Blip

About this episode

St. Paddy’s Day offers up a great reason to grab a corned beef, a cold six pack and sit down to a nice boiled dinner. To understand the greatness of a dish like this, it helps to know a little of the history and making of modern corned beef. First of all, today’s corned beef is quite different from the original recipe dating back to medieval times. The preserved meat was created out of necessity to keep the meat from spoiling before Maytag came around. Originally the cuts of meat were rubbed and then submerged in large salt crystals in an effort to dehydrate the outside of the meat and ward off the nasties. These salt crystals were about the size of a corn kernel- hence the name. After sitting in a bath of salt for weeks or months, the meat probably wouldn’t taste too great if you just threw it on the grill, hence the boiling or braising. Toss in a few heads of cabbage, some carrots, potatoes and onions (all fresh from the cellar by the way) and you had a nice warm meal. Over the years, spices and seasoning were introduced to the mix and brought us the modern day corned beef. Of course, ours is made from scratch using brown sugar, salt and spices to cure all natural beef “shoulder clods”- sounds tasty huh? A shoulder clod is basically a boneless cross rib (near the chuck roast) and results in a tasty tender cut after the brining and slow cooking. I like to get a big pot, fill it partway with warm water and add a few bottles/cans of Guinness and some pickling spice. Add the corned beef and simmer it on the stovetop for about 3 and a half hours. Toss in cut carrots, red potatoes, cabbage and yellow onion then let it go for another 30 minutes or so. Really, you can’t over cook it unless you go WAY too long. You can also put all the ingredients into a big roasting pan, cover it up and braise it in a 300 degree oven for about four hours- but the house won’t smell quite as good.Hit the blog for the recipe: http://thebutcherisback.blogspot.com/

• Release Date

  Mar 13, 2009

• Runtime

  06:08