Corned Beef & Cabbage

I've said before that St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays and I stand by that. Also, corned beef and cabbage is one of my favorite meals :)  Here is how I go about making it.

Start with your corned beef brisket. What makes corned beef brisket special is that it is wet-cured in a brine (typically) spiced with mustard seeds, cloves, allspice, peppercorns and/or other pickling spices.

Put the brisket in a stockpot with included spice packet and enough water just to cover.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat, simmering for 2 1/2 - 3 hours.

When you have about 15 minutes remaining, add a quartered onion, some quartered potatoes and large carrots, sliced.

I didn't have any carrots on hand so I just skipped them. Yes, it did feel like it was lacking something but I think it was mostly color I was missing.

When potatotes and onions have been cooking for about 15 minutes, remove brisket to a warm pan, covered, and to the pot add a cabbage, quartered.

It was so tender I shredded it trying to take it out of the pot!

The potatoes and onions, half cooked in the broth from the brisket.



Allow cabbage to cook for 15-20 minutes and transfer to platter.

And there you have it - a super easy, yummy dinner...best of all? It only takes one pan!  If you're lucky and have leftovers you can make corned beef hash for breakfast the next morning...I'll show you that next :)

Do you like corned beef? 

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas :) Ours was fantastic. We are so blessed and truly thankful for having everything we could possibly need. This Christmas was special for me - I have a brother in the Air Force who is stationed at Osan AFB in South Korea. He's 26 and attended college away from home but this was the first Christmas he hasn't been able to make it home and our first Christmas where we weren't all together.

My dad ended up making the journey to Korea to be with him (which is special in and of itself!) so my mom came to celebrate Christmas (her first without my dad since they were married) with us at our house. We had a great evening on Christmas Eve with dinner, presents and a surprise Skype session with my dad and brother :) 

Anyway...to compliment our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of shrimp, I made roasted garlic mashed potatoes and orange glazed carrots. Since I know some people are intimidated by roasting garlic, I thought I would share the process. ( I don't know why anyone would be intmidated by this - maybe because it sounds yummy?)

I started with three whole bulbs garlic.

and sliced the top off (leaving the root end intact to keep the garlic together)

I rubbed some olive oil into the cut end making sure it was totally covered.

I wrapped each bulb loosely in foil. One easy way to do this is by putting them in muffin tins and looosely covering but I guess my husband threw away all of our muffin tins. Hmm. I wonder why.

 

Bake at 400 degrees for 35-40 minutes, remove from oven, unwrap and allow to cool enough to handle.

I don't know how it happend but a few of these warm, yummy cloves ended up in my mouth before they even hit the bowl...

There are so many things you can do with these - mash into some softened butter to use on garlic toast, add them to a salad or pasta, mash them directly on crusty bread...oh, the possibilites are endless!

I mashed mine in with a brick of softened cream cheese to add to my mashed potatoes.

I added a little fresh ground black pepper...this mixture by itself was so good and would have made a fantastic dip.



Oh yeah. This post was about mashed potatoes...I got kind of carried away with my garlic :)  I washed, peeled and diced about three pounds of potatoes. I know that Yukon Gold or Russet make the best mashed but this is ND. We're serious about our red potatoes.



Put your diced potatoes (about one inch pieces) in a large pot and add enough cold, salted water just to cover. Simmer until fork-tender, about 15 minutes.

Put drained, hot potatoes in a big bowl with cheese/garlic mixture, about 1 cup warm milk and 1/2 stick butter, softened.  Mix well.

I don't have any pictures of the finished product, mostly because they looked and smelled so good that we couldn't wait to eat them :)

I hope you all had a great Christmas. Do you have any traditional meals for Christmas Eve?