Corned Beef and Cabbage and Turnip and Carrot and Potato

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Although today is actually St. Patrick's Day, we celebrated along with the rest of the city of Boston yesterday - a day early. We were up having breakfast and watching the Annual St. Patrick's Day Breakfast (it is kind of a political "roast" they have every year in Southie - check out some pics) and then we watched some of the parade - from the comfort of our warm, dry kitchen! It was pretty cold and damp yesterday...

Following a couple of Guinnesses after lunch, we started up our Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner by placing our 4lb flat cut corned beef in our dutch oven, along with a cut-up onion, six garlic cloves, a bunch of peppercorns and corriander and mustard seeds, and bay leaves... and yet another big pint of Guinness Stout. We topped that with cold water and brought it up to a boil, then covered and reduced to a simmer - for 3.5 hours.

Towards the end of that process, we started another pot going - in which to boil our veggies - with water, a big scoop of the cooking liquid from the corned beef pot, some low sodium beef stock powder, more pepper and mustard and corriander. First into that boiling flavored liquid went big turnip chunks, then 5 minutes later carrots, then 10 minutes later potatoes, then 5 minutes later cabbage. After maybe 15 more minutes we were ready to go.

We didn't get many good pics because we dug right in to this tender, flavorful meat too quickly. The flat cut we bought this year didn't have nearly the fat that the point cut from last year had - and we agreed it was MUCH better this way! The meat was still delicious and buttery - without all THAT MUCH fat mixed in.



As we ate we decided that - next year - we'll try to corn our own beef brisket!

Check out previous St. Patrick's Days:
* Last year's Corned Beef
* Lamb Stew from 2006

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Cead Mile Failte!