# corn beef & cabbage



## chef debi (Feb 14, 2008)

I need to make Corn beef & cabbage for a St. Patrick's day open house - what is a good recipe and how do I keep it hot for several hours ? and do you slice the corn beef on the bias?


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## kuan (Jun 11, 2001)

I'd just make a basic brine with a lot of cloves. How big a piece would you like to corn?


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## ed buchanan (May 29, 2006)

I hope you are useing a corned brisket, not a bottem round.

Boil brisket approx 18-25min pound in a lot of water with pickleing spice, onion, garlic,parlsy stems, celery stalks added. SAVE cooking liquid, do not stick corned beef with forks.
Cool it seperate top from bottem of brisket as grain of meat goes in 2 different directions. Trim fat, slice on slicer on a bias. put in 2 inch ss steamtable pans and pour cooking liquid over it so it stays moist. then put a clean towl over it. 
For service reheat in steamer if you have one or on top of stove ,not the oven. this is how you keep it hot . From stove to chaffer or steam table . Keep cooked wedges of cabbage hot same way or for a la carte service you can put sliced beef on top of cabbage and dish out useing only 1 motion. this is how its done for volume banquetservice. Boiled carrots and celery can be served with this as well as boiled parsley potato. Cabbage, carrots, potato celery can be cooked in same liquid as corned beef for better flavor. St. Patricks day I have Corned beef dinner for 850 guest. :bounce:


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## mikelm (Dec 23, 2000)

*"I have Corned beef dinner for 850 guest." *

There are a LOT of them pesky Irish around, aren't there! 

Mike

hint: My middle name is Linahan


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## amazingrace (Jul 28, 2006)

I do corned beef in the pressure cooker. Here is recipe: 

Start with 4pound brisket and 2 onions
Remove brisket from wrapper and discard the flavor package. Rinse the meat under cold running water. Trim of all visible fat. Rub with spice blend...I like steak seasoning with lots of garlic powder. Slice the onions.
Pour a 12-oz bottle of Guiness stout into the pressure cooker, put the rack in place, add onions on the rack, then the meat. Lock on lid, bring up to pressure and cook 35 minutes. Remove from heat and allow pressure to drop naturally. When the pressure has dropped, remove the meat to a warm place and cover it. Put the cabbage, potatoes and carrots into the rack, sprinkle with salt & pepper
Core and cut cabbage into wedges. Use small red potatoes, scrubbed, but not peeled. Cut carrots into 1" chunks. Place the vegetables on the rack in the pressure cooker, over the same liquid used for the meat.
Bring back to pressure and cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat, allow pressure to drop naturally for 5 minutes, then finish with quick release.
Cut across the grain in thin slices. 
If you need to keep the food warm, I would put it into a crock pot set to low heat. 

If your pressure cooker is large enough, do 2 or 3 roasts at once. No adjustment to time or liquid is needed. If you don't care for the strong flavor of Guiness Stout, use another type of beer, or use water or low sodium beef broth. 

I just did a brisket this way last week. It turned out fantastic. Tender, juicy & flavorful.

An alternate to this, if you don't have a pressure cooker, or if you are cooking in large quantity, is to use an electric roaster, braising the brisket right in the liquid. Of course the cooking time would be extended to several hours, adding the vegetables at the appropriate time. Use the same roaster to keep it all warm.


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## ed buchanan (May 29, 2006)

And it is a Jewish country club!!!!! On St. Pats day, everyone is Irish


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## gonefishin (Nov 6, 2004)

I prefer to roast my corn beef in the oven...

Place on a rack in a roasting pan and add liquid until it reaches just above the rack, tent with foil. Place in a 350_f_ preheated oven and cook for 2-3 hours. Remove the foil tent and continue to cook until fork tender (1-2 more hours depending on size). Check the liquid periodically and add more if needed.

I just made some corn beef and cabbage a couple of days ago. I used a nice IPA for the liquid and cooked the vegetables and cabbage separately in a pot of boiling water. You can also choose to add the cabbage and vegetables in the roasting pan after the first hour (or so) of cooking (depending on size)

yum yum!
dan


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## boar_d_laze (Feb 13, 2008)

Rather than keeping the meat hot, just keep it covered and warm. Use the cooking broth to reheat it. You can hold the broth hot in a crock pot. Corned beef may or may not be sliced on the bias; but it must ALWAYS be sliced at 90* to the grain of the meat. There are more detailed slicing instructions in the following recipe. Regular, that as a general rule corned beef should be sliced as thin as possible without falling apart.

The recipe may be multiplied to whatever final quantity you like.

