RUBS & SEASONINGS
Easy and Simple Corned Beef and Colcannon
by Cooking Secrets for Men
Here's a classic St. Patrick's Day menu, with everything you need to taste that Irish tradition. Perfect for a stormy day or just any day you prefer to stay in doors, this recipe has you covered.
Hi, I'm Charlie from CookingSecretsForMen.com. Today, we're going to get ready for St. Patrick's Day. We're going to have a full Irish menu starting with corned beef that we're going to cook in the oven with some roasted carrots and onions and some Irish soda bread...
We're going to show you how to make colcannon. It's an Irish dish, combines cabbage with mashed potatoes. We're going to show you the cooking secrets for men way to make colcannon. Pretty easy.
There are many, many ways to cook corned beef. It's a tough cut of meat, so we have to cook it a long time to get it tender. You can boil it, roast it, smoke it, braise it, use a slow cooker, instant pot, each way has its own distinctive taste.
Roasting it in the oven is best for me because you really don't do a lot with the corned beef. Just set the timer, get the right internal temperature, and then, serve it with some great side dishes…
I usually have my lobster claw oven mitt. We're gonna be using these from Grillaholics. They're barbecue oven mitts. They're heat resistant up to about 660 degrees Fahrenheit…
They've got these little silicone dots on them that stop the heat from getting in and burning your fingers. They're very good if you need to use your fingers, which I will be using today.
We're going to start our St. Patrick's Day meal working on our corned beef, so we have two corned beefs… One’s a little under two pounds, one's a little over two pounds, about four pounds in total.
And the first thing you want to do is you want to get rid of big hunks of fat on top. This is called the fat cap here, and what I did was I got rid of a lot of the extraneous big chunks of fat. And you want to leave some because fat is flavor.
You want to pat them dry. Now, they're not going to look perfectly dry because corned beef is made by putting it in a salt solution and it just retains water, so there's water all through it, which is another reason we won't be using a lot of salt.
First thing we're doing is we’re going to make our spice mixture. This is the mixture that comes in with the corned beef in the package, so we'll put about a teaspoon each. Except for the black pepper. We're going to put about a tablespoon. And we've got some thyme. I'm going to put about a teaspoon of that in. And then we've got some garlic powder from Penzeys spices…
Now, we're getting some onion powder. Put that in and about a teaspoon of paprika… We're going to mix this together and this is what we're going to put on top of the corned beef. And you should get an instant read thermometer for when we take it out after the first two hours, so you can get the internal temperature.
So we have our corned beef. We're just going to take and rub this in on the fat. Don't have to worry about the bottom.
Now that we're going to move over here to our baking pan, and since I'll be having two pieces I'm putting a grate in. That's why we're using a bigger pan because I've got two. So this grate is gonna keep the corned beef above and we're gonna put water in underneath... plain water.
Fill that to not quite touching but close to the grate. What that'll do is allow not only it to roast but also steam. And now we're going to cover it with aluminum foil. We've preheated the oven to 325
You can read 100 recipes on the internet and get all kinds of different times, all kinds of different temperatures, different ways to cook. This seems to work for me. We're going to cover.
All right, now, this is going to go in to our oven for two hours, and then, after two hours, we'll take it out. We'll take the temperature and figure out how much longer we have to do. While this is in the oven, I'll show you how to make colcannon the cooking secrets for men way.
All right so now we're going to move on to the colcannon while the corned beef cooks in the oven. So colcannon is very simple. It's cooked cabbage and mashed potatoes.
So first we're going to deal with the cabbage. So I'm going to cut off the stem here. Let's get rid of that, and then we're going to cut it in half all right.
And you can see this core right here. We're going to cut that out at an angle on both. It'll come right out…
So these top leaves… a little wilted we're going to discard those also.
So all we're going to do is shred this with a knife. I'm just going to cut down. And all this will cook down once we put it in the pot...
Dealer's choice on how you want to cook it. My favorite way gives it the most taste with a little butter.
So you can turn on the heat. This is four tablespoons of butter, so let that melt.
Now, we're gonna put our cabbage in. Butter is melted and this will melt down very quickly. We’re gonna add a little salt pepper garlic, which is actually in a smaller container from the Grillaholics SPG. Something we like to use. Put some in here, and we'll continue to stir this.
While this is cooking, what we're going to do is tell you what the Cooking Secrets for Men way is to make colcannon. So you obviously can, if you want, peel some potatoes, boil them, let them cool, drain them, mash them.
We don't do that. Since we're Cooking Secrets for Men, we use Bob Evans. So my rule of thumb, very easily: If it's not the star of your dish, why are you wasting time on it.
Once you put cabbage and salt pepper and everything and butter you cannot tell the difference. So we're gonna put these in the microwave and once the cabbage cooks down we'll put it together…
All right so that big pile of cabbage that was overflowing is now down about two-thirds and released a little bit of liquid down there so it's perfect.
So I know the purists out there say, “Oh my God! Packaged mashed potatoes!” You can't tell the difference, and this is not the star of the dish. The corned beef is. So just put this in.
All I'm going to do is turn the heat down a little bit. Just fold everything in and what you have is a nice combination of soft mashed potatoes and cabbage. That gives it a little bit of texture. It's got an interesting taste to it. We're also going to put in a little salt and pepper and top it with some butter. And towards the end, when we serve, put on some green onions.
So this is colcannon. We are going to watch the corned beef, and once that's halfway done, take it out, take its temperature, and then put it back in. And as soon as everything is finished, we'll plate our meal and have a happy St. Patrick's Day.
All right it's been two hours and one of the reasons you use these gloves is to use your fingers. Thanks to Grillaholics.
All right, first we're going to test it. See it does not go in very easily, so that means it still needs more time. So what we're going to do is put it back in, and we're going to turn down the temperature, and let it cook a little slower and check the temperature in about 45 minutes.
All right so we took the two corned beefs out. And we're gonna let them rest before we cut them. When we cut them we're gonna serve a plate with some colcannon, some Irish soda bread, and some roasted carrots and onions.
So we've let it rest a little bit. We're going to cut against the grain. Look at that. That is just fabulous.
All right so we're gonna plate our meal. We're gonna put our corned beef right over here. Nice and tender.
And we've got some Irish soda bread… We've got some roasted carrots and onions.
All right and then, a nice helping of colcannon. This is our cabbage and mashed potatoes together. We're going to top with some green onions.
I need a little butter here on the Irish soda bread. Just a tad here in the middle of the colcannon. And there you have it! Our St. Patrick's Day meal.
