Dinner tonight - St. Patty's Day 2006

[Constance]

I am making corned beef for the first time. Since I won't be home till much later I did it in the Crock Pot. I put the beef in with one bottle of beer and the spice packet. I throw in quartered red potaotes and put the heat on low. When i get home I will pull the meat out to rest and at that time I will throw the cabbage in. I am really looking forward to this meal and a couple of Guiness to wash it all down.

Same here, GB...except the beer will be Bud Lite.

 

[corazon]

I'll be leaving the house shortly to go to the firestation. I'm making corned beef for dh & the rest of the guys. What's a good Irish dessert? Bailey's cheesecake would be good. I like corned beef but, too bad for me, I won't be having any. Earlier this week, I accepted an invitation to the neighbor's. It's Aidan's babysitter's birthday. Otherwise I would cancel, but since it's a special occasion, we will go over. Don't know what we'll be having, she mentioned homemade ravioli. That would be good! And cake! Who can resist cake?

 

[buckytom]

ya know cora, i'm not really sure of any irish desserts. i don't remeber having any, besides scones with honey and butter.
you could go with pistachio or mint ice cream.

 

[licia]

I stopped on the way home and picked up the fixins, but will have to check the posts and see how to cook it. I've never made corned beef and cabbage.

 

[pdswife]

I don't think Paul is going to make it home in time for a big dinner tonight...
so I'll prbly just make burgers or something quick and easy.

Corned beef sure sounds good!

Good luck to all you first timers, I'm sure you'll have a great dinner!!

 

[SierraCook]

.... What's a good Irish dessert? Bailey's cheesecake would be good. ....

Here is a whole pageful of Irish Desserts. I particularly thought the Ultimate Irish Apple Cake sounded good.

Irish Desserts


For dinner tonight I am having chicken piccata, wild rice pilaf, and sauteed spinach with garlic.

 

[auntdot]

We have the corned beef in the fridge, but it has been a heck of a week and neither of use wants to cook, so we are going out.

The only Irish place about is one pub and we want to relax, not have to deal with partiers (God bless them).

So tomorrow we will make the meal, unless we can get reservations at the local racetrack, and then will be eating there.

So Sunday, absolutely, positively, will be St. Patty's day about here.

Unless............

Am really looking forward to the corned beef though, really.

 

[callie]

GB, I don't know about you - but I'm very happy with the way my crockpot corned beef turned out. I let it cook for 12 hours along with my red potatoes. The taters were tender and so was the beef! I poured the juice from the crockpot into a pan and boiled the cabbage in that while the meat rested. I'll certainly fix my corned beef this way from now on.

 

[GB]

callie I was thrilled with the results. I got home and put the beef on a cutting board tented with foil. I threw a cabbage, quartered, into the Crockpot and turned the heat to high. That cooked for about 40-45 minutes. The beef was so tender, the potatoes with perfect, and the cabbage had just the right crunch. Yeah I was very pleased with the way it came out.

 

[Claire]

Since we moved to Galena (a small town with quite a bit of Irish heritage), we were "adopted" by a large Irish-American family here, and wind up in the parade and doing some bar-hopping after. This year we were tired of the couple of hours of partying and hit a quiet steak house for supper!!!

Hints for newbies making corned beef and cabbage: I like to add some extra peppercorns, mustard seeds, and alspice corns to the water I'm cooking the corned beef in. I like that extra flavor (this is in addition to the spices that come in the corned beef packet). I find that most foods we buy get less and less flavorful, and this zips it up to the flavors I remember as a kid.

I prefer to add my cabbage last (as well as others have mentioned), so the entire meal doesn't taste and smell like over-boiled cabbage.

And lastly, after I've removed the meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbage, I strain the whole spices from the stewing juice. Refrigerate overnight and remove the fat (almost unecessary given how lean you can buy the beef these days ... as a matter of fact I've taken to buying cheaper cuts of corned beef because I want a little more fat for flavor). I then chop some leftover corned beef, potato, carrot, and maybe a fresh onion (by now the old ones have all but dissolved) into the broth, and a can of saurkraut, to make what I call "rueben soup". Serve with a slice of swiss cheese on top. Hubby likes this better than he likes the original corned beef meal.

