My wife was away for the week last week, so that of course meant it was again time for me to make a large chunk of meat for my personal consumption. Last time she was out, I made a classic slow cooker pot roast, but last week with St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday I decided I needed to make some classic corned beef – as in corned beef with cabbage and potatoes. I of course always like Irish fair and corned beef is definitely not an exception. While I like the complete dish, I can say fairly confidently that corned beef itself is in my top ten favorite meats.
It made for a bit of a late night but I made my corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes (I used small reds), on Wednesday evening after getting home from work. Traditionally recipes from the British Isles call for boiling the hell out of everything and that’s basically what I did for this. I put the corned beef in a cast iron Dutch oven, added the seasoning packet, and added water to cover the meat. The pot was then brought to a boil and then reduced to a simmer. The recipe then called for simmering the meat until tender which they said would be 50 minutes per pound. My corned beef was four pounds, but it did not take over three hours. It was nicely tender after just two. Once tender, I added wedges of cabbage and probably around twenty red potatoes. I let the Dutch oven continue to simmer for another half hour. At that point, the cabbage was getting starting to get a big soggy and overcooked, so I pulled it out. The meat and potatoes continued to cook for only fifteen minutes more. I scooped those out of the Dutch oven and let the corned beef for a bit before slicing and going to town eating my Irish meal.
It was about 9:30 by the time I sat down to eat, so I was starving. The corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes definitely filled me up quickly though so I was sufficiently stuffed. It probably wasn’t so good that I was stuffing myself so close to bedtime, but my corned beef meal couldn’t have been much better. The only things I can think of would be if I would’ve had some soda bread and a pint of Guinness. It’s stereotypical, yes, but would have just seemed so right.
Making a whole Dutch oven of food, you can guess that I had a lot of leftovers to go through. On Thursday, my work provided a lunch of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes for all employees so I partook in that offering but then skipped having my own corned beef leftovers that night. Friday night I did have some leftovers, reheating and again stuffing myself easily. Saturday morning though I did something special that I had planned for the leftovers. Corned beef hash!! I diced up the remaining potatoes, some of the corned beef, and even a small bit of cabbage. In a frying pan I heated some oil and quickly sautéed some shallot and garlic, then added the diced up leftovers after a minute. I stirred / tossed everything to get good mix of everything and then lightly flattened the mixture to the bottom of the pan. After a few minutes, the bottom side was browned and I flipped / tossed the mixture to do another round of browning. I browned the mixture one additional time and then dumped the mixture onto a large plate. It was a large breakfast for sure, but I always like good filling breakfasts on the weekends. It’s a much needed break from quick “milk and cereal” type breakfasts during the week.
On Sunday, I finished up what was left of the corned beef. I just sliced it up, reheated it in the microwave, topped it with good coarse-ground horseradish mustard, and put it between two pieces of wheat toast. It was a nice simply tasty hearty sandwich to finish off the meat. Sadly, I had to throw out the small bit of leftover cabbage as it was just getting too water logged and soggy. Still I can’t complain. The five straight days of corned beef were wonderful.
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