St. Patty's Day Corned Beef

[wayupnorth]

I have been making this for many years and always goes over very well. Instead of boiling it in a pot, I put it in a large roaster, season and spice to your preference, add all the vegs and use some seltzer water instead of regular water to bring it up about an inch or so. Put into a 275 degree oven for at least 4 hours, basting all the vegs and meat every hour or until the meat falls apart. I think boiling it takes all the flavor out of the meal.

 

[launderess]

Since Owning and Discovering How Well and Fast

CB comes out in a pressure cooker (Magefessa), haven't bothered with any other way. Will put my special mustard and brown sugar coating on top then under the broiler when done just kick things up a notch.

However having seen prices at the supermarkets for CB this week, haven't picked one up yet. Refuse to pay that much money for mostly salt and nitrates. Will see if prices go down by Friday or there's always after Saint Paddy's day.

 

[rp2813]

I picked up my CB today.  There will be six of us around the table for dinner on Saturday.

 

This year I may try steaming it.  I always have displacement issues when I add the cabbage to a big pot with a giant chunk of meat floating around in it.

 

The steaming recipe is from The Los Angeles Times, and calls for using the outer cabbage leaves to line the steamer insert, then placing the meat on top of them.  Cooking time is around three hours.  I'll use a big pasta pot, so lifting the meat out will be a cinch. 

 

I also found a recipe for "Chicago style" CB, which is more along the lines of the OP.  I'm going to do the cabbage as suggested in that one, which calls for 8 oz of Kerrygold Irish Butter melted, mixed with a splash of cider vinegar and drizzled over the cabbage before serving, then topping with crumbled bacon (six slices worth).  Should make the cabbage a lot less boring than it usually is.

 

I've selected a couple of featured cocktails.  I'm going to have my 40's vintage Waring Blendor out on the bar for whipping up batches of grasshoppers (a tradition my mom started with a friend down the street one blurry St. Patrick's day about 50 years ago), and the shaker will be out for mixing up key lime pie martinis, served in glasses rimmed with crushed graham crackers.  Can't wait!

 

[vacbear58]

Kerrygold Irish Butter

You must be cooking one hell of a lot of cabbage to need that amount of butter over it, not so much a drizzle as a bath!

Al

 

[polkanut]

We make our corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots in the Crock Pot.  It takes more time this way, but it is so delicious.  The veggies are added about 3/4 of the way through the cooking time.  Usual total cooking time is about 6-8 hours on low. 

 

[rp2813]

A friend of mine is a champion for the crock pot method.  I might be swayed to go that route since it will be more of a set-and-forget convenience, until adding the vegetables, and there would be less cookware clean-up afterward.

 

[pulltostart]

Forget about the CB - let's focus on those cocktails a little longer!

Lawrence

 

[rp2813]

Oh, I think my crowd will!  Which makes the crock pot more appealing -- I can indeed forget about the CB with no worries!

 

[wayupnorth]

My ancient avacado K-Mart crock pot just isnt big enough to hold everything. Although I definitely would rather use a crock pot than the oven, the roaster method works for the large quantity I am making for Saturday. And I agree with Laundress on the prices this year, outrageous! I did find 2 decent priced ones at of all places, Walmart. If they do go on sale after Saturday, I will definiely buy extra and freeze them.

 

[perc-o-prince]

I'm cooking up the two that are in the freezer from last time they were on sale (maybe September or October?). About 4# total. Bought one about 4.5# "fresh" and threw it in the freezer Monday at $1.29/lb. I'll grab another 5# or so before the sale is over. Love making a big dinner of it then a big batch of hash to portion out and freeze!

Last few times I've been using the 6+ qt. slow cooker. I do it on hi for about 3-4 hours- keeping in mind it takes a good hour or so before it simmers, dump the salty water for fresh, add seasonings (bay leaves, peppercorns, red pepper flakes, garlic cloves, mustard seeds) and have it go a couple more hours on hi. I can add some carrots and taters to the pot (switch to lo) but the cabbage usually has to be done afterward for lack of room.

Served with brown mustard/horseradish mixture for smearing or dipping.

Next day or so, get out the Nutone grinder!!!

Chuck

 

[revvinkevin]

SMOKED Corned Beef !

 

 

I'd heard about a local guy from coworkers who has been smoking and selling a variety of smoked meat, poultry and fish out of his garage for years apparently.   The beginning of last year he finally opened his own store front, but he's only open Saturday & Sunday.

 

Last year while I was in there buying something else, he mentioned the smoked CB and gave me a sample to taste.   Boy was it good!  WOW!   I bought some and invited a friend over.   She was really surprised just how good it was!

 

I called in my order 3 weeks ago, I'm picking it up Saturday and am having 6 friends over for dinner Saturday to share in the yummy-ness!

