
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:38
Although now nowadays, like with like billionaires do it being like space tourists, probably they think they can get away with anything, and like, you know, slip someone like $1,000 bill to skip the pat down. What do you think Katy Perry brought space? Oh, like, pop
Molly 17:53
she, yeah, and Justin.
Matthew Amster-Burton 17:59
She, she, like squirreled both of them away in her in her space suit. I forgot that Katy Perry had gone to space until you reminded me.
Unknown Speaker 18:09
I'm sorry that is just the strangest sentence.
Molly 18:11
Yeah. No, it is, yeah. Okay. When did you start making corned beef? And do you make it for the sandwiches?
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:17
So I certainly make it with sandwiches, sandwiches and hash in mind. Although last night we had just some sliced corn beef, roasted potatoes, roasted broccoli for dinner. It was great. I made those. Like, I was really, I was really in a cooking mood yesterday because, like, I was braising the corned beef. I already made the corned beef. We'll get get into how. And I was like, I want to make those English style roasted potatoes with the semolina flour. Have you made these? No, oh, we've probably talked about this on a roasted potato episode. Do you boil
Molly 18:49
them, kind of shake them up to, like, get their edges or get all the skins sort of riled up.
Matthew Amster-Burton 18:57
Yeah, toss them with semolina flour, a lot of salt and a lot of oil and roast them. Wow. Really good. So they're really crispy on the really crispy and really creamy on the inside. Incredible. Yeah, it was really great dinner.
Molly 19:09
I think we should do an episode on we should do that. Yeah, so you did that. Did you offer any mustard at the table?
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:15
I didn't offer any mustard at the table. If anyone had wanted some, they certainly could have walked over to the fridge and gotten some we do have yellow mustard, because Watson likes it on some things and a cots D and I don't like it on any things.
Molly 19:27
So you mentioned that this brisket was that you sourced it at a nice butcher shop. Yes, Pike Place Market. So is this something that you do? You source nicer meat than you might usually buy.
Matthew Amster-Burton 19:40
So it's not so much that it's that it's not easy to find a point cut brisket. Like, if, if I'm if I were gonna buy it at Safeway, which I won't, because it was double the price. Like, I don't even know they sell whole briskets there. I don't know if, at the Safeway meat counter, if they would sell me half of it and or if. They would trim it for me. Okay, like, and I don't even know if I would trust them to do a good job. I guess, I guess I am throwing shade at the Safeway butcher butcher counter.
Molly 20:09
So you bought this at Don and Joe's. It was nine pounds, and you had them trim it. I had
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:14
them trim it, and then I trimmed it a little more, because I don't like, like, some people like the fat on the corned beef is the whole point. I like mine fairly lean, and so I trimmed it fairly aggressively, so from nine pounds down to below seven pounds, okay?
Molly 20:28
And then you bring it home, and you just basically, like, rub it with corns.
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:33
Oh, I rubbed it with so many corn it's really satisfying. So first of all, I love making a proprietary spice blend. And when I say proprietary, I mean just that I mixed it up myself. Okay, not that you can't
Molly 20:44
happen, but by proprietary, like, is it a secret formula?
Matthew Amster-Burton 20:49
No, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna share it in the in the show notes. Oh, great, yeah. So this originally was inspired by one that that cooks illustrated published many years ago. And I just like, I kind of it varies a little bit every time, just based on, like, what I pull off my spice shelf. But this time I did crushed black pepper, coriander, cinnamon, allspice, ground ginger, mustard seeds, crushed red pepper, fresh garlic, brown sugar, crushed bay leaves and MSG, awesome, and a lot of salt. So like, I want to say about a cup of kosher salt. Kosher salt, yeah, and then you rub it all over, okay? And then do you put it in like a Ziploc bag, yeah? Like, one of those, one of those we have, we have some of these, like, two and a half gallon Ziploc bags that I think of as, like the corned beef bags, even though they only get used for that every other year or so, I'm sure we put, like, I was gonna say, toys we don't have, like we do. I guess sometimes we have kids come over. It's like, the sort of, like, storage bag you would put toys in, right?
