Corned Beef and Cabbage

At the beginning of March when I was planning my menu I decided to make corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day. You see, last year I had planned to make corned beef and cabbage and found a great recipe to use. It was a day or two before St. Patty's and I pulled up the recipe only to realize that the corned beef required 10 days of brining and I only had 2 days left before I needed it!

After that experience I knew this year would be the year to try it. I figured that since it was only the 1st or 2nd when I was planning my menu I would have plenty of time to buy the beef brisket and get it brining for the 10 days. Hmmmm, that ended up being pretty far from the truth.

We waited for the grocery store advertisement to show a sale on corned beef. We waited and waited and waited. Finally, we just went and bought it and I believe the next day is when we got the ad that said it was on sale. Go figure. Well, that put us into our 10 days of brining in time to meet the March 17th dinner deadline, but we were still close. Maybe a day or two short of brining or a day or two late on dinner. That wasn't the only delay though. Life and work happened and the brining went from 10 days to 12 days.

When we finally got to making it I was kind of tired of the idea of corned beef but we spent a pretty penny on the brisket so we were determined to go ahead and get it made.

It was a bit of a feat just to get the stuff brining, but the overall dish just wasn't appealing to everyone in our family. I am not a fan of big chunks of meat so I had to cut all my meat pieces down. The youngest member of our family took one bite and declared that he didn't like it (that shouldn't be too surprising though). Even my husband who managed to muscle down a bowl had to drink a 32 oz. bottle of water afterward because it was so salty.

The problem is that I'm not sure if it was supposed to be so salty or if it was the extra few days of brining, and we most likely will not be experimenting to find out. What I do know is that this piece of meat is pretty expensive and the fact that it wasn't a big hit at our house means it most likely won't be gracing our table again. You might be able to play around with it though. Just make sure you don't have any issues with sodium should you choose to make an attempt. Enjoy!  



Corned Beef and Cabbage
Source: Foodnetwork