Corned Beef and Cabbage

Last year, we made a traditional Irish Lamb Stew for St. Patrick's Day - one of our favorite holidays of the year. This year, we went traditional again - but in a different direction... the traditional Irish-American St. Patrick's Day meal: Corned beef and cabbage (and turnips and carrots and celery and onions...)

We trimmed much of the fat off of a 4lb flat-cut corned beef and then added it to our dutch oven along with alot of water, a 16oz Guinness (yum!), a chopped-up onion, about 5 crushed cloves of garlic, three BIG bay leaves, a handful of whole tellicherry peppercorns, and some kosher salt. After finally coming to a boil, we covered it tight and set it to simmer... and forgot about it for 3.5 hours.

3.5 hours later, we warmed up the oven to ~200 degrees and removed our now-red and tender corned beef from the liquid. We wrapped it in alumninum foil and let it rest in the warm oven in order to boil up our veggies in the corned beef's flavorful broth.



After bringing the broth to a nice boil, we added a turnip, about a dozen carrots, and a bunch of celery ribs - all cleaned, peeled, and chopped to around the same size. Back to a boil and give those guys a head-start, then we finally added a head of cabbage that had been cut into 8 wedges.



20 minutes later and we were eating. The corned beef was SO tender it is hard to describe... it was almost like jelly - although that not the most flattering description, trust us it was good. Along with some dijon mustard, the flavor was delicious. And the veggies had absorbed the wonderful broth left behind by the corned beef. We enjoyed this delicious meal with the last of many, many Guinness pints from the weekend and are looking forward to the leftovers - and sandwiches!

Happy St. Patricks Day!