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE
(Serves 6 - 8)

_*Ingredients, First Stage:*_
Packaged corned beef brisket(s), about 4 lbs - Flat, point or both 
1 bottle Guinness Stout
1 qt beef stock, about
2 tbs molasses + 1 tbs sugar, or 3 tbs brown sugar
water as necessary
1 seasoning packet from the brisket package, or 2 tbs pickling spice
2 large carrots, washed and unpeeled
2 medium onions, white or brown, paper on
2 stalks celery

_*Ingredients, Second Stage:*_
2 carrots, peeled
1 large white or brown onion, peeled; or, 1-1/2 dozen boiling onions, or cippolinis; or package frozen pearl onions 
2 lbs small red or spring potatoes
1 head cabbage, cut in eight

_*Technique:*_
Empty the contents of the package(s) into a kettle, rondeau or oval covered casserole, ideally just large enough to hold the brisket flat. Include the juices from the packaged meat. Most packaged corned beef comes with a seasoning pack, if yours does set aside.

Add the broth, stout, molasses and sugar to the kettle, and enough water if necessary to completely cover the brisket. Note: Without some sweetener the stout will turn bitter when it cooks. The amount specified here is about medium sweet, you may prefer more or less.

Turn on the flame and bring the brisket to a low boil. Either before or just after the boil, a scum will form from the fat and "impurities" in the meat. Skim the scum and discard it. Lower the heat to a simmer.

Rough cut the carrots, onions, and celery into sixths, and add them to the kettle. Add the contents of the seasoning pack or the pickling spice and the bay leaves.

Cover the pot and allow to simmer for two hours, or until beef is tender. Don't panic, but "tender" means "very tender," it doesn't mean falling apart stringy. That means you'll have to check the meat now and then as it cooks. Start at about ninety minutes and then check every 10 minutes or so by sticking with a fork. The progression goes: tough, just tender, very tender, and overcooked - with each stage lasting about 10 minutes. So, once you feel a difference, allow another ten or fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile scrub the potatoes and, if necessary, cut them into serving size pieces. Cover with water and set aside. Peel the "Stage Two" carrots, and cut them into bite size pieces, set aside. Core the cabbage and cut it into 8 wedges. Set aside.

When the meat is cooked, remove it form the the meat and set it on a plate or board. Cover it with foil and hold in a warm place.

Strain the broth into a bowl through a sieve. If you like, you may press the vegetables for their "essence." If your pot has scum stuck to the walls, clean it. If not skip the cleaning and return the strained, clear broth to the pot.

Add the potatoes, carrots and onions, cover and simmer for ten minutes. Add the cabbage wedges, cover and simmer until the cabbage is tender - about fifteen minutes more.

Meanwhile, while the vegetables cook, set the brisket on a carving board and remove any excess fat. If the brisket was whole, i.e., point and flat, separate them.

To slice the brisket, ALWAYS cut across the grain. Cut slices from slightly less than 1/4" to a bit more than 1/2" thick. Thickness depends on tenderness. Very thin slices will seem more tender, thick slices will hold together better.

To serve the corned beef, arrange slices and vegetables in a large bowl or plate. Pour some of the broth over the meat to reheat it. A bowl works better or high sided plate works better than a dinner plate, allowing for more of the wonderful (if I say so myself) broth. If all you have are regular dinner plates, serve bowls of broth on the side.

Serve with horseradish-mustard sauce.

Hope this works for you,
BDL

PS. _As always, if you want to share or post this recipe elsewhere, you have my permission as long as you attribute it to me, Boar D. Laze. Also, I would consider it a kindness if you would mention my eventually forthcoming book, COOK FOOD GOOD: American Cooking and Technique for Beginners and Intermediates._


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## mikelm (Dec 23, 2000)

*"And it is a Jewish country club!!!!! "*

Now, Ed, _that_ is pretty funny.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Mike

Erin go bragh :bounce:

I have no idea how to say that in Yiddish.


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## teamfat (Nov 5, 2007)

Like gonefishin I prefer to roast my corned beef. If you are using a brisket that is already prepared it can end up a bit too salty. Not an issue when boiling it, just when baking it.

The night before take it out of the package and rinse well. Save the little pack of seasoning. Put the beef in a pot large enough to hold it and cover with cold water. Cover and stash in the fridge overnight.

In the morning change the water, back in the fridge. About 4 or 5 hours before serving time, pull out of the cooler, drain. Sprinkle the seasonings from the packet over the meat and follow gonefishin's recipe.

It does help to let it rest before slicing. Don't be stingy, use a good, strong brand of horseradish. And after leaching out the pickling salt with the overnight soak you may need to add a dash or two tableside to get the salt balance just right. 

Oh, instead of baking it, you could rub it with cracked peppercorns, stick it in your smoker and make some pastrami, but that's not what folks expect on March 17th.

mjb.


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## greyeaglem (Apr 17, 2006)

MikeLM;258975 said:


> *"And it is a Jewish country club!!!!! "*
> 
> Shouldn't surprise anyone. That's where the Irish got corned beef from- the Jewish delis in New York. They were used to a dish made from a cut of pork belly they couldn't find in the U.S. and decided corned beef worked just as good. You won't find much corned beef in Ireland.


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## ishbel (Jan 5, 2007)

Corned beef and cabbage is appearing on more and more menus in Ireland (rather than the boiled bacon/cabbage that was the traditional Irish dish) - which I put down to the visits of tourists from the USA! 