 

Kevin 

 

[wayupnorth]

HASH

YUM, leftovers through Ma's old grinder and fried up. Nothing could be tastier. Doubt I will have any as last year there were 16 and this year looks to be more. I have 2 corned beefs, a whole cabbage, pound of carrots, turnip, onions and 10# of potatoes plus a quart of seltzer water. I may have to use 2 roasters...lol. But a good time will be had by all, I'm sure, and none of us have to drive as we all are within walking distance of each other. All of us in the "hood" each take holidays and this is my turn. Thank goodness extras are coming from everyone else.

 

[launderess]

CB Is Ok For The One Day

But as one who does not reguarly eat red meat much less that which is heavy on the salt and full of nitrates, after the first day one does grow weary of the thing.

Indeed often after a heavy CB meal start to get the same feeling one has after consuming a heavy MSG laden food.

 

[redcarpetdrew]

We actually cook ours in the Romertopf clay cooker. I managed to find a really nice one with extra capacity at a thrift store a while back and the CB comes out great each time. We actually get ours from a local butcher who makes his own. It's much less salty than the store bought variety but is much higher quality.


RCD

 

[brisnat81]

If you dry cook the Corned Beef how do you get rid of the saltyness?

I've slow roasted Silverside, but if you cook corned silverside without water, how do you make it edible and not crazily salty?

 

[retro-man]

To Launderess

I would like to try cooking it in the pressure cooker. How long and how much pressure do you use? Do you put the cabbage in with it to cook also? About how much water do you ad?
thanks
Jon

 

[polkanut]

Chuck,

Where in the world did you find corned beef brisket @ $1.29lb?  The cheapest I've seen here was $2.49lb at of all places, Wal-Mart.  Could it be because of Boston being so close, and the large Irish population?

 

[whirlcool]

I love Corned Beef! We haven't made it in a long time. We usually slow cook it in the slow cooker. Then I use our slicer to slice up any remains for sandwiches. I really have to have a good horseradish when I have corned beef.

While I love corned beef, I absolutely cannot stand that canned "Corn Beef Hash". When I was young my mother used to make sandwiches made of it, fried. Yuck! Pasty,
nasty, vile stuff. I swore I'd never have it again. And it must have been 45 years or so since I have had it.

 

[wayupnorth]

I had to go in town today on a few errands and thought I would stop at the local Hannaford Superstore. Lo and behold, corned beef was marked down to $1.29 lb. Bought 6 more and threw them in the freezer. Walmart was $2.29 for the same brand today. I agree with you whirlcool, that canned crap is BAD! I dont dare to order it in a restaurant for breakfast because it is always that canned crap.

 

[MrX]

Oddly enough, it's not actually a very popular or normally eaten dish here in Ireland and not at all associated with St. Patrick's Day.

It tends to be a big carvery type dinner - roast lamb, roast beef and/or bacon.
Served up with all sorts of vegetables.

Or, it could be anything really from fish, to ... you name it.

We'd tend to try and throw in some fancier locally produced produce though.

There isn't a particular tradition of a special dish for St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. You could be as likely to find some kind of "celtic-fusion" food or a curry on a table in Ireland on Paddy's day.

It's also usually referred to here as Paddy's day, and rarely St. Pat's.

The parades tend to be multicultural and have a bit of a mardi gras quality too in the bigger cities like Dublin and Cork. They're often not very 'traditional' in the Irish-American sense and may include things like a gay pride section, Brazilian dancers in fether costumes, robots, dinosaurs, giant puppets... you name it! Anything goes!

In Irleland itself, Paddy's day's kinda about celebrating everything about presen-day Ireland, rather than a particular version of ethnic Irishness as it is our national holiday.

 

[twintubdexter]

Lots of good ideas here for cooking corned beef. Many years ago I tried using my old Presto pressure cooker on a piece of CB. I don't know what I did wrong, probably didn't cook it long enough, but the meat was like a piece of rubber, sort of like corned beef chewing gum. Yesterday I threw a piece in my new electric pressure cooker along with the seasoning packet, garlic and about 4 cups of water. I set the timer for 70 minutes and just walked away. The corned beef was delish, tender and tasty. Since the cooker is almost silent and doesn't do the psssss psssss psssss thing like the Presto almost all of the liquid was still there.

This was my "test" piece, so I cut it in half, put a big piece on a plate and started to nibble on it. After about a half hour I had nibbled all of it away except for some of the fatty stuff...and it was a big corned beef. What a pig I was. I was sick even when I got up this morning, but a CB sandwich sounds good right now. OINK!

 

[launderess]

Have A Magefesa

Will have to find the owner's manual/recpie booklet to see how it is done.

