The Corned Beef & Cabbage, accompanied by potatoes and carrots, rests on an Autum Leaf platter passed down from MT’s grandmother, who bought it from the Jewel Tea door-to-door salesman, probably during the 1940s. Times Leader test cooks Mark and MT now have an Autumn Leaf tea towel to match, thanks to a thoughtful reader named Jim.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
And horseradish sauce ’just what it needed’
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“The meat has a nice salty taste,” reporter Margaret Roarty said earlier this week as she sampled the corned beef & cabbage I’d made in the Times Leader Test Kitchen in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. “And the cabbage has a really nice flavor, which I wasn’t expecting.”
Well, I’m certainly not an expert, considering how Tuesday was the first time I’d ever made this dish.
But I knew enough to explain that much of the flavor came out of the meat — during the 2 and 1/2 hours it simmered on the stovetop. Then the potatoes, carrots and cabbage that cooked in the same liquid soaked some of it up.
And, to really enhance the flavor of the Corned Beef & Cabbage, I whipped up a horseradish dipping sauce.
“What’s in that sauce?” columnist Bill O’Boyle said. “You could go into business with that one!”
“It’s sour cream, horseradish, mustard and Worcestershire Sauce,” I told him. “It was very easy to make.”
While we won’t be bottling the sauce anytime soon, my husband/fellow test cook Mark also was enthusiastic when he tasted it at home. “I love the sauce,” he said. “We could put it on anything.”
And on Wednesday, when I offered leftover corned beef & cabbage, plus the sauce, to any newsroom folks who had been away from the office on Tuesday, reporter Kevin Carroll heaved one of those happy, Kevin’s-in-heaven sighs.
“Oh, it’s delicious,” he said. “I love the horseradish sauce. It really works with the meat. And I love cabbage, too. It’s one of those things you don’t like when you’re a little kid, because it looks gross. But I’ve come around to it now that I’m older.”
“I would’ve been disappointed,” he added, “if I read about this and realized I missed it.”
Another person who almost missed the taste test was Gabby Lang, our Weekender entertainment writer. “I really don’t think it has a lot of flavor,” she said when she eventually tried the corned beef & cabbage on Wednesday. “It’s kind of a bland meal, but I look forward to it all year (because it’s a St. Patrick’s Day tradition.)”
She also appreciated the horseradish sauce.
“I definitely think that’s what it needed,” she said.
While the horseradish sauce recipe came from foodnetwork.com, the corned beef & cabbage recipe came from allrecipes.com, where some posted comments inspired me to make adjustments — namely, adding an onion to the mix, and pouring in a bottle of the Old Man Winter Ale that was left over from the time I made Vegetable Chowder in January.
By the way, when I was shopping for corned beef brisket I found one that weighed 3.5 pounds. I hoped that would be enough for the taste testers and my family — because I’d read that corned beef can shrink 30 to 40 percent during the cooking process.
Mine didn’t seem to shrink that much, even after 2 hours of simmering in a mix of water and beer in a Dutch oven. In fact, since the brisket was still so large after 2 hours of cooking I pulled it out of the Dutch oven, cut it in half and divided everything into two pots so I’d have room for the veggies.
All told, this Corned Beef & Cabbage was super easy to prepare. And, Mark baked a hearty loaf of Irish Brown Bread to accompany it, as you might have read in Wednesday’s Life section.
Hours after the taste test, I was still basking in kind comments, like this description of the Corned Beef & Cabbage from news editor and taste tester Roger DuPuis:
“It’s a classic. This is what the dish is supposed to be, and you executed it perfectly.”
Here is the recipe I used, based on one from allrecipes.com/.
Corned Beef and Cabbage
1 (3 pound) corned beef brisket with spice packet
10 small potatoes (or equivalent; I cut up larger potatoes)
1 onion
5 medium carrots
1 large head cabbage
Place corned beef in a Dutch oven and cover with water (and a bottle of beer, if desired.) Add spice packet, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until corned beef is just about fork-tender, about 2 hours. Cut potatoes in half. Slice onion. Peel carrots and cut into 3-inch pieces. Cut cabbage into small wedges.
When corned beef has cooked for 2 hours, add potatoes, carrots and onion; cook until vegetables are almost tender and meat is fork-tender, about 15 minutes. Add cabbage and cook until tender, about 10 more minutes.
Please note, according to the website editor, the total cooking time for corned beef to be fork-tender should be 45 to 50 minutes per pound. Make adjustments if your corned beef is larger or smaller than 3 pounds.
Horseradish Sauce
1 cup sour cream
6 to 8 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
Whisk together all ingredients and enjoy alongside corned beef. Or you could try dipping some bread, in particular Irish Brown Bread, into it. Mmmm!
