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Nope this is beef you grind yourself. I never buy supermarket ground beef. Can't remember where I read it but I have noticed it's true that it doesn't stick together well after it's frozen.
 
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netgypsy said:
Nope this is beef you grind yourself. I never buy supermarket ground beef. Can't remember where I read it but I have noticed it's true that it doesn't stick together well after it's frozen.
My wife and I don't get ground beef from supermarkets, but from a local butcher-shop. When ground beef is on sale, she'll buy a lot and we'll repackage it and put in in our chest freezers. These are very cold freezers, not self-defrosting compartments in a refrigerator/freezer combo, so that might make a difference. We don't have any problems with burger-patties falling apart during cooking.

Before the local butcher shop opened up, we did have problems with frozen or re-frozen, re-packaged beef falling apart and sometimes even had to resort to using eggs as a binder when making patties. I like my patties thick (and rare in the center) and that is very hard to achieve when your patties crack or break.
 
My grocery store has a new "Manager's Special" section where they put all of the half price or less meat, poultry etc... I loaded up on 56 cent chicken & 99 cent smoked ham hocks. I felt like I won the lottery, finally no more hunting and guessing when something might get marked down. For non-perishable items, they fill shopping carts labeled 50% off along the front of the store. Brilliant.
 
A couple of days ago when we were in the grocery, my wife picked up a package of corned beef and asked me if I wanted it. I said no, not especially. Last night she informed me that she bought it anyway and that I should cook it tonight. I asked her how to do it and she said she didn't know, I should look it up on the net. I found a recipe and it looks pretty easy. The recipe said use the packet of spices that came with the corned beef. Well how did they know there would be one there? Anyway here it is:

2.16 lbs of corned beef, with a packet of spices.
6 small red potatoes skin on
4 carrots peeled and cut into 1 inch pieces.
A cabbage cut into wedges.

Put the corned beef in a pot and cover it with water. Add the spices from the packet.
Bring to a boil and then simmer.
Simmer 50 minutes per pound i.e. 1 hr and 48 minutes. or until tender.
Then put in the potatoes and keep simmering until they're almost but not quite soft enough to eat.
Add the cabbage and simmer for 15 more minutes.
Remove the meat and let it rest for 15 minutes.
Put the veggies in a bowl and add as much broth as you please.
Chew 15 times before swallowing.
Eat it all up, remember there are children starving in Africa.
Brush your teeth after each meal.
Wait one hour before swimming.
 
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Corned beef with vegetables is fun and easy, Jimmy, and it sounds like you've got a fool-proof recipe. Don't add any salt to the broth or to the vegetables. "Corned" means "salted", so there will be plenty of salt in the broth already. I like to add some quartered yellow onions and some chunks of turnip, too, but that's me. Whenever I cook a big hunk of meat, I start trending toward the more traditional New England boiled dinner. Trim the fat off that hunk of brined brisket before you get started - the fat gets slippery and unappetizing when simmered for a long time and you don't need all that grease in your broth. If you have lots of vegetables and meat left over after your meal, coarsely grind it in a meat grinder, feeding in enough vegetables to look "balanced". Pan fry that hash in butter and serve with sunnyside-up eggs. Good luck.
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
A couple of days ago when we were in the grocery, my wife picked up a package of corned beef and asked me if I wanted it. I said no, not especially. Last night she informed me that she bought it anyway and that I should cook it tonight. I asked her how to do it and she said she didn't know, I should look it up on the net. I found a recipe and it looks pretty easy. The recipe said use the packet of spices that came with the corned beef. Well how did they know there would be one there? Anyway here it is:

2.16 lbs of corned beef, with a packet of spices.
6 small red potatoes skin on
4 carrots peeled and cut into 3 inch pieces.
A cabbage cut into wedges.

Put the corned beef in a pot and cover it with water. Add the spices from the packet.
Bring to a boil and then simmer.
Simmer 50 minutes per pound i.e. 1 hr and 48 minutes. or until tender.
Then put in the potatoes and keep simmering until they're almost but not quite soft enough to eat.
Add the cabbage and simmer for 15 more minutes.
Remove the meat and let it rest for 15 minutes.
Put the veggies in a bowl and add as much broth as you please.
Yep, you can't go wrong with corned beef, did you get a point or flat cut? Dont forget to cut it across the grain when you serve it.

Chew 15 times before swallowing.
Eat it all up, remember there are children starving in Africa.
Brush your teeth after each meal.
Wait one hour before swimming.
:-p
 
Because when you eat salt, you sprinkle some corn on the cob on it?
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
Flat cut.
Good cut, less fat than the point.
 
3 inch pieces, are you kidding? That would choke a horse. I choked a horse with a 3 inch piece just to be sure. I changed it to 1 inch pieces. If you already cooked this and your horse choked on the carrot pieces, you have my apologies.
 
Need help. URGENT!. Oh yeah, you guys hate it when people say that. I'll start again. Need help. YOU CAN TAKE YOUR SWEET TIME ABOUT IT TOO!. I trimmed the fat like turbo said. What a rip. We'll be having corn beef canapes tonight. I figured 1 hr 48 minutes based on 2.16 lbs. Now the weight has changed significantly and I don't know what it is. Maybe that's OK. The recipe said "or until tender". So what do I do, tell it a sad story and see if it cries? Anyway I put the meat in the pot and covered it with water like the recipe says. There's just enough water there to boil the potatoes and carrots but not the cabbage. What do I do, put the cabbage on top and let the steam cook it?
 