Do know did it last year for the first time as one had just purchased the new PC set and wanted to put it through it's paces. The CB came out juicy, moist and tender. Not at all like a rubbery brick some pressure cookers do with corned beef.

Note Magefesa models use less water than other pressure cookers. Also didn't do potatoes and cabbage in the PC, but remember from the recipe one is supposed to stop the PC cooking of meat, take it out and then add the cabbage et al and continue with cooking. This is all off the top of my head. Link below is from Miss. Vickie's site on how she does corned beef.

One likes the PC method because in addition to being fast it helps render out excess fat and allot of the salt from the meat. This is why some prefer to use either fresh water and or draw off/dilute the remaining water when making the veggies, it helps avoid all that salt.

http://missvickie.blogspot.com/2009/03/corned-beef-and-all-fixings.html

 

[perc-o-prince]

Tim (polkanut),

As Tim (wayupnorth) found, it was Hannaford! I usually shop at Price Chopper, and theirs was $1.49 if you had the coupon (the coupon was on the front page of the flyer that's given right in the store- gimmick!). Price Chopper did beat Hannaford on the cabbage by 10 cents (29/lb vs. 39/lb).

Put 11# of CB in the freezer from yesterday's trip to Hannaford (keeping the 4.5 pounder from Monday company for a while) on the way home from work!

Chuck

 

[polkanut]

Guess I'll have to keep my eyes open for a deal or two!  Thanks Chuck.

 

[retro-man]

Incredible edible

Well I guess after cooking my corned beef in the pressure cooker I will never go back to boiling it for 3 hrs. In just a little over an hour from start to serving this meal. I have never tasted that much flavor and moisture in this cut of meat. I told a friend about this and he did his the same way and will never boil again. I am going out today or tomorrow and see whats left for sale and put a couple in the freezer. If it only takes an hour to make this it will happen more often in this house. thanks for the info launderess.
Jon

 

[launderess]

Told You So

Most women/cooks who do CB in a PC don't go back either. Many declare their family and or guests won't have it done any other way.

Doing CB in a pressure cooker also allows one to have it on a weeknight even when time might be tight. If one is willing to do potatoes/sides another way,or serve something else you can have a brisket done in about an hour with dinner on the table soon after that. I add a several extra minutes for the mustard/brown sugar crust to be done in the broiler.

 

[perc-o-prince]

Launderess, Jon,

Please tell me about the saltiness of the PC cooked CB. Launderess, you mentioned that it rendered out a lot of the salt... was the meat salty, just salty, or otherwise? I ask as neither Rich nor I like food overly salted, and I can't have it so for health reasons (and don't tell me how much salt is in the Frank's Red Hot Sauce that I buy by the gallon- that's different {chuckle}). I thought you had to have the "lotsa" water to carry the salt away, even though it carries other flavors with it.

On a flavoring note, I wish I remembered the brand of the CB I had in the freezer and cooked yesterday just for letting all know about the seasoning packet. It wasn't a skimpy 1/2 teaspoon- it had to be a full 1.5 Tbsp at least! Each aprox 3.5# CB had a packet, so I used one for the first boil then for the simmer.

Chuck

 

[launderess]

It's Been Over A Year Since One Did CB In The PC

But if memory serves the dish was to our taste slightly less salty tasting but then again it was packaged corned beef, so no matter what you are going to taste salt. *LOL*

Some people who do not like very or even mildy salty foods skip the pre-packaged CB sold in shops and go for special "old world" types. While closer to what corned beef might have looked to our grand or great parents (before the nitrate filled packaged mass supermarket stuff came along), it often lacks the intense red colour (which comes from nitrates) and perhaps some of the flavour (this would depend upon how it was prepared and cooked).

When serving CB I make sure to cook all sides as one normally would and *NOT* in same water as the meat. Cabbage and or potatoes if they are being served are cooked on their own. This cuts down on the overall salt at the table.

 

[wayupnorth]

I did get some leftovers!

My 85 year old neighbor made one also last night and she just had to cook it the same way I did and said it was like a crock pot but everything fit and she didnt have to mess with it. There was 16 of us with 3 corned beefs and vegs and tons of sides. Her crock pot wouldnt fit one either and she is very afraid of a pressure cooker after one blew up on her. I have a pressure cooker somewhere in the attic but never couldnt master it. We all had a wonderful time and her Irish coffee topped it off.

 

[retro-man]

Chuck and Rich
I didn't feel that there was that much salt left in the meat. Of course you will have some but it wasn't overly salty. I always like a little yellow or brown mustard on the cb so that overpowers any saltiness. Try it and you will be a convert on pressure cooking. I always make beef stew in mine, so fast and so good. Another meal that can be started from scratch and be ready to serve in 1 hour.
Jon