Molly 21:52
And so then you keep it in the fridge,
Matthew Amster-Burton 21:54
yeah, keep it in the fridge. And, like, the original recipe said to like, like, weight it. I haven't found that that really makes a difference. And, like, how do you do that when it's going on, like, the bottom shelf of your fridge and there isn't really room to, like, put anything on top of it, and it doesn't matter, so, but I do flip it once a day. Can I even say for sure that that makes a difference? No, but it's fun. It makes me feel like I'm doing something, and
Molly 22:15
then you rinse it right? Yeah.
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:18
So, so I cured it for a week. Honestly, like, this, I thought this was really good. Like, it would have been fine with me if it was slightly less salty. So maybe, like, I will do five days next time instead of a week. But like, I'm not saying this was bad. So I rinsed it and then, first off, I cut it in half and froze half as a Christmas gift for my parents. Okay, they're not gonna find out, because this episode is airing way after Christmas, they're not gonna find out. Will you give it to them raw, or will you cook it? I will give it to them raw, frozen. Will you give it to them? Yes, they're gonna raw dog that corned beef.
Unknown Speaker 22:56
Okay, so you'll
Matthew Amster-Burton 22:58
give it to them raw. I'll give it to them raw. And what I'll tell them, is thaw it and then soak it for half an hour to, like, take a little bit of the salt out, okay, and then braise it, you know, simmer, boil it for like, three, three and a half hours, just in water, just in water. Oh, wow, oh yeah. It will be plenty flavorful. It does not need anything other than water.
Molly 23:17
So usually, or at least I always thought of corned beef as being, you know, almost a garish pink color and salts.
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:27
Yes, I do not use pickling salts. I'm not against pickling salts in any way. I just find that I don't care about the color, like I don't care if my corned beef is brown, and for something that you're gonna like keep in the fridge and eat most of pretty quickly. It's not really adding any anything in terms of food safety, and the flavor is not really that different for the amount you use, either. Okay. So, like, if you prefer a nice pink corned beef and want to use pickling salt, absolutely
Molly 23:56
go for it. And so pickling salt would have is it nitrates?
Matthew Amster-Burton 23:59
Yeah, like, sodium, sodium and potassium nitrate. I think great. Maybe not potassium nitrate anymore. Isn't that saltpeter? I'm not sure. Okay, let's get our an expert, our expert saltpeter in
Molly 24:11
here. Okay, okay,
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:14
it's me. I'm salty. I don't know.
Molly 24:17
Okay, all right, but hang on. So we had a delicious and quite brown corned beef today, and you served it, as we said, on this baguette. I don't know that I've ever had it on, like, the traditional ride.
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:32
Yeah, I probably should have gotten some. But then I saw I already had bread. I was like, This bread is going to be good, so I'm not going to buy more bread, but we'll do it sometime. Okay, we'll revisit this next year.
Molly 24:41
Okay, first of all, I'm so interested that this began in Jewish culture, but then migrated to Italian or Irish American.
Matthew Amster-Burton 24:52
Yes, corned beef, as we know it is, is not a traditional Irish thing, like cured pork would have been more of an Irish thing. Like. In Ireland, and is also, like, in like, like, we said, like the Jewish version, like, it was born in New York City. So, like, you know, preserved beef was part of Jewish culture, Jewish food culture before that, but not exactly this.
Molly 25:12
Corned beef is corned beef? This is maybe a really stupid question, but is it basically pastrami that's not smoked?
