Corned beef & cabbage

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

It was an exciting day when I realized that corned beef & cabbage is not actually that difficult to make.

Of course, I haven’t actually tried corning my own beef or anything like that, but throwing things in a pot I can do, and did last Friday. Thought I’d beat the St. Patty’s Day rush? Someday I will have to experiment with corning, because grocery stores hardly ever sell corned beef brisket except in early March.

I put potatoes, carrots, and cabbage in mine. I chop up the potatoes and carrots into about bite-sized pieces, but you cook them long enough that they get pretty tender anyway.

The beef takes a couple hours to cook, so I usually put it on (water at a rolling boil) for an hour and a bit, and then chop the potatoes and add those, then chop the carrots and add those. The cabbage only takes about fifteen minutes to cook to the right consistency, so it goes in only once the potatoes and carrots are soft when you poke them with a fork (about 30 or 40 more minutes).

The pot typically gets very full. Lots of leftovers! Or enough to feed a large party, which I am rarely called upon to do.

One of these days I will learn to plan ahead and start cooking at, say, 4 PM; on Friday I didn’t get home from work/grocery store run until after 7, which meant I wasn’t eating until 9 PM. Oh well!