They even serve green beer on St Patrick's Day in lots of pubs


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## boar_d_laze (Feb 13, 2008)

A lovely idea, but bad history. For one thing, the big wave of Irish immigration preceded the big wave of Jewish immigration (and the resulting delis) by many years. The "delicatessen" (German word) in New York was a phenomenon of the very late nineteenth century. For another "corning beef," largely as a way of preservation, was a technique of which the entire British empire was well aware for a century before the Irish came over -- among other things, that's how they fed the fleet.

On a related note, one does not make pastrami by smoking a corned beef. That's a fairly recent idea which came about during the recent bullet and offset smoker explosion. You can call it pastrami if you like, but it's neither the traditional Romanian nor the "Jewish delis" technique -- way too salty for one thing. A pastrami brine is different, the brining period shorter, then there's the dry rub ... It's all about the rub. Delving deeper into nuance, delis make corned beef and roast brisket from the flats, and pastrami from the points.

BDL

PS. So, I started looking for my pastrami recipes and found that they, along with almost all of my other barbecue recipes were lost during the recent, tragic formatting which in turn was caused by a virus or trojan. It caused the desktop to continually refresh every few seconds which made opening programs difficult -- and if you could open them they would do the same thing. Fortunately, the data files were deep enough below the shell that they lasted long enough to copy. 

But I couldn't save everything in the time I had. After a few days I needed the laptop for work and had to quit fooling around and just reformat. Which was something I couldn't force myself to do. Linda pressed the blue button (it's an IBM) while George Tse Dog (a shar pei) took me for a walk. 

At the time, I was using ESET NOD 32 and XOFT Spy SE, which were supposedly among the best of their type; ran scans periodically, hadn't liberated any software for awhile; and avoided likely contagion sites. But somehow... 

I thought I'd got all the recipes. Really, I would have spent another day trying for them. But, that's the way the cookie crumbles. The missing barbecue file had well over a hundred recipes, maybe two hundred if you count sauces -- and included a few comp firsts and seconds. The good news is that I like working on recipes, and if there's are particular recipe I can't remember very well, chances are they weren't very good. 

The other ray of sunshine is that it's fun to get and load new software. Everything is the latest and greatest iteration. So it was kind of like unwrapping presents. Although it took me another TWO reformats it was fun getting everything in and working quickly. Word Perfect X4 STILL makes me use a workaround to load properly -- but WP is how I write and shall remain so. Roxio Ultimate turned out to be bloated beyond belief, too slow to use; then it wouldn't uninstall properly, forcing one of the extra reformats. So, I'm using a variety of standalones. (There are better and faster burners than Nero or Roxio, and some freeware just as good.) And when it comes to all the associated stuff like photo editors, music converters, etc., waaaaaaaaaaaaay better.

For security, it's Vipre and Malwarebytes. If you're looking for new anti-virus software, Vipre is light, fast and very good indeed. Malwarebytes has a good reputation, but so far hasn't done enough for me to evaluate it. Vipre has caught all malware, except for one low level cookie, before Malwarebytes could get to it. 

Corned beef?


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## chalkdust (Feb 18, 2009)

these recipes are for briskets that are already preserved right?

u get them at a shopping center around st patricks time?

is it owrth it to do it yourself?

i think Mr. Bruce Addeles the chef associated with this site had posted something about corning the brisket himself.


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## just jim (Oct 18, 2007)

For the last couple of years we have been preparing ours in the alto-shaams.
We rinse the brined brisket, or at least pick off all of the bay leaves, and slow roast for about 6 hours, with water in the drip pan.
This gives us a moist heat, reducing the rind, and we have drippings in the water to use for our cabbage.
After years of using the steam kettle, and rotating briskets in and out for the volume we do, this new method is virtually pain free, and definitely reduces the mess.


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## boar_d_laze (Feb 13, 2008)

Most of the recipes are for briskets already "corned" (aka preserved). American supermarkets carry them at wonderful prices around this time of year. The prices are below what it would cost to do it yourself, so it's worth buying a few and freeze what you won't use. They freeze very well.

Corning brisket yourself is very easy. One negative is that it uses up refrigerator space for a couple of weeks. Another is that it's difficult to pack much individual character into a corned beef brine, salt is the dominant flavor seconded by the normal pickling spices. Still, when you do it yourself it's whatever you make it to be. On the rare occasions I make my own, I use "better than Choice" black angus briskets, and use a few kinds of peppercorns as well as allspice and juniper berries. I'd like to think the brine has its own spin, but the truth is that other than what comes from meat quality and cooking technique all corned beefs taste mostly salty. The beer/stock cooking liquid carries more individuality than the brine. 

Bottom line: Making your own is borderline worthwhile, unless it's difficult to get or something you really enjoy doing. At this time of year I wouldn't consider making my own. But, that's me. 

It's definitely worth making your own pastrami. There's a complicated interplay between sweet, hot, spicy, smokey, salty and beefy tastes which reflect the cook's skill and taste.

BDL


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