Corned Beef and Cabbage
First of all, I am not a week late with this post, I am 51 weeks early. Dishes like this take months of planning - I don't want anyone to fall behind. Not really. Actually, all the ingredients were assembled and in the crock pot in about 15 minutes. And in a mere seven hours +/- it was ready. Oh how I love slow cooking - thank you to my awesome Sister-in-Law, Juliana, for giving me a crock pot as a present many, many years ago.
The beauty of this dish, is you don't really have to prep before throwing the ingredients in the pot - there is no browning of the meat - just a tiny bit of cutting of the onions. The cabbage goes in at the end, ( I actually used some of the broth to braise my cabbage separately)and the pototoes are boiled separately, so really, the corned beef and seasonings are all in the pot and cooking in about 15 minutes.
From experience, I would suggest a good quality corned beef - I have heard corned beef horror stories of the meat turning out gelatinous, or being flavorless. The meat comes prebrined (unless you want to take the extra time to do the brining yourself), so is really about cooking slowly to tenderize this cut of beef (brisket) and seasoning well. Remember, it is a fatty cut. I had a 5+ lb corned beef to cook and cut it in half before throwing it in the pot. It let me see how much fat I was dealing with. Even with the long (what turned out to be nine hour) cook time, there was still plenty of fat to cut away during carving. On the plus side, I had lots of delicious broth that I will use in the future to cook vegetables and who knows what else. (And now you see why this recipe made it to the blog - it is no different than any other broth that you make, other than the meat is not roasted first).
Here is the link to the recipe from Cooks.com that I used.
Also, for those curious about the history of corned beef and cabbage, here is a short video that teaches and makes your mouth water at the same time.
Holiday Foods: Corned Beef and Cabbage — History.com Video
Your welcome! Although, I don't remember giving it, since it was so long ago! ;)
ReplyDeleteSee, THAT looks good...not like all the corned beef and cabbage pics I've ever seen before and didn't make me want some. Now I do!
It made for a good sandwich the next day too!
ReplyDelete