Matthew Amster-Burton 25:19
Yeah, I was, I was afraid you were gonna ask that I was thinking about this, that this morning I was gonna look it up. I believe, like the the cure is slightly different for pastrami, the texture, yeah, maybe we should do a pastrami episode. I have eaten so little me too. My my dad, I was also curious about the word, yeah. My parents were very corned beef. E so even when we would go to New York, they didn't get pastrami, right? Corned beef? Okay, let's, let's do a pastrami episode the week so we can both learn something about it. Great. Do you like me every time you say my dad was a blank man? Imagine sort of this checklist in your head with like, something being added to it, like Altoids. Man, endive. Man, corned beef.
Molly 26:02
Man, no, I hadn't thought of it that way.
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:05
I think, I think like it kind of we just reached a threshold where it started turning into a checklist for me, what kind of man is your dad? He's a pickled herring. Man, pickled herring. Man, a kimchi. Man, a licorice. Man, halva man, yep, my dad was also a halva. Man, yeah. I'm sure we talked about this on the halva episode. I'm sure we did every time I eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Now I think, oh yeah, that's halva in the middle.
Molly 26:27
Oh, I haven't thought about that lately. Okay, cool. Matthew, so Do people ever make cold corned beef sandwiches?
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:34
Yeah, absolutely cold corned beef is delicious. Like, I'm not, like, I generally always will take a hot meat over a cold meat. But I have to admit, I was certainly snacking on, like, little bits of cold corned beef that fell off as I was slicing it for this sandwich today. It's great.
Molly 26:48
There is something though about since brisket is sort of threaded with fat, yeah, there's something so nice about having that fat be warm and melted,
Matthew Amster-Burton 26:57
though, and like, I'm sure I'm not anywhere near among the first people to observe this, but a corned beef sandwich is kind of like a Jewish barbecue sandwich. How? So it's like some hot, you know, the sandwich is filled in an informal way, like, you know, sort of where, like, we're gonna take some meat out, we're gonna plunk it into the sandwich. It's It's hot, it's salty, it's tender, and it's messy to eat. It really, it serves kind of the same function.
Unknown Speaker 27:26
Yeah, I see that. I see that the rye bread, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:28
think, is, like, important to, like, a traditional corned beef sandwich, but like, the it's about, it's a sandwich that's about the meat, the bread, the bread is there to serve the meat.
Molly 27:37
Yes, the bread is there to serve the meat. Yes. So I remember on our hot sandwiches episode, right, that we talked about the Reuben, oh, yeah, which is corned beef and sauerkraut
Matthew Amster-Burton 27:51
and Swiss, Swiss cheese and 1000 island dressing. Whoa, yeah, it's, it's like a thing I that is just not for me. So if you're a Reuben fan, great. I'm happy for you.
Molly 28:03
What kind of, what kind of bread, what kind of vehicle does it? Is it presented on?
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:08
I don't even know. I mean, I guess I should know, because this is the corned beef sandwich episode, and that is a corned beef sandwich. But, like, Whatever,
Molly 28:17
whatever I've
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:19
never, had,
Molly 28:21
never had a Reuben? Yeah, as previously discussed on the hot sandwiches episode. Okay, I
Matthew Amster-Burton 28:26
feel like we had some good information earlier in the episode, like in the middle of the episode before, before we ran out of gas. I'm really tired now. I don't know if you, like me, are settling in for a long winter's meat nap. I was gonna say, Do you have the meat sweats? I don't have the meat sweats, but I have the meat sleepies. Yeah? Me too, yeah, yeah. There's, like, we had like, a, like, a hearty little sandwich, and then we each had another half a sandwich. Just so good, yeah? So the thing is, homemade corned beef is so good. It's much better than, like, I love store bought corned beef. Like, you know, I love the cheap stuff. I love the like, you know, one step deli counter. I will buy corned beef like, in the meat section at Safeway, like, the cheap stuff that goes on sale for St Patrick's Day. And it's great. Homemade is so much better than that like, and it and to me, it's even better than like, you know, good, you know, it's, it is up there with, like, the best deli corned beef you will have it really is worth making at home if you want to spend your wooden nickels on fresh brisket.
