Corned Beef and Cabbage made in the Crock Pot

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.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1612,157180-243201,00.html

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

Szechuan Pork and Pickle Soup, sort of

So, remember how I went to the trouble of color coding the lids on my broth. Apparently, that only works when you pay attention to the broth you are pulling out of the freezer. Because frozen, chicken brown broth looks a lot like beef broth. One trick, look for stray beef particles at the bottom of the container.

With that said, the other night, I made Szechuan Pork and Pickle Soup, sort of. Very quick and easy. Marinate very thin slices of pork in sherry, soy sauce, sesame oil, combine with Szechuan preserved vegetable (you can get this at a specialty shop - there are lots of different kinds - cabbage and other vegetables). I wouldn't worry if you can't find the Szechuan preserved vegetables - even kimchee or any other asian pickled vegetable will impart that sour, spicy taste that makes this soup wonderful. I used a pickled cabbage, but not the szechuan version, so my soup was not terribly spicy. You can always add chiles to suit.

Next step, combine the meat and pickle with chicken broth, unless, of cccccourse you have defrosted beef broth. Since we all know what a time consuming activity it is to make broth, guess what I used...

Finally, add scallions and serve. Season with soy sauce if necessary.

Here is what I learned regarding this soup:
1) beef broth is too heavy a substrate for pork - even marinated pork is lost
2) I might have been able to use water instead of the beef more effectively. It didn't taste bad, its just that the pork was lost.
3) Keep the cooking time on the pork to a minimum. Unless it is paper thin, it will get chewy quickly.
4) Slice the pork paper thin

Here is what I am thinking for next time:
Substitute tenderloin or even brisket for the pork, use the beef broth and use spicier preserved veggies like kimchee or the Szechuan cabbage recommended originally.