Corned Beef and Cabbage

Corned Beef and Cabbage: Step by Step

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1. Rinse the brisket under cold water for a minute to take off the surface cure, then put it fat side up in a large pot.

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2. Add the bay, peppercorns, mustard seeds, coriander seeds, onion, garlic and any supplied spice packet, and cover with cold water by 5 cm. Add no salt.

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3. Bring to a bare simmer, skim off the grey foam, then cover and cook at the gentlest possible simmer for 2 hours 45 minutes. The surface should barely move.

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4. Test with a fork: it should slide in and out with almost no resistance. If it does not, give it another 30 minutes.

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5. Lift the beef onto a board, tent it, and leave it to rest while the vegetables cook.

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6. Add the potatoes to the pot and simmer 10 minutes, then the carrots for another 10.

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7. Lay the cabbage wedges on top, cover, and cook 12 minutes more until tender at the core.

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8. Slice the beef thickly across the grain — across, not along, or it will pull into strings — and serve with the vegetables, a ladle of the broth, mustard and parsley.

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Keep an Eye on These

1. Never let it boil. A boil is the difference between sliceable and stringy, and it cannot be undone.
2. Find the grain before you cook it, while it is easy to see, and remember which way it runs.
3. Keep the broth. It makes the best base there is for a next-day soup with the leftovers.

Swaps and Variations

• An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.

Good to Know About Corned Beef and Cabbage

Corned beef is cured brisket, which means a great deal of connective tissue and a great deal of salt. The tissue needs three hours below a boil to turn to gelatine — a rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres tight and gives you stringy meat, which is the usual complaint about this dish. The salt is why the water starts unsalted and why a rinse comes first. Staging the vegetables is simple honesty about timing: potatoes take 25 minutes, carrots 20, cabbage 12, and cooking them together for three hours turns all of them to mush.

What to Serve It With

Soda bread and butter · A pint of stout · Horseradish cream

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Brown Soda Bread, Irish Brown Bread, Irish Scones.

Leftovers

Refrigerated in its broth for 4 days — storing it in the liquid is what stops it drying. Sliced cold it makes a Reuben.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Nutrition Facts

Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.

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