What You Make For Sunday Dinner When You Can't Use The Oven.

[leene_chan]

It's Corned Beef and Cabbage! With Carrots and Steamed New Potatoes!

Maybe we should have made this for St. Patrick's Day, but the 17th was in the middle of the week, and my older brother only visits during the weekend. I actually don't care for corned beef and cabbage at all. The meat is often fatty and gristly, and the boiled vegetables can end up as a pile of multi-colored mush. Kristen and I had a tough challenge to make this boiled dinner edible!

Most of the credit goes to her, as usual. :O She's usually the innovater, while I do a good job following orders. The secret to making the meat not taste like crap is cooking it to the extremely high temperature of 210 degrees Fahrenheit. You HAVE to do this, or the meat won't be tender. So we cooked it at a healthy simmer in a big pot of water with two bay leaves and a whole onion studded with eight cloves until it reached 210 degrees. It took about three hours, but the meat came out tender enough to shred with a fork. Neat!

Next came the cabbage, carrots and potatoes. Usually we boil these together, but we were so happy with the taste and texture of steamed new potatoes that we decided to separate this unholy trinity. XD

We washed and peeled several carrots and cut them into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Once the meat was out of the simmering water, we threw those in and set the oven timer for 10 minutes. After they had been cooking for 5 minutes (leaving 5 minutes left on the timer) we added 1/2 a washed, cored and sliced green cabbage to the simmering water, and cooked the whole mess until the timer beeped off. Then we drained the vegetables and dumped them into a covered casserole dish. We later seasoned those to taste with kosher salt, black pepper and browned butter. Not melted butter, but Browned Butter. Unsalted butter melted in a pan and cooked until the solids turn golden brown and smell nutty. I assure you that the vegetables did not taste like mushy crap when they were done!

In the meantime, we cut new red potatoes (skins still on)into quarters and arranged them in a bamboo steamer basket. We set the basket over a dutch oven of rapidly boiling water and steamed the potatoes for 20 minutes, then tossed them melted butter, minced chives and kosher salt.

The meat was still a little fatty and salty for my tastes (but oh so tender) but the rest of my family loved this meal. My favorite part was the cabbage and carrots with browned butter. I think everyone else liked the potatoes best.

I don't mean to brag about this meal, but corned beef with cabbage is usually one of my most hated meals. Even if I relent to eating it, I regret it in the end. So if Kristen and I (mostly Kristen) managed to transform it into something we could eat without reservations. I'm glad! :D

And I didn't even need to use the oven....