St. Pat and Corned Beef: an American Tradition

“Even if you don’t like it, you’ll eat it. Even if you’re not Irish Catholic, you’re going to have it,” says Martin Silver, vice president of sales and marketing for Hebrew National.

Have what? Corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day, of course.

But why corned beef? Was St. Patrick, the 5th century apostle credited with converting the Irish to Christianity, a corned-beef-and-cabbage kind of guy? Did the Irish embrace him and his culinary repertoire and ultimately take the whole meal to America? How can corned beef be so Irish if it’s on the sandwich menu of every self-respecting Jewish delicatessen in America? And while we’re at it, how is beef “corned” anyway?

It’s about time to set the corned-beef record straight.

For starters, eating corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day is purely American, which makes sense, since celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is more American than Irish.

“I don’t know anybody who serves corned beef in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day,” says Myrtle Allen, Irish cookbook author and owner of Ballymaloe House, a country hotel in the lush countryside of east County Cork.

But that, says her daughter-in-law, Ballymaloe Cookery School founder Darina Allen, may be because the Irish are busy eating turkey on that day, which they’ve begun to do at celebrations because of Irish-American tourists.

Myrtle Allen, author of “Myrtle Allen’s Cooking at Ballymaloe House” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1990), further contends that corned beef is “no more Irish than roast chicken.”

And that’s true enough: For millennia, to keep food through the winters people around the globe have preserved meat in brine or dry salt rubs. We see the technique in everything from beef jerky and Smithfield hams to preserved Tunisian lamb and various Chinese exotica. The Jewish deli sandwich is just one more exponent of this tradition, in its Eastern European form.

Darina Allen explains in her new cookbook, “The Complete Book of Irish Country Cooking” (Penguin Studio), just how the cycle of food preservation played out in Ireland:

“Originally [corned beef with cabbage] was a traditional Easter Sunday dinner. The beef, killed before the winter, would have been salted and could now be eaten after the long Lenten fast, with fresh green cabbage and floury potatoes.”

To Eileen Ahern, reached at her stall in the Old Market of Cork City, it’s very much a taste of the present. “We have it every other week,” she says. “But it’s more popular here than in Dublin.”

In fact, corned beef has long been associated with Cork City. According to Darina Allen, between the late 1680s and 1825, beef corning was the city’s most important industry. In that period, corned beef from Cork wound up in England and continental Europe and as far away as Newfoundland and the West Indies.

But what has become a rather ordinary meat, not special enough to serve on special occasions in Ireland, once had far more importance. The daily fare of the poor or rural Irish generations ago included the preserved meat primarily as a flavoring for the main staple, potatoes and root vegetables.

For Irish immigrants, the abundance of America changed all that. “There must have been a lot of beef coming from the Midwest to the East,” says Myrtle Allen, because those carefully husbanded snippets of meat became large roasts worthy of a special day.

Even if St. Patrick’s Day has remained the same in America, the making of corned beef hasn’t. Ann Brody, a food consultant and former senior vice president at Sutton Place Gourmet, says that in the early 1900s, beef was stacked and cured naturally in barrels.

The brine mixture would consist of water, salt and other seasonings, such as allspice, bay leaves or garlic. A later adjustment to this slow process was to use hand pumps to inject the brine into the meat.

“Nowadays,” says Silver of Hebrew National, “America just doesn’t have the patience, nor the space, time or money to naturally cure the product. It takes weeks.

“And after the second World War, when the suburbs became the real life of America and people started moving west and south, food manufacturers had to start developing more sophisticated processes to keep the product fresh.”

So the industry began using sodium nitrite, which helps cure and preserve the meat and turns it pink, Silver says.

That makes beef corned in Ireland almost unrecognizable to Americans: Without the use of sodium nitrite, corning turns the meat gray or brown, not pink.

Here, large mechanical needles inject a brine solution into beef briskets as they travel down a conveyor belt, says Jeff Saval, vice president of manufacturing of Saval Foods Corp. in Baltimore, which sells corned beef to delis.

Saval’s brine includes water, salt, sugar, onion and garlic as well as sodium nitrite and sodium erythorbate. It’s the spices in the brine that distinguish one company’s corned beef from the next.

“There’s very garlicky and not garlicky,” Saval explains. “We make it in between.”

Another difference from one company to the next is the cut of beef used. Saval uses only Choice grade briskets and sells two cuts of it: the lean, more expensive first cut and the fattier and cheaper point cut.

Not all companies exclusively cure briskets. Saval also makes corned beef from eye and bottom round, but kosher facilities do not. Round is not a kosher cut in the United States, Silver says.

After the brine is injected, the meat sits for three to five days in stainless-steel tanks. Some companies, including Hebrew National, cure for shorter periods. To speed the curing process, others tumble the meat in vats that look like cement mixers, Saval says.

After curing, the meat is cooked or vacuum-packed and sold raw. At Saval, the cured meat is boiled in stainless-steel steam-jacket kettles; at Hebrew National, the meat is bagged, then cooked.