Molly 29:27
It's so interesting to me. It's so easy when you were when you were a kid, and maybe this is just something about my family back then. No, when you were a kid, do you feel like your family bought more like large pieces of meat than your family does now.
Matthew Amster-Burton 29:43
I think so. Like, certainly my mom was always roasting a chicken, yeah, like 24 724, beyond sign outside that said rotisserie.
Molly 29:55
No, I mean, I guess, I guess I think of it mostly as a holiday thing, you know, like a beef tender. Loin or, yeah, like, did we ever do that, like a round rose? Did people really do that? Or was that just like, I think people really magazine spreads.
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:09
I think, like, it was, like, always more in magazine spreads, but I think people really did that. Like some people I did We did my family do that a lot? I don't think so.
Molly 30:18
No, I think of it as something that, like, when we would get together with my siblings on my dad's side of the family, my half siblings, I feel like they are very comfortable with, like, big pieces of meat. There would always be like, some sort of extravagant roast, which just doesn't do it for me.
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:37
Yeah, it's not something I'm super interested when you say they were comfortable, big piece of me. Do me, like, go into the den and there just be, like, a whole ham like, relaxing in the easy
Molly 30:45
chair, big time. Yeah? Well, no, what it was was that my brother would be on the sofa snuggling it. I mean, he was very comfortable with it, right? Of course.
Matthew Amster-Burton 30:53
Yeah. Rock by hammy, yeah. Okay, that's so sweet. It's so sweet. Okay, so that was corned beef sandwiches. Hey, do we have any spilled mail? No, we don't. Could you? Could you the listener? Please hit us up with some spilled mail. What do you want to know? We're an open book. We'll tell you anything, maybe not anything, but contacted. Say next and and like, ask us something normal, and we'll answer
Molly 31:20
it on the show, Matthew, I hear that you do have a now,
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:23
but, wow, I sure do.
Matthew Amster-Burton 31:32
I loved this book. The book is called automatic noodle by Annalee Newitz. Annalee Newitz is a sci fi author, and this is definitely a sci fi book, but it's also, I think it may fall under what I've heard called cozy sci fi, in that like nothing really terrible happens, although the threat of it is out there. It's about a bunch of robot friends who are trying to get a restaurant off the ground in post apocalyptic California after California has seceded from the US in a brutal war. Robots are highly discriminated against, and so there is incredible food stuff in this book, because the robots who can't, you can't eat because they're robots, but like, you know, sort of get obsessed with making hand pulled noodles, and they need money in order to, like, get the resources to stay alive, and they want to do this by, like, opening a great restaurant in very difficult circumstances. So, like, it's, it's not really about robots, really, but, but, man, these robot characters are so are so vivid. There's, like, incredible, you know joyful stuff about gender in the book, it's just a beautiful, quick read that's automatic noodle by Annalee Newitz, great.
Molly 32:49
That sounds fabulous. Our producer is Abby circuit. Tella can rate and
Matthew Amster-Burton 32:53
review us wherever you get your podcasts, and you can chat with other
Molly 32:56
spilled milk listeners at reddit.com/r/everything,
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:01
spilled milk, and until next time swing, I just listened to a podcast about about a Wayne's World video game, and they kept saying Schwing. So that's why it was in my brain,
Molly 33:16
amazing I'm leaving. I a
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:24
good job us, good job us. Good job us. The hut All right, when that movie, I guess, I guess you're younger than me. So do you remember when, when Return of the Jedi came out? I don't. Yeah, because, like, I remember there was a lot of talk about Jabba the Hutt before I knew what it was, and I was like, I gotta meet this hut.
Molly 33:44
My introduction to Jabba the Hutt was sort of cocktail party backwards through pizza the hut.
Matthew Amster-Burton 33:51
Oh, sure, yes, yeah, yeah, no, that checks out. Okay. Do.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai