Corned Beef and Cabbage Recipe Just one of Many Popular St. Patrick’s Day Recipes Online

It will likely come as no surprise that online searches this week have trended in large part toward searches for St. Patrick’s Day recipes. One of the top online recipe searches of course is for how to make corned beef and cabbage – an Irish tradition.

While a true Irish recipe would actually be for corned pork and cabbage, the American twist on the recipe, Corned Beef and Cabbage is very popular, along with some green beer on this one day of the year. Need some St. Patrick’s Day dessert recipes – we have them in another article here.

After some searching of our own online for good Corned Beef and Cabbage recipes, we have shared one of them with you below. But if you are wondering why the recipe has changed from corned pork to corned beef, it appears that the change is based on the meat which was more plentiful to early Irish immigrants when settled in America. While pork was more abundant in Ireland, it was beef that was more readily available in the U.S.

This Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe was found online at the Huffington Post. It makes about six servings and requires about three to four hours for cooking time.

Ingredients:
1 (3 pound) slab of corned beef, preferably home made
2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons pickling spices, preferably home made
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1″ segments
2 pounds of potatoes, cleaned and cut into 2″ chunks
1 small head of cabbage, outer leaves removed, cut in quarters

Instructions:
1) Open the package the meat came in and dump out all the liquid. Rinse thoroughly. Trim off all the fat cap. If you have made your own corned beef, and you should, it is just plain better, remove it from the brine, and rinse it well.

2) Corned beef is essentially pickled in salt, and straight out of the pack it is way too salty. Before we can eat this cured meat, we need to cook it and desalinate it a bit. Place the beef in a large pot along with enough hot water to cover it by at least 1″ and put the lid on.

Turn the heat to medium and bring to a low simmer for 30 minutes. Do not let it boil. If you boil it, it will get tough and shrink. Beware that the meat is cold, so when it warms the water will slowly move from simmer to boil. Keep an eye on it and do not let it boil. After 30 minutes, dump out the water and cover the meat with fresh hot water. This time add the pickling spices.

Bring to a low simmer again, this time for 1 hour. Again dump the water and pickling spices and replace it with fresh hot water. Bring to a simmer and let it simmer for 1 hour. Add the carrots. After 30 minutes add the potatoes. After 10 minutes add the cabbage. After 15 minutes the cabbage will be done and so should everything else.

3) Remove the meat and place it on a carving board. There are often two horizontal muscles separated by a thick layer of fat. Separate them by sliding a knife through the fat. Carve and/or scrape off the fat layer. Carve the meat by cutting across the grain about the thickness of a pencil. Any thinner and it will fall apart, any thicker and it will be chewy.

5) Lift out the cabbage, potatoes and carrots and divide them into serving bowls. Place the meat in the bowl. Spoon some of the cooking liquid over them and serve. Happy Holiday!