Corned Beef & Cabbage

This past Tuesday was St. Patrick’s Day as I am sure you all know. I just love celebrating this day. On Tuesday morning, I had my corned beef in the crockpot, some Bailey’s in my coffee, and a big green sparkly bow in my hair. I always make corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day. Last year I made a sort of Irish poutine with my corned beef but I was feeling more traditional this time around so I slow-cooked the corned beef with pickling spice, carrots, onion, and red potatoes.

I am a big fan of cooking the beef low and slow. In other words, I like to cook it on low heat for 10 hours. However, you can get away with a 6 hour, higher-heat setting on your crockpot. It is not necessary to add liquid when you start cooking. The beef and veggies will provide plenty. Also, feel free to use the pickling spice packet that comes with your store-bought corned beef but it is worth it to have a jar of pickling spice at home and add a little bit extra. I’ve noticed the little provided packets are usually mostly mustard seeds. The pickling spice on my shelf has bigger pieces of things like bay leaf and clove which ultimately positively contributes to the dish.

Depending on your heat setting, you can add your cabbage to the crock pot a few hours before the cooking cycle ends. I am generally never around to do this so I always remove some liquid from the crock pot once everything is done and braise/steam the cabbage in it. Lastly, what a horseradish sauce is to prime rib, mustard is to corned beef. Furthermore, I can never quite decide what kind of mustard I like best with corned beef. My solution is to make essentially a mustard platter to go along with the dish. On my small plate, I had yellow mustard, Dijon, and a stone-ground horseradish mustard. It was so nice to try little bits of each and all of them together. Final thoughts, I need to slow-cook brisket more often. It’s a long process but it is so gratifying.