Corned beef and cabbage preparation

Yes, yes, I know I’m late. I got a small corned beef brisket yesterday, and I want to make corned beef and cabbage today or tomorrow. What’s YOUR favorite method? Do you boil it, slow cook it, or roast it? I will consider all recipes. I’m not willing to make them all at the same time, though.

I have the smallish brisket, about 3.5 pounds, onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, and cabbage. I have various herbs and spices, and also a nice assortment of frozen vegetables. I don’t have a turnip, and I’m thinking of picking one up at the farmer’s market, and possibly some beets as well. Oh, and I have fresh mushrooms, but I don’t think that they’d go well. I have mandarin oranges for dessert.

Of COURSE I picked up rye bread and Swiss cheese at the market. I might be a godless heathen who ignores the saint, but I do respect the corned beef.

I like the pull-apart with a fork results that come from oven roasting with a lid. Just depends on how much time you want to take to cook it. My method is an hour per pound at 225F in a cast iron dutch oven. When the meat is done, remove it from the pot, put what vegetables I want to roast in there with the juices, bump up the oven and roast those with the lid off until almost done, then put the meat back in on top until heated through again. I don’t have times for that last part, so it’s not very helpful if you have a target meal time.

I tried boiling a brisket twice. The first time it was great and tender and juicy, and the second time it was tough and dry. No idea why they came out different, but I’ve gotten more consistent results with the dutch oven so have stuck with that.

Slow cooker or stovetop, depending if I’m home. In the slow cooker, I layer potatoes on the bottom, meat, spices, liquid and cabbage wedges on the top.

Stovetop: I simmer (not boil, simmer - boiling tightens the proteins and risks toughness) in spices and water sometimes a little beer. 30 minutes before dinner, I throw a bunch of red skinned potatoes in the same pot and turn the heat up a little bit. 15 minutes before dinner, I take the meat out to rest covered in foil, then I skim off some of the fat (or use bacon grease) and put it in a skillet and brown some wedges of cabbage on both cut sides, then ladle a couple of spoonfuls of the cooking liquid over the cabbage and cover it with a tight lid to steam it.

Simmer on stovetop is my favorite method. Add the turnips and beets. Nex day:Red Flannel Hash.

For me, slow cooker. Add vegetables just the last 40-60 minutes of cooking time to avoid them turning into mush. Alternatively, I’ll put the vegetables in a microwave safe dish, ladle some of the cooking liquid from the slow cooker over them, and nuke 'em for a few minutes.

I just ordered corned beef spices from Penzy’s. I’m going to find some beef brisket and have a go at doing my own “corning” of the beef. “Only” a week’s prep time for that dinner! But I’m hoping it will work out as cheaper per pound and hopefully at least as tasty as what I’ve been using.

I usually use cabbage, small potatoes, and carrots for the vegees but it’s not a hard and fast list, I’ll vary it depending on what’s in the kitchen.

I’ve never tried that, it sounds good.

About once a year, I put a corned beef brisket in my electric smoker at 225 for 3-4 hours. Perfect pastrami.

I simmer the corned beef for about four hours. With about 1 hour left I slice up the cabbage and make cole slaw. When it’s done I let the corned beef set for a while, then thin slice it, make some Russian dressing, and make Russian Reubens.

Boiled cabbage is vile beyond all reckoning, and adds nothing to the beef, so I don’t do that. Instead, I make a cabbage salad with scallions and tomatoes, and dress it with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. My friend calls this “Yemenite salad” but I truly have no idea if it’s really from Yemen.

Slice the corned beef into 2" or so strips. Put in the crock pot. (Note: All cooking is covered with the lid.) Add the seasoning and cover with water. Cook on High for about four hours. Peel and quarter a couple of russet potatoes, and peel and slice into chunks a couple of carrots, and add to the pot. Let it go for a couple more hours. Cut a head of cabbage into wedges and add to the pot. Let it simmer until the cabbage is at desired doneness.

My crock pot never seems to be big enough for everything. This year I cooked the cabbage separately, using liquid from the meat. I think it’s important to cook the meal with potatoes and carrots, even though I went through a phase where I didn’t. Corned beef is often very salty, and the root veg absorb some of the salt and even things out.

I prefer it oven-roasted, but I’ve found that it’s overly salty this way as there’s no water to dilute the brine it’s been cured in. Soaking it in water for a little while before roasting first seems to help.

First: do you have “red” corned beef? (cured with sodium nitrate), or “gray” corned beef (cured with salt). The two are different. In any case, you must soak the beef to remove the salts. Then cook till tender, and add the vegetables (diced so as to cook quickly). Then the potatoes and beets are done, serve.

If slow cooking, substitute apple juice for the water !

I have red corned beef.

My husband left town for the week without getting the slow cooker down. I am Not Allowed to get on stepstools, ladders, etc., so it looks like I’m going to have to choose between stovetop and oven. Hmmm. I will definitely put the potatoes and carrots in the pot, because I like the flavor that the broth gives to them, and because they do draw out some of the salt in the beef.

Before there were slow cookers, there were pots and stoves. Just put it on the stovetop, covered, at a low simmer for a few hours.

My sister made this cabbage dish for Passover and it was quite tasty! I think it was a little too sweet as prepared, so maybe a bit less sugar and a little more vinegar.

I think it would be really solid with some corned beef.

Yeah, that’s basically a New England boiled dinner, and in my OP I said “boil” when I meant “simmer”. I’ve made pot roasts on the stovetop before, and they came out perfectly OK.

Just had one of these yesterday. We cooked the brisket by itself in the slow cooker, then pulled it out and (as suggested in Joy of Cooking) slathered it with a mixture of brown sugar, soy sauce, dry mustard and ginger before baking it in the oven for 15 minutes to crisp up the topping. It was served with buttered egg noodles and asparagus. Yum.

Normally we’d do the typical corned beef + cabbage + boiled potatoes thing, but this was really good.