Mostly sunny skies and 70s today. Patchy fog overnight and early Wednesday morning then turning partly cloudy with highs in the low 80s. Near record highs by the end of the week with scattered showers and storms developing during the afternoon and early evening Friday and Saturday. These will become widespread on St. Patrick’s Day, making it a great day to slow-cook a brisket and cabbage while roasting some potatoes.
Scattered showers will become part of the forecast starting Friday. The same pattern will continue Saturday, with showers and thunderstorms developing after 2 p.m. and continuing through around 8 p.m. Rain with thunderstorms will move across the area Sunday and Monday.
Rain on St. Patrick’s Day sounds about as right as Corned Beef and Cabbage to celebrate. And a rainy day sounds perfect for breaking out the crock pot, pressure cooker or slow roasting a delicious dinner.
While a beef brisket with cabbage and spuds on the side is traditional in the States, it’s about as Irish as Lucky Charms. In Ireland, the day would be celebrated with stews and soda bread with a meal of pork and potatoes.
It is believed and often cited that those items were too expensive for early Irish settlers, so they went with less traditional, tougher and thereby less expensive cuts of meat for the celebration. There may not be much difference in prices of bacon, pork or beef brisket today, but a long time ago, that stringy, tough cut of beef was really cheap.
The most common method of cooking corned beef is boiling. Probably because it is the easiest method. Water, cover, boil. For this, all you need is a pot, heat, the meat and time.
Other methods include slow cooking, baking, grilling and pan frying. I have only had leftover corned beef pan-fried on a sandwich with seasoned cabbage and stone-ground mustard and it was good, really good. Dang, now I want leftovers.
You know what I will be doing on Sunday. I may try a new method or I may just pop the brisket in the Instant Pot and set it to slow cook. I will make a video and post it next week. If you cook a brisket to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, take a picture and share it with us.
PS: The leftovers will be good for Monday too as the rain continues...