How to Make Corned Beef
Every March, when St. Patrick's Day rolls around, people all across the United States start digging out recipes for how to make corned beef. Corned beef is a beef brisket cured in large grains of salt (called "corns," hence the name). While its association with the Irish holiday is cemented in American culture, corned beef and cabbage is not actually the national dish of Ireland. In fact, the average Irish diet didn't even include beef until the 1900s. Corned beef was a delicacy beyond the reach of most common folk, largely because salt was so expensive and also because in those days the Irish kept cattle primarily for dairy.Ironically, in Ireland today, there is no particular dish that's regarded as "traditional" for St. Patrick's Day (save for maybe a pint of Guinness).
Transcript
-Hey everyone, I'm Judith. Well today, I'm gonna be showing
you to make a meal that's traditionally serve on St.
Patrick's day, but really this can be served all year
long. It's really nice and hearty dish to make. I'll
be making corned beef and cabbage. So, what you will
need is for this is 8 whole cloves; 1 medium
yellow onion, halved; lean center-cut corned beef brisket, about 2
pounds; 3 large carrots, peeled and quartered lengthwise; 1/2 pound
new potatoes, halved; 1/2 pound of boiling onions, peeled; 1
small head cabbage, outer leaves removed, cut into 6 wedges.
So the fantastic thing about these dishes is that there
is not much labor that needs to be put into
it. We're gonna be using a slow cooker or a
crock pot as people know, and basically, we just add
in our ingredients, let it setback for a good 5
hours and voila. So, first of all, as you can
see we have our cut of brisket here, corned beef
usually come served as a cut of brisket, otherwise, it
can also come canned. It can come salty. There's various
ways it comes, but today, we'll be using a nice
good brisket. So, first of all, let's get our halved
onion that we halved and let's get our cloves. These
smell really good and it's gonna give the whole slow
cooker a nice fragrance when we put everything in there.
So, all we wanna do is get the pointed edge
of our whole cloves and stick them in to the
half an onion there. That's just gonna intensify that flavor,
give a nice aroma. Now, the wonderful thing about using
slow cookers is that you can buy inexpensive cuts of
meat like this brisket and you can basically slow cook
it for a long time and still turns out delicious,
you know, a lot of the time, we wanna buy
[unk] or something quick to do and it's much more
expensive cuts of meat, but with a brisket like this,
you can serve a lot of people. We just need
a little bit of time. So, stick one of those
cloves in there. So, our brisket is a big muscle.
There's a lot of connective tissue in there, which we
wanna get tender. We want the brisket to be nice
and tender and soft so we can eat it very
easily and that's why we slow cook it and needs
to be cooked over a long amount of time on
a low heat to get it nice an tender. So,
that's the idea of slow cooking it. So, into our
crock pot here, you can take the metal part out
first. Let's add in our brisket and our onion with
the cloves. We'll just gonna add in those 2 ingredients
for the moment and we're gonna cover it, cover the
ingredients with water, so that they are fully covered, and
once they are fully covered, we're just gonna add another
about 3inches of water on top of that, fantastic. So
now, we're gonna put that on a low heat and
we're gonna let it set there for about 5 hours.
So, go do what you need to do, let it
sit there and we'll add in our other ingredients. Well,
our corned beef and onions now have been slow cooking
for about 5 hours and they're very flavorful there with
those cloves. So now, it's time to add in our
other vegetables or so in go our potatoes. So, our
carrots go in there as well, our onions, see very
easy, got a little time. Let's put all that in
there. You can go and do your thing and that
will cook, and last but not the least of all,
of course, our cabbage. So, fit them in there as
best possible, fantastic and that's just about full there. So
we leave that. Now, we're gonna put the lid back
on and we're gonna let that cook for another 3
hours. So, other vegetables have been in our slow cooker
with our meat for another 3 hours. So, it's been
in there for a total of 7 hours and now
it's ready come out and plate up. So, let's get
a nice large platter and we'll get some of these
lovely, tender cabbages from out there. So, great one when
you got a lot of friends coming over for a
nice big meal, nice dinner. It's a good one you
can put in the morning, come too at night and
it will be done. So, let's plate up some of
those. Watch because it will be hot, and any other
veggies you like obviously you can put in there too,
cabbage you'll have to have of course. Now, this probably
will breakup easily because they are nice and soft tender
now. So, you just organize on how you like it.
Let's keep going with that. So, let's get everything out
of our crock pot, all of those nice veggies and
don't forget to those carrots too to give the whole
plate a nice bit if color. There we go. We'll
plate the rest of those veggies and then we'll cut
our meat. So, all of those lovely tender veggies are
on our platter there, so let's get out our meat.
This lovely corned beef brisket that has been in there
for a while and that should have tenderizing nicely by
now, leave that out on the platter and we wanna
cut that to nice thin slices. We can serve up
on top of our veggies. Oh yes as you can
see that is nicely done, perfect. So, brisket is a
fairly inexpensive cut of meat. So, really, it's worth a
while to invest in a nice slow cooker to be
able to cook this nice flavorful and not expensive meat
shared with the family. There you go. So, let's plate
this lovely stuff on top of there. That's one grand
meal right there that all the family can cut into,
beautiful, and obviously, if there's any fatty part, you can
just cut those off as well. You don't' want those
on there. So, once the meat is on your veggies,
don't forget to have a nice drizzle of our broth
that it's all been cooking in right on top there
and all these wonderful flavors from the cloves in there.
So keep it nice and moist, see that. That's how
you make your corned beef and cabbage.
What You'll Need
- 8 whole cloves
- 1 medium yellow onion, halved
- 1 lean center-cut corned beef brisket (about 2 pounds)
- 3 large carrots, peeled and quartered lengthwise and cut into
- 1/2 pound new potatoes, halved
- 1/2 pound boiling onions, peeled
- 1 small head cabbage, outer leaves removed, cut into 6 wedges
Step By Step
1
Stick cloves in onion. Place onion and beef in slow cooker and add enough water to cover ingredients plus 3 more inches. Cover and cook on LOW for 5 hours.
2
Add carrots, potatoes, onions and cabbage to slow cooker and cook an additional 3 hours.
3
Remove corned beef from slow cooker and slice. Place on large platter with vegetables. Drizzle with the broth to moisten and serve.
Preserving meat in salt goes back hundreds of years to Medieval Europe. In those days, people didn't have the luxury of refrigeration, so curing meat was essential. Corned beef remains a favorite today because it's simply delicious.
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