Corned Beef: A Dual Heritage

Both an Irish-American and Jewish deli staple, I try it in a slow cooker for St. Patrick's Day☘️, with mixed results

A traditional St. Patrick’s Day feast, with corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread—unfortunately, not mine!

My memories of St. Patrick’s Day go back to elementary school where forgetting to wear green on March 17 could earn you a nasty pinch somewhere on your anatomy. Long before Dr. Seuss’s famous book made green eggs a thing, I recall my brother Denis adding some green food coloring to some scrambled eggs and serving them to our parents. Although I can’t recall their reaction, I know I was less than thrilled when the rascal tinted a glass of water perched atop the bathroom door the same emerald shade, laughing hysterically as it tumbled onto my unsuspecting head.

Wearin’ the green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day at our local gym.

Though I’m tempted to experiment on some eggs just for joy of recreating the past (or for a bit of Seussian mischief), I instead decided to make corned beef and cabbage after texting with couple of friends who were doing the same.

“The Trader Joe’s one comes in a package with spices and all you do is follow their super simple directions, add cabbage toward the end or cook it separately and have a dinner to die for (and regret having eaten too much the day after!),” Donna wrote.

How could I resist? I ran right over to the local TJ’s and purchased the smallest package of corned beef I could find. It only needed to feed two.

Apparently you don’t have to be Irish to enjoy this popular Irish American dish. After looking it up, I found it even has some connection with my Eastern European Jewish heritage. The Irish, who emigrated the U.S. in large numbers, particularly during Ireland’s devastating potato famine in the mid-19th century, remade an old favorite in a new way. Allrecipe’s Laria Tabul explains.

“Irish immigrants in 19th-century New York City, who often lived in the same neighborhood as Jewish butchers, noticed flavor similarities between the corned beef of NYC delicatessens and the pork bacon of their homeland. Thus, corned beef and cabbage was born.”

In those days, brisket was apparently cheaper than bacon in New York, another reason Irish immigrants probably gravitated toward it.¹

You can find corned beef and pastrami at most American Jewish delis (assuming you can find a deli; there are a few here in L.A.!). Both are made from brisket, but the preparations are different. Corned beef is usually cured in a salt solution (the “corn” isn’t the cob variety but the salt pellets used to cure it), then boiled or slow-cooked, while pastrami is made from meat that has been cured, coated in spices, cold smoked and then steamed.²

We usually opt for pastrami at Langer’s Deli in Los Angeles (the #19 is world famous—check out my ode to Langer’s and this great sandwich below). Corned beef is not as high on the list—but maybe it should be!

Celebrating a Great L.A. Deli: Langer's!

After hearing from Donna, I thought I’d give corned beef and cabbage a try. As I’d had quite great success with brisket (here’s a link to my story about that too), and corned beef is basically brisket with difference spices, what could go wrong? In this case, the piece of meat I bought from Trader Joe’s was sitting in pickling brine but hadn’t been cured in the usual way, which requires the use of nitrites. These are commonly employed for curing meats such as bacon, ham, hotdogs and also corned beef, but they’re sometimes viewed as potentially harmful.³

While nitrites help preserve the meats and impart an enticing pinkish glow, enhanced flavor, and are an ancient preservation technique, there are worries about their longterm health effects. My own unscholarly view is that, like so much else we probably shouldn’t eat, for most people, it’s okay to partake in moderation. Life is simply too short to pass up the joys of a great hotdog or pastrami sandwich—or corned beef on rye. (Hey, doesn’t happiness contribute to longevity too?)

From crock pot to stovetop

It was a bit of a bumpy ride for corned beef and cabbage in the Ruthtalksfood kitchen! The meat was finally tender after 8 hours in a slow cooker and four hours on the stove in a Dutch oven. Here's hoping that a gravy of Guinness and Dijon adds just the right touch!

The directions on the package were pretty simple:

“Place entire contents of bag in a pot. Add enough water to cover beef. Bring to a boil Reduce heat, cover, and gently simmer for 3 1/2 to 4 hour or until fork tender. Cook to a minimum internal temperature of 145°F as measured with a food thermometer and allow to rest for 3 minutes before carving. Serve hot or cold.”

Instead, I opted to cook the meat in a slow cooker, which I assumed was foolproof. Here’s a link to the recipe I used, which included a delicious-sounding gravy of Guinness (or other Irish stout) and Dijon mustard. It called for cooking the corned beef on low for eight hours. After the prescribed time, I poked the meat. It was as tough as a horse’s saddle. Yikes!

I looked up another recipe for stovetop prep, also from Allrecipes. You can find it here. After removing all the added vegetables and spices, I boiled the beef for another 3 1/2 hours, adding the vegetables back in (minus most of the pickling spices that I had strained out) for the final half hour. With some additional cabbage to add to the plate and that Guinness-Dijon gravy I’ll be making later, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that Donna’s prediction of “a dinner to die for” will come true (though not literally, of course!).

If it doesn’t, I’m heading for Langer’s for that #19 sandwich, or maybe the #54—hot pastrami and corned beef on rye!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

If you made something special for St. Patrick’s Day, I’d love to hear about it. Any tips for making corned beef and cabbage? I think perhaps I’ll just follow the package directions next time!

If meat and cabbage aren’t your thing, try Anne Byrn’s recipe for potato leek soup for a different taste on this early spring holiday. You can find it in Anne’s latest blog, along with another of her recipes for a Yeasted Fruit Loaf. She also shares some history and reflections on the potato famine known as the Big Hunger that killed more than 1 million people in Ireland between 1845 and 1852 and spurred so many from the Emerald Isle to flee to this country.

Potato Leek Soup for St. Patrick’s Day - No. 277

If Irish scones are calling your name, I wrote about them for a previous St. Pat’s Day post that you can find below.

Scones and My Quest for Irish Roots

Thanks as always for taking the time to read, like and comment on my posts. If you know someone who might enjoy this newsletter, won’t you please share it with a friend? As I head into my fifth year of blogging here at Substack next month, I’m hoping to reach a magic number of subscribers without annoying my readers by asking too often. Still, it’s nice to know that I’m writing not only for my own pleasure but for that of others who might find something interesting and useful on this site. Thanks again for your support. It means a lot.

See you next time!

Ruth

1. Liam Stack, “Corned Beef and Cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day? Not so Irish, Historians Say,” New York Times, March 17, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/dining/corned-beef-and-cabbage-not-so-irish-historians-say.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dE0.IORF.QTj7zNuAcFYR&smid=url-share here

2. Layla Khoury-Hanold, “Corned Beef vs Pastrami: What’s the difference?” Food Network, January 25, 2023. https://www.foodnetwork.com/how-to/packages/food-network-essentials/corned-beef-vs-pastrami#:~:text=Corned%20beef%20is%20made%20from,section%20just%20below%20the%20ribs).

3. Karolina Ferysiuk and Karolina M. Wójciak, “Reduction of Nitrite in Meat Products through the Application of Various Plant-Based Ingredients,” National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine (NIH), August 5, 2020 (online). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7464959/#:~:text=Cured%20meat%20products%20are%20another,meat%20%5B9%2C20%5D.