Talk:Corned beef

Several problems here - Corned Beef in the US is clearly a different product to the one used in the UK & Ireland (and Commonwealth countries) - UK Corned beef is tinned. Even when sold as a deli counter sliced meat, it has come from a bigger tin. It's made with Saltpetre (probably salt too - but the saltpetre is the main thing). Usually imported from South America - and before the Falklands war almost entirely from Argentina. US corned beef is a cured beef product - it's not usually tinned. (but tinned UK style corned beef is possibly available too). It's counterpart in Europe is Salt Beef - typically a Kosher product. Tinned Corned beef was popular during the two world wars as a non-perishable meat for use by troops - and christened "Bully Beef" - not because it sounds like Bouillon - but because beef comes from a Bull - and there would often be a picture of one on the the can. During the 2nd world war it was sold increasingly to civilians in the UK and Ireland - meat was tightly rationed by the Government, and the meat ration could be doubled if applied to corned beef rather than fresh meat. This led to it being used in traditional recipes such as Lancashire Hot Pot, Irish Stew, or Scouse - and turning them into Corned Beef Hash. - often with very little meat and large amounts of potatoes - which could be grown locally in gardens and allotments. It's entirely possible that tinned corned beef is intended to be a version of the 'Salt Beef' sold as 'Corned Beef' in the US - but it really isn't remotely similar. The meat in tinned corned beef is chopped rather than minced.

Corned Beef remains popular in UK - but salt beef and Pastrami are also increasingly popular as sandwich fillings - often with heavy Dark Rye Bread (eg. Pumpernickel) rather than the lighter Rye Breads eaten with corned beef in the US. Part of popularity of the tinned version is that it keeps forever in the tin, and can be used to make a meal extremely quickly. West Indian (Caribbean) and Irish brands are available in specialist sections of supermarkets in UK

The whole section on Ireland and the famine needs cutting out - it's not remotely relevant - it's about beef NOT corned beef. Irish Beef is seen in the UK as a high quality product (Many restaurant - McDonalds & Burger King for example generally state : We only use British and Irish Beef ) - Differences in Irish and UK diets are subtle - like regional English differences.

If I could put all this in a revised article and source the information I would but it would take me more time than I have ! - Sorry ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2a02:c7d:7aef:2500:b574:2914:360f:88c6 (talk) 02:08, 2017 July 24 (UTC)

I broadly concur with this poster's sentiments. The article as of now does at least mention that the "US version" is known in the UK as salt beef. I have had a nice salt beef sandwich at Selfridge's in London once upon a time and as I recall it was more less exactly what I would expect of a corned beef sandwich in North America. I still think this distinction between that and bully beef as corned beef needs to be made stronger. Or common origin explained more, if any. I grew up in Canada with the tinned corned beef aka bully beef, but we also had and I encountered deli corned beef at a relatively young age. Of course we also have smoked meat and pastrami, and the respective wiki pages at least offer clues to the differences among those very similar products. Random noter (talk) 16:00, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Would this article be better renamed 'salt beef'. This term is most widely used globally to refer to this kind of brined beef product, and has a number of cognates in other languages. It is used in the USA interchangeably to refer to what is called 'corned beef' here. In the UK, Ireland, and commonwealth, corned beef refers to the canned product (nobody uses the term bully beef, this is highly anachronistic) and salt beef refers to the subject of this page. Considering that, calling this 'salt beef' would not be incorrect in any context. That would help clear up confusion and the page currently titled 'bully beef' could be retitled corned beef and only require a small note to say that in the USA 'corned beef may also refer to salt beef'. 88.108.60.202 (talk) 13:00, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I would concur that with the sentiment of this article being renamed Salt Beef. It seems quite US centric currently. Commonwealth refers to this salted beef and also, I would argue, better defines the product for distinction. "Corned beef" would better be used as a Disambiguation or the pages be delisted as Corned Beef (commonwealth) Corned Beef (US). Jo Jc Jo^{Talk💬Edits📝} 23:29, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

This seems eminently sensible. Would you happen to know the process to get this done? 82.11.195.62 (talk) 03:04, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I know I'm late to this conversation, but as someone from the UK, corned beef refers to both the subject of this page, and the tinned stuff referred to on the bully beef page as corned beef.

If I'm to make an assumption, being as I haven't encountered it being listed as "salted beef" anywhere, perhaps some more upmarket spots (a sandwich shop in a Selfridges in London sounds like that might be a little more upmarket) might be attempting to sound more fancy by distancing itself from the canned form of corned beef, by choice of a different name.

We also need to bear in mind that canned vs. non-canned is perhaps not the most useful distinction either. I see 'bully' corned beef more often pre-sliced and sold in packets than in cans, although I've no doubt it used to be overwhelming sold in a can.

