Day 76 - Corn Beef & Cabbage

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

First the winner of the LUCK banner is Katie T. :) Thanks for all the new ideas & please keep them coming! I chose the winner by drawing a name out of a cup. (Katie I will bring the banner over tonight).

Today I made corn beef & cabbage for the first time. Although, I had my moments where I was convinced it was going to be a complete disaster - it was delicious (if I do say so my self) Q thought so too and so did our 3 dinner guests :)

Ingredients: (for 5 people and a little leftovers)

Corn beef (I started with about 3.5 lbs of corn beef, before some fat was trimmed off)
1 Bay leaf
5 Carrots
12 Potatoes (I used Yukon gold)
4 Celery stalks
1 Yellow onion
1 Cabbage
Water

First, with a very sharp knife carefully cut of the fat off the corn beef (this was the bloodiest piece of meat I have ever worked with and there was so much fat - but I got the job done.)

Next put the meat into a large crock pot with 1 bay leaf and add enough water to just cover the meat. Set the temperature to cook on high and cover.

Next prepare all the vegetables except the cabbage. Be sure to use a clean cutting board. Peal the carrots & potatoes and cut them into good bite-size pieces. Then dice the onion and celery.

Once all the veggies were prepared, I added them on top of the meat (this was after the meat had cooked about 45 minutes), first the onion then the celery then the carrot and then the potatoes. (Note: my veggies were very soft, but very tasty - so if you want more of a bite to your carrots & potatoes let the meat with the onion & celery cook for 3 hours before adding these).

Total cook time in the crock pot was approximately 6 hours on high. Once the meat was at 175F I turned the heat off, but left the lid on to keep everything warm and left it like this for about an hour before our friends arrived and it was time to eat. Once it was time to serve I used a slotted spoon and put all the veggies into a serving bowl and thinly sliced the corn beef, the key here is to cut the meat opposite the grain.

For the cabbage I set a large pot of water to boil and added a bit of salt. While the water was warming up I cut the stem off the cabbage and cut it into 2 half's and then quartered each half. Once the water was boiling I carefully added the cabbage and let cook for 12-15 minutes. I removed the cooked cabbage and strained it over the sink and placed onto my serving platter with the corn beef.



I served all this goodness with a loaf of Rye bread and of course we had green beers in frosty mugs.




After dinner we enjoyed the key lime pie and Quinn made a special dessert drink with Crème de Menthe (mint) that tasted a lot like mint chip ice cream, yum!

I also took a few pictures of the set table while we waited for our friends to arrive - gotta love fiesta dishes, I had just enough green & orange for the occasion.





It was a great, low key St. Patrick's Day at home.