For St. Patrick’s Day, the corned-beef process remains the same, Silver says: “Nothing changes--except the hype.”

All this would seem very foreign to Michael Cuddigan, the butcher in Cloyne, County Cork, who supplies meat to Ballymaloe House. He hangs his beef for seven days, then “pickles” it for five. “It’s very old-fashioned,” he says, “no additives added.”

It’s also quite popular in hotels around Cork City, Cuddigan says. Why? “It is traditional, old-fashioned. Quite a lot of locals come in asking for corned beef.”

And in Cork City they don’t even wait until St. Patrick’s Day.

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE

4 pounds raw corned beef

3 large carrots, cut into large chunks

6 to 8 small onions

1 teaspoon dry English mustard

1 large sprig thyme and some parsley stems, tied together

1 cabbage

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

This recipe comes from Darina Allen’s “Complete Book of Irish Cooking.” Serve the corned beef with lots of potatoes and mustard.

Put corned beef into large saucepan with carrots, onions, mustard and herb bundle. Cover with cold water and bring gently to boil. Simmer, covered, 2 hours.

After discarding outer leaves of cabbage, cut cabbage into quarters and add to pot. Cook until meat and vegetables are soft and tender, 1 to 2 hours more.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve in slices, surrounded by vegetables and cooking liquid.

Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

493 calories, 34 grams protein, 13 grams carbohydrates, 33 grams fat, 169 mg cholesterol, 11 grams saturated fat, 1989 mg sodium.

CHAMP

6 to 8 unpeeled baking potatoes (like russet or Yukon Gold)

1 bunch green onions (white and green parts) or 1 1/2 ounces chives

1 1/2 cups milk

4 to 8 tablespoons butter

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

As Darina Allen says in her “Complete Book of Irish Cooking,” champ is a very traditional Irish side dish. This recipe is from her book. Champ may be made ahead and reheated in a moderate oven (about 350 degrees). Cover with aluminum foil while it reheats so a skin doesn’t form.

Scrub potatoes and boil them in their jackets until they are easily pierced with a fork.

Finely chop green onions then cover with cold milk in saucepan and bring slowly to boil. Simmer 3 to 4 minutes, then turn off heat and leave them to infuse.

Peel and mash potatoes and, while still hot, mix with hot infused milk. Beat in 4 tablespoon butter and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add more butter if needed for smooth texture.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

339 calories, 7 grams protein, 47 grams carbohydrates, 15 grams fat, 44 mg cholesterol, 9 grams saturated fat, 325 mg sodium.

BUTTERED CABBAGE

1 pound fresh Savoy cabbage

2 to 4 tablespoons butter

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

This recipe for quickly cooked cabbage has converted many an ardent cabbage hater, says Darina Allen. It comes from “Complete Book of Irish Cooking.”

Remove tough outer leaves from cabbage. Cut cabbage into quarters, remove stalk and then cut quarters into fine shreds, working across grain.

Put 2 or 3 tablespoons water into wide saucepan with 2 tablespoons butter and pinch of salt. Bring to boil, add cabbage and toss over high heat, then cover saucepan and let cook few minutes. Toss again and add salt, pepper and butter to taste. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Each of 8 servings contains about:

85 calories, 4 grams protein, 12 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 2 grams saturated fat, 232 mg sodium.

IRISH APPLE CAKE

2 cups flour, plus extra for handling dough

1/3 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, plus extra for pan

2/3 cup superfine sugar, about

2 eggs

1/3 to 1/2 cup milk

2 cooking apples

2 or 3 cloves, optional

Powdered sugar, optional

Dark brown sugar, optional

Whipped cream, optional

This is adapted from Darina Allen’s “Complete Book of Irish Cooking.” If you can find free-range eggs, it will make the cake even better.

Sift flour and baking powder into bowl. Rub in butter with your fingertips until mixture resembles texture of bread crumbs. Add 1/2 cup superfine sugar and combine.

Beat 1 egg in small bowl. Make well in center of flour mixture and mix in beaten egg and enough milk to make soft dough (add milk gradually). Divide dough in 2 pieces. Put 1/2 in greased pie plate (tin or enamel is preferable to glass) and pat it out to cover bottom completely.

Peel, core and chop up apples. Place them on dough, with cloves and remaining superfine sugar to taste, adding more or less depending on sweetness of apples.

Roll out remaining dough on lightly floured board and fit dough on top of apples or, if dough is too soft, spread it over apples. (You may need to do bit of patchwork if it breaks.) Press edges together and cut slit through top crust. Beat remaining egg and brush onto crust.

Bake at 350 degrees until cooked through and nicely browned, about 40 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar and serve warm with dark brown sugar and softly whipped cream.

Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

436 calories, 7 grams protein, 62 grams carbohydrates, 18 grams fat, 115 mg cholesterol, 11 grams saturated fat, 35 mg sodium.