Traditional Corned Beef And Cabbage Recipe for St. Patrick's Day

Today, I'm sharing a traditional corned beef and cabbage recipe. Very easy to make and perfect for beginners. Hi, sweet friends. I'm Mary and welcome to Mary's Nest. I'm a former New York City girl now living the simple life with my sweet husband here in the Texas Hill Country. And this channel is all about cooking from scratch, living naturally, and creating a cozy home with charming thrift store finds. So if you're like me and you want to live the simple life, be sure to subscribe to my channel and don't forget to click on the little notification bell below. That'll let you know every time I upload a new video. With St. Patrick's Day just around the corner, I thought I would share with you a traditional corned beef and cabbage recipe. Now, when I say traditional, does that mean this came from Ireland? Well, the answer is no. The truth is the traditional dish in Ireland is bacon and cabbage. But when Irish immigrants came to America, they couldn't find bacon similar to the bacon they were used to at home. So instead, what they did was substitute with a brisket. And they often bought them at kosher delis. And so was born this wonderful Irish-American dish that we know as corned beef and cabbage and often eaten on St. Patrick's Day. The beauty of this dish is it's just a one-pot meal and really you can make it at any time of year to enjoy. But it's perfect for St. Patrick's Day. And what you want to do is find a nice corned beef brisket and I recommend a flat cut because this is going to cook up beautifully and it's going to slice nicely. And I'll show you once it's cooked because I don't know if you can see this on camera, but it has a grain going through it like this. But when you slice it against the grain, it's going to make beautiful slices that they're sort of showing here on the package. So you want to look for a flat cut. And this is about four pounds. And so I'm thinking that this will feed maybe about eight people, six to eight. It does shrink a bit once you cook it. So plan for that. And in the package with the brisket comes a seasoning packet and it's got some mustard seeds and various things like that, which you'll want to add into the pot when you cook this brisket. So this is what you want to look for. A nice corned beef brisket, classic flat cut. And the next things that you're going to want is two pounds of carrots, two nice heads of cabbage, four onions, and about two pounds of potatoes. Now when it comes to potatoes, I like to use these little ones and I keep the skins on and throw them right in. I think they work beautifully when making corned beef and cabbage. But you can certainly use any kind of potato you want. And if it's a large potato, I recommend leaving the skins on. I think it adds a nice flavor and it just sort of fits in nicely with the rustic look of the dish. But what I would recommend is that you just cut them up. And even though the brisket does come with a spice packet, I like to add in some black peppercorns and two bay leaves as well. Well, the first thing I'm going to do is take this brisket out of the package. I'm going to put it in a large pot. You want to make sure that you have a nice large pot because we're going to add the vegetables in later too. And you're going to put it in there. We're going to cover it with water. We're going to bring it to a boil. Some foam will probably come to the top. We're going to skim that off. And then we're going to add in the seasoning packet or the spice packet as it's called. Because if we put the spice packet in with the meat as we're bringing it up to a boil, it may float to the top and we don't want to remove all the nice spices when we remove the foam. So I've got my pot filled up about halfway with water. I've got the flat brisket down on the bottom there. And I'm going to bring this up to a boil. I'll remove the foam. And at that point, I'll add in the seasoning packet and then I'll also add in the onions. Now, this is going to need to cook for four hours to be nice and tender because it's four pounds or approximately four pounds. And if it's three pounds, it'd be three hours. And usually you don't want to get a brisket any smaller than three pounds or a corned beef brisket any smaller than three pounds because they do shrink. So you want to make sure you have enough for your dinner as well as leftovers because leftovers are delicious for not only making sandwiches with or even a delicious hash. So this will cook for a total of two hours. But at about three hours, we'll put in our carrots, our cabbage, and our potatoes and let them cook along with the brisket. But you don't want to put them in now because they'll get overcooked and the potatoes will probably disintegrate. I know when I was first learning to cook, I put everything in in the beginning. And when I served it up, my mom was like, wait a minute, my mom taught me how to cook. And my mom was like, what happened to the potatoes? And then I realized they had all disintegrated. So I'll put them in about the last hour. Now I brought this up to a boil. And as the foam rose to the top, I just wanted to show you, I just scoop this off. And this is what, when you scoop through the foam and pull it through a slotted spoon, this is what you're going to see. It's just little minor impurities, nothing serious, but it's best to remove it. So I've got this down to a simmer. And now I'm going to add in the spice packet. And basically it's just some herbs and some mustard seeds. Now I'm going to peel these onions and I'm going to quarter them. But I'm going to show you what I do. When I quarter them, I'm going to leave the root in so that they stay together as