  We compute the chiral condensate of $2+1$ QCD from the mode number of the
staggered Dirac operator, performing controlled extrapolations to both the
continuum and the chiral limit. We consider also alternative strategies, based
on the quark mass dependence of the topological susceptibility and of the pion
mass, and obtain consistent results within errors. Results are also consistent
with phenomenological expectations and with previous numerical determinations
obtained with different lattice discretizations.
