GW, if you look at some brine recipes for chicken and corning recipes for corned beef, you will see that have very similar salt to water ratios. There really isn't any more salt in a corned beef than a brined chicken, relatively speaking. Yet you never see anyone recommend soaking a brined chicken in fresh water to remove excess salt. That's why I was wondering about this. Even if you are smoking or grilling the corned beef, most recipes I came across all said to soak the beef to remove excess salt. You just don't find that for chicken. The only difference I could think of was the chicken goes right from the brine to the grill. The corned beef goes in a package for who knows how long.