Ah the Irish. Fresh after celebrating St Patricks Day, I thought that it was high time I made the corned beef.
When I was a kid, my entire exposure to corned beef was the stuff in a can, which was covered in tallow and sometimes had flaps of skin in it. It was still good on sandwiches, but that’s mostly because of the salt. Years later when my mum or granddad would make it, the result bore a very slim resemblance, but was very tasty in another way. I’d never heard of colcannon mash until very recently, but it’s a pretty simple idea – fried cabbage in mashed potato with a metric ton of butter.
One note about this, the smell that this beef recipe leaves in your house is.. how do I put it? Disgusting. So, keep plenty of air coming through because you will want to leave your house, and maybe set it on fire.
Corned Beef:
1kg Silverside beef (I used the extra trim version, in a vague attempt to be healthy)
300ml brown malt vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
1 onion, diced
3 bay leaves
1 cup stock (I used beef cubes)
OK, so no fancy prep here, just throw it all in a slow cooker and set for 5 hours. If the beef is a little exposed on the top, turn it once after a few hours.
The beef should end up a toxic pink colour, and very tender to the touch. Lift it out carefully and slice up. You can eat it with white sauce (recommended) and colcannon mash.
Mash:
Er, make mashed potatoes as normal to taste. Add some more cream and stir. Fry up some thinly sliced kale or wombok in butter, but don’t brown it just wilt it. Stir into the mash. Arrange on the plate with a little dip in the middle and add a spoon of butter. The idea is to let it melt, and then dip each forkful in to get more fatty goodness.