(To allow factoring in for local dialects, my exposure to it would be Midlands English)

I'd actually make a bolder suggestion that this page, and bully beef should be merged, because I think the latter is a variation on the former (ultimately the distinction is if it is minced or not). In fact, we already in the "Regions" section of this page list the 'bully' beef version five times (Caribbean, United Kingdom, Israel, Polynesia, Phillipines) - I believe Hong Kong's entry is also referring to the canned variety although not 100% sure and it doesn't specify in the text on this page.

I think current page structure of having loads of different headers for regions is unhelpful, when some are just a sentence with one source, and in two cases we have a regional header, then a country header, for one short paragraph on one country!

I think a better structure would be to get rid of most or all of the regional headers while preserving much of their text, this also lets us shift around some of the points, so for instance we could bring the Philippines and Polynesia directly following North America, given that it's that country's influence largely that brought these into local food culture there (along w/ NZ and Aus in the case of Polynesia)

We can then extract all the references to "Bully beef" or "canned corned beef" and shift it under a new subsection dedicated to this item. ~2026-86916-9 (talk) 22:11, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

The statement "Smoking corned beef, usually with the addition of extra spices such as black pepper, produces a cold cut known as pastrami, or, in Canada, smoked meat" is misleading at best. It is most obviously interpreted as meaning that pastrami is known by the name "smoked meat" in Canada. This is flat out false - "pastrami" is both widely available and commonly known. "Smoked meat" is generally a Montreal or Quebec item, and is known in other parts of Canada as "Montreal smoked meat" where it is also both widely available and commonly known, very often alongside both pastrami and corned beef.

While it can be similar to corned beef and pastrami, generic smoked meat is considered distinct from both. Most importantly, it differs from both by way of the fact that it is usually not "corned" or brine cured - it is simply smoked. The Wikipedia entries for pastrami and smoked meat note these differences. Montreal smoked meat on the other hand is a specific item that is in fact similar to corned beef and pastrami. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.229.147.217 (talk) 21:49, 2007 December 14 (UTC)

On top of the section need citation, i think the ingredients is referring to, is "鹹牛肉", which in fact are minced "Corned beef" which came from canned food. I never saw non-minced "Corned beef sandwich" in Hong Kong personally. Matthew hk (talk) 21:34, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Images are stacked, unnecessarily on the left, and sandwich (no pun intended) text. The easiest way to remedy this would be by taking all of the images placed in unrelated sections out and relying on the Commons link. I know people like adding pictures, but how many images of sandwiches do we really need?Orangejuicedude (talk) 22:01, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I removed a few of the images, should be ok now. Seems to be a common issue for these articles. Hickoryglaze (talk) 01:02, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Could someone add nutricional value and/or health information of the product to the [corned_beef] ? Theking2 (talk) 13:00, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I propose merging Bully Beef into Corned Beef. I think the content in SOURCEPAGE can easily be explained in the context of this article, and merging them would not cause any article-size or weighting problems.

Specifically, a lot of the length of this article is used up in pretty redundant headings (I don't think the current regional/country breakdown on this page is very good), plus a fair few bits on this page are talking about canned corned beef.

Meanwhile the 'bully beef' page:

• Firstly, it's an odd name for the page as discussed on it's talk page by other people, nobody really calls it that. 'Bully beef' is a niche bit of historical military slang which isn't present in the civilian population, so "corned beef" or "canned corned beef" is a better name for that page.
• Secondly, the product being talked about is not very different. It's often in the UK now not sold in a can but rather just sliced and packaged like any other lunch meat, and it's only real difference to the corned beef talked about here is that it has been minced.
• Thirdly, some of the text on the Bully Beef page is kinda nonsense, the whole talk about "iconic" rectangular cans which are pretty similar in appearance to say, the rectangular can of spam, and the patent which we talk so much about was denied because of prior art (so clearly somewhere/something else was already using a similar can!) We could probably condense that whole chunk to a shorter mention that it began to appear in rectangular tin cans around WW1/Boer. Likewise we don't need to talk about key-open cans so much, because that is discussed on the page Can opener#Twist-key_can-opener, and is an innovation applied to a number of canned food products. I reckon that page will probably shrink to about 2/3s of 3/4s of it's current length.

So referencing WP:MERGEREASON, there is significant overlap between these two pages (2), the text of the two pages is not tremendously long (3), and the article on bully beef needs you to understand what corned beef is, as "bully beef" is just a minced and canned form of corned beef (5). Thus my position would be to Merge the pages. ~2026-86916-9 (talk) 22:43, 1 March 2026 (UTC)