Corned Beef And Cabbage

Corned beef and cabbage are practically synonymous with St. Patrick’s Day. This one-pot dinner recipe has earned its place at the table for good reason. As a holiday dinner or any other day, you’re going to love this recipe.

This corned beef recipe is the BEST!!

Imagine corned beef brisket slowly braising in the oven in a bath of Guinness until it is so tender that it melts in your mouth. Caramelized onions and beer make a rich and decadent sauce that pairs perfectly with the carrots, potatoes, and braised cabbage.

While you can make this recipe in a slow cooker, there’s something magical about the corned beef when it’s cooked slowly and gently over time. The flavor becomes richer with every step of its journey through your Dutch oven.

What is Corned Beef?

If you’re wondering what corned beef is and why it’s so special, let me tell you. Corned beef is made from brisket. This cut of beef is a shoulder cut that’s tough and needs to be cooked for a long time at a low temperature to get it tender.

Brisket is the king of meat in the BBQ world. A perfectly smoked brisket is a work of art that you won’t soon forget. It’s often on the smoker for 18 plus hours. Is your mouth watering yet?

The brisket is made up of two main parts, the flat and the point. The entire brisket is used when smoking a full brisket. Corned beef is most often made from brisket flat. But you can use the flat or the point for this recipe.

Corned beef gets in name from the salt used to cure the meat. Brisket is brined in a salt solution, brown sugar, and pickling spices for 5 or more days. The salt that was traditionally used to cure corned beef was large and chunky rock salt, thusly named corns.

The curing salt used to cure meat is sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrate is a pink salt that preserves meat and inhibits the growth of bacteria. It’s also what gives cured meat its pinkish color.

You can find sodium nitrate commonly marketed under the name Prague Powder #1. Curing salt is easy to find online and curing your own corned beef is super easy to do and has a flavor that is out of this world. This pink salt is very different from Himilayan salt. Himalayan salt is not the pink salt used to cure a brisket.

What Is In Pickling Spice?

Pickling spice is a blend of spices that are commonly used to make pickled vegetables but is also a super important flavor component for making traditional corned beef and cabbage. When you buy corned beef from the grocery store a pickling seasoning packet is usually included with the meat.

Pickling spice is made up of whole allspice, mustard seeds, whole coriander, red pepper flakes, black peppercorns, whole cloves, cardamom pods, bay leaves, ground ginger, and cinnamon sticks.

You may find that different pickling spice blends vary slightly. You can tweak the spice blend to your own liking.

How To Cook Corned Beef

You can cook corned beef and cabbage in a slow cooker, in a pressure cooker (or Instant Pot), or with my favorite cooking method, slowly braised in the oven in a dutch oven pan.

Crockpot corned beef is by far the easiest method for making corned beef and cabbage. But, I’ve always felt like this method leaves your house with a very strong lingering cabbage smell, and meat that has been cooked in a crockpot lacks the caramelly goodness that a dutch oven corned beef has.

But, if you’re short on prep time or will be at work and really want that corned beef and cabbage when you get home, a slow cooker might be your best option for this one-pot meal.

What You’ll Love About This Recipe

• This recipe is cooked in a large dutch oven. You’ll slow cook this corned beef and cabbage in the oven for the better part of a day.
• The corned beef is browned which gives you those brown bits that impart maximum flavor.
• The beer and the onions meld together to create a rich and succulently flavored steam bath for the corned beef.
• The potatoes and carrots are added in after a few hours of cooking and the cabbage is added at the very end. This method ensures that the beef is melt-in-your-mouth tender while making sure that the vegetables aren’t overcooked because noone loves soggy cabbage.

What You’ll Need

• Corned Beef (4 to 5 pounds)
• Guinness Beer. You can your a lager style beef instead or you can use beef broth if you don’t want to buy beer.
• Beef Broth. I usually don’t end up needing to add the beef broth for this recipe, but i like to have it on hand just in case I need the extra liquid.
• Pickling Spice. This seasoning will usually come with a purchased corned beef.
• Onions. 2 medium onions.
• Carrots. 4 to 5 medium carrots.
• Green Cabbage. You can use regular green cabbage or napa cabbage. I like the texture of the napa cabbage. It’s little crinkles grab more tasty juice.
• Potatoes. I like Yukon gold potatoes or red potatoes for this recipe. It’s best to use a waxy potato.

Instructions

These steps will take you through how to cook corned beef in the oven. I will also provide the slow cooker instructions in the recipe card if you would like to use your crockpot.

1. Rinse the corned beef with cool water and pat dry.
2. Preheat the oven to 450℉ (230℃)
3. Pepper the corned beef generously with fresh cracked black pepper. There is not need to add salt to this recipe.
4. Brown the corned beef. Heat a large dutch oven on medium-high and brown the corned beef on both sides. Remove the beef and set it aside.
5. Add the onions to the dutch oven and sauté for a few minutes.
6. Return the corned beef brisket back to the dutch oven and place it on top of the onions fat side up..
7. Add the Guinness to the beef. Cover and place into the oven.
8. Cook at 450℉ (230℃) for 10 minutes.
9. Reduce the temperature to 325℉ (165℉). Cook for 2 ½ hours.
10. Add in the carrots and the potatoes, return to the oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. You want the potatoes and carrots to be fork-tender.
11. Add in the green cabbage, return to the oven and cook until the cabbage is tender. About 30 minutes.
12. Remove the dutch oven from the oven. Pull out the vegetables and put them onto a large platter. Pull the corned beef from the pot and allow it to rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

How to Serve Corned Beef and Cabbage

1. Remove the cabbage, the carrots, and the potatoes from the dutch oven and arrange them individually on a large platter.
2. Pull out the corned beef carefully with tongs and a large fork or spatula. The meat will be very tender to you don’t want it to fall apart.
3. Let the meat rest for about 10 minutes on a cutting board and then slice across the grain.
4. You can use a stick blender to puree the onions into the remaining cooking liquid that is in the dutch oven. YStrain this liquid through a fine seive and then add in a few tablespoons of horseradish sauce or whole grain mustard. Serve this gravy alongside the corned beef for extra flavor.

What to Serve with Corned Beef and Cabbage

This recipe is a hearty meal that’s pretty much a complete meal on its own. However, if you’re a person that likes extra carbs with your carbs I recommend serving this with Irish Soda Bread. Nobody is going to complain about having some bread to sop up all the delicious juices.

You can serve corned beef with extra mustard or horseradish sauce. I find that I really can’t get enough horseradish sauce.

More St. Patrick’s Day Recipes

Hearty stews and a few yummy desserts to round off your meal.

• Guinness Cupcakes filled with Whiskey Ganache and frosted with Bailey’s Buttercream.
• Guinness Braised Short Ribs & Smashed Potatoes.
• Apple Cake
• Beef Stew