they're cooking with the corned beef. So I cut my onion in half and I remove the blossom end. And then I'm just going to peel off one layer or so just to get rid of the skin and a little bit of the onion. I don't mind that because I like to save this for making bone broth. Alrighty, so now I've got the stem in and I'm just going to cut it right down like that. I'm going to leave that stem on because that'll help keep the onion together. And then it'll be flavoring the meat, but it'll also be nice to be able to serve with each individual serving on the plate rather than just having little bits of onion that, you know, have disintegrated. This will stay more intact. Well, I've got my last onion all done. I've got the root in. I've just cut a little bit off of the blossom. I've got all my scraps here which I'm going to save for bone broth. And I'm going to go ahead and put this in with the corned beef. And now I'm going to let this simmer for about three hours. I'm going to put the lid on and I've just got it simmering sort of about medium. And if you notice it boiling, you're going to want to lower it. But on this little stovetop, it's going to be about medium will be good. And I'm going to let that cook for three hours. And then we're going to go in and add the cabbage, the carrots and the potatoes. And I'll show you how we prepare all of those to add in with the corned beef. Oh, and I almost forgot my peppercorns and my bay leaves. I've got those in too. Alrighty, so we'll let that simmer for three hours. And while that's simmering, one thing I have to share with you is that for all the years I've been cooking, I've never found the secret to cutting onions without having my eyes tear up. I don't know if you could tell. And so if you know the secret, let me know in the comments below because I would love to learn. Well, while that's simmering, I want to show you how I prep the vegetables. Now with the carrots, all I do is peel them. Certainly you're free to leave them unpeeled, but I just feel it makes a little nicer presentation when you bring the platter of food to the table, the bright orange of the peeled carrot. Now I'm going to save all these shreds because these shreds can go into your bone broth when you make that. So this is saving vegetable scraps is a terrific way to use them up rather than throwing them out. Or if you want, certainly you can put them in the compost pile, but they're great for adding to broth, to bone broth when you make it or any kind of broth or stock. And then the next thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to cut off the tail and cut off the blossom end over there. And then basically what I'll do is I like them to be served in a healthy portion. You can slice them any way you want, but since I am going to put them in about an hour before, I just like to cut them basically into about this size. And I find that's perfect. When it comes to the cabbage, what I do is something very similar to what I did with the onions. I'm just going to quarter this and I'm going to leave the stem in because this way it'll stay together and it'll make it for easy serving when you go to remove it from the platter to each person's serving plate. You'll be able to put an entire quarter of cabbage rather than the leaves just sort of going every which way. So all I'm going to do then is just quarter this cabbage right down the middle. So I've got the two halves now with the stem in and now I'm going to cut each half into half again so that I have a quarter. The cabbage is quartered. Well, I've got the cabbage all quartered and I'm going to do the same thing to my other cabbage. And then when it's time for it to go into the pot, it'll just go in right like this and it'll cook like this. And then when it comes time to serve, you can serve it like this. It's perfect. Now I switched to my cooktop so I brought you over here because I was worried about having this heavy pot on the little portable cooktop. Now this has been simmering for about three hours and it's looking and smelling delicious. And so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go ahead and add in the potatoes. And now I'm going to go ahead in and add in the carrots and on the very top I'm going to put the cabbage. Well, I've got everything in my pot and I've got the cabbage right there on top and I'm going to put the lid on and let that simmer for another hour. Well, this has now been simmering for four hours and it looks wonderful. The vegetables are beautifully cooked and all we need to do now is just remove this top layer of fat. And once we get that off, we'll slice it up. Alrighty, well, I removed that fat layer and now I flipped it over and I want to see if you can see this on the camera, but the grain on the meat is going in this direction. So in order to slice this so that it stays together, we want to slice it against the grain. So if the grain is going this way, then we want to slice it this way. But don't worry if you don't want to slice it or if it does fall apart, it's delicious and you can even just take a fork and pull it apart. Oh, and this just looks lovely and it's slicing up beautifully and it's so nice and lean. These flat cuts are really terrific. You leave that fat layer on when you're cooking it for the flavor, but then you remove it as I did before you slice it and look at these wonderful slices. And look at this wonderful corned beef and cabbage meal. If you'd like more from Scratch recipes, be sure to subscribe to my channel and then click on this video over here where I show you how to make traditional Irish brown soda bread. And I'll see you over there in my Texas Hill Country kitchen. Love and God bless and happy St. Patrick's Day!