I've got a recipe from Ireland for corned beef -- I'll try to remember to post it, as it's at home and I'm not.

As a side note about the saltpeter -- which is, chemically, potassium nitrate. When my youngest brother discovered that hot dogs contained sodium nitrate (which can also be used to make gunpowder) he wondered if you could explode them. After he experimented he decided that you can't do that. However, putting a firecracker into one and exploding the firecracker whill throw bits of hot dog a pretty fair distance.