Looking for a good oven or stove-top recipe for corned-beef and cabbage for New Year's Day supper that includes beer or Stout and brown sugar. I don't like my mother's method from the time crock pots were invented because the veggies are always turned to mush. She has used a crockpot for so many years that she no longer has the recipe she used pre-crockpot.

I have a 4 lb. brisket and the label says up to 35% solution of a bunch of stuff, including sodium phosphates and sodium nitrates. Doesn't say if that is 35% by weight or by volume but I assume by weight.

As an aside, and for another year other than 2014, is it possible to find corned beef "naturally brined?" i.e. sans the phosphates and nitrates? Or is that just the reality of corned beef?