 

[Barbara L]

I always fix corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day, but I got home way too late for that tonight. I couldn't cook it in the crock pot because I didn't have any corned beef yet! I bought 4 on the way home (3 went into the freezer for later). We had tacos tonight (green lettuce, so we were ok on that, lol), and I will cook the corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and onions tomorrow.

Barbara

 

[Erik]

We're going to make Corned Beef and Cabbage next week, I cooked about 200 lbs the last week, with all of the fixin's, honestly, even being Irish, I am kinda sick of looking it.

But I did make a Spinach/Potato Soup that was pretty tasty!!

 

[biev]

I've never celebrated st-patrick's day, and I didn't even know it was today, so nothing special here... Hubby's at work, I'm still hurt from my burns, so no cooking... I ended up reheating some ham and cheese macaroni in the microwave. Not my favorite type of dinner

 

[mish]

callie I was thrilled with the results. I got home and put the beef on a cutting board tented with foil. I threw a cabbage, quartered, into the Crockpot and turned the heat to high. That cooked for about 40-45 minutes. The beef was so tender, the potatoes with perfect, and the cabbage had just the right crunch. Yeah I was very pleased with the way it came out.

So glad it turned out well, GB. Sounds like the recipe I posted, except for the beer. Had a feeling you might make it in the crockpot. Did it shrink at all?

The market here has the best salad bar, so... I made a salad of artichokes hearts, beets, crab, mushrooms, green beans, a little bleu cheese dressing (I forget what else I put in there) & a grilled lemon & pepper chicken breast on the side. Tomorrow I may have the zucchinni pancakes I took out. (It's still green, right? )

 

[thumpershere2]

We had the corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots and apple pie for desert. Claire, I love your soup idea.

 

[Constance]

Ours turned out great, also. After 6 hours in the crockpot on low, the corned beef was perfectly tender, and I took it out and let it stand while I cooked the cabbage on high, just as GB did. I found at the last minute that I didn't have any decent potatoes, but I didn't miss them.
HB got his corned beef on rye, and I got my corned beef & cabbage and some toasted rye bread to go with. I cooked a whole big head of cabbage, so I'll be lunching on it all week.

 

[GB]

Did it shrink at all?

It sure did. Everyone here told me it would shrink a lot and they were not joking. What had looked like would feed 4 people raw only fed 2 of us cooked. It really became a very small piece of meat. It tasted amazing, but next time I will get the biggest one I can find.

 

[buckytom]

the shrinkage is incredible gb. and i usually buy the biggest one that i can find as well.
you always end up with much more potatoes and cabbage than corned beef, so the next day i like to mash the potatoes, chop the cabbage and mix it into the potatoes with a hunk o' butter and chopped scallions, kinda like making colcannon.

we ended up having sashimi last night. normally that would have made me happy, but...

oh well, there's always next year.

 

[kingfisherfd2]

One of the guys that I work with is Irish, so last night he was having a St. Patrick's day party.
So my boss told me that he would pick us up so that we would all be safe and so that we could drink if we wanted.
So I was at one of my coworkers house when the boss called us to come down. So as we are walking out we see this Limo. We are saying someone is going out on the town tonight. My friend says were are they? I say, I think the limo is here for us. He says no way, I say, I think so. Then the driver opens the door and our boss says, Are you guys looking for a ride.

Pretty cool.

Anyway this is about food.
Dennis, our Irish co-worker, had Irish soda bread, wheat bread, irish butter, irish potato chips, cabbage, potatoes, some kind of salted ham. And ofcourse there was plenty of Guiness to drink.

It was a really fun time, and I believe that it was my first time in a limo.

It was a happy st. pat's day.

 

[callie]

kingfish - you have a cool boss!