You started the brisket first, right? You need to get that part done first. Hard vegetables like potato, carrot, turnip need some more time in the broth than the softer ones like onions and cabbage. And yes, keep the pot covered and DON'T PEEK so that the vegetables will steam. Steam actually cooks the vegetables better than simmering water.

Sorry about the fat thing. You have to choose lean cuts of corned beef, or you'll lose a lot just trimming off most of the fat. Those vacuum-sealed bags of corned beef in the supermarket are not always a good deal. If you have a good kosher butcher shop nearby, you can do a LOT better. Our local butcher is not kosher, but typically the kosher shops have a higher level of quality, IMO.
 
I don't ever trim the fat off corned beef. It gives needed flavor. I skim the fat off after cooking is finished. The cabbage will wilt down to a fraction of it's beginning size. Add just a handful at a time if your pot isn't big enough. The corned beef should have also become smaller. I like my cabbage boiled until soft, it also absorbs more flavor. But that is just my preference, which is ALWAYS RIGHT. :biggrin:
 
Evo said:
But that is just my preference, which is ALWAYS RIGHT. :biggrin:
Food Nazi! I always trim excess fat (leave a little) to avoid turning the broth into a greasy soup. Not so much of a problem with chuck roasts (New England boiled dinner), but it can become problematic IMO in the case of poorly-trimmed brisket. Even the flat cuts can have more fat than I want, and I'm ALWAYS RIGHT. :biggrin:
 
turbo said:
Food Nazi! I always trim excess fat (leave a little) to avoid turning the broth into a greasy soup. Not so much of a problem with chuck roasts (New England boiled dinner), but it can become problematic IMO in the case of poorly-trimmed brisket. Even the flat cuts can have more fat than I want, and I'm ALWAYS RIGHT. :biggrin:
Ok, we're both always right! :-p

But we are the ONLY right ones. Of course there will always be those that prefer to be wrong, what can we do?
 
Evo said:
But we are the ONLY right ones. Of course there will always be those that prefer to be wrong, what can we do?
Get them a show on the Food Network?
 
OK. My wife's back. She said that without the fat it won't taste as good. I said, in my best turbo voice, but then it will become slippery and unappetizing and we don't want all that grease in the broth. She said ok and told me to put the fat in the freezer so she can cook collards with it. Suits me. Collards are already slippery and unappetizing, what harm could a little more do? Then she said quarter the potatoes. I would have told her that the recipe said whole potatoes, but the recipe was not within striking distance. The potatoes have been quartered. She's cutting me some slack though. She said this is an experiment and if it doesn't work out it's ok.
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
OK. My wife's back. She said that without the fat it won't taste as good. I said, in my best turbo voice, but then it will become slippery and unappetizing and we don't want all that grease in the broth. She said ok and told me to put the fat in the freezer so she can cook collards with it. Suits me. Collards are already slippery and unappetizing, what harm could a little more do? Then she said quarter the potatoes. I would have told her that the recipe said whole potatoes, but the recipe was not within striking distance. The potatoes have been quartered. She's cutting me some slack though. She said this is an experiment and if it doesn't work out it's ok.
My objection with a fatty piece of brisket (corned beef) is that if you simmer it with vegetables, you can skim some of the grease off the broth, but you can never get that fat out of the voids in the cabbage, and that overpowers the flavor of the cabbage, IMO. Of course, my opinion rules because I'm always RIGHT. :-p
 
Evo said:
Ok, we're both always right!
The plaintiff spoke in court and the judge said "You're right".
Then the defendant had his say and the judge said "You're right".
Then the bailif said, these two versions are opposite. How can they both be right?" and the judge said "You're right".
 
I'm a methodical cook. Learned from my mother and grandmother, and it took years to figure out why they did things a certain way, although I'm sure that stuff when have flown over my head when I was in grade school.
 
I made corned beef and cabbage last week, and i kept eating the cabbage, so every day I'd add another head of cabbage to the broth. I cooked 3 heads of cabbage that way.

If you make the corned beef early enough in the day, or even the night before, if you put the cooled down pot in the fridge, the fat will harden and you can easily pull the hardened fat right off. It also tastes better the next day.
 
Evo said:
If you make the corned beef early enough in the day, or even the night before, if you put the cooled down pot in the fridge, the fat will harden and you can easily pull the hardened fat right off. It also tastes better the next day.
My wife and I do this with turkey and chickens, especially in cold weather. Once you have boiled down the carcass, strain out the bones and skin and set the broth out in a covered pan on top of one of the freezers (cool in the garage) and skim off the fat in the morning. Not so do-able when you want to be able to serve a non-greasy boiled dinner the day of preparation. I'd love to have a walk-in refrigerator in this place, but we barely have room for a walk-in bedroom.
 
Put the broth in the fridge, then collect solidified fat from the surface. At least that's what Marzena does.

Funny thing is I made a goulash soup today, so we are eating beef as well.
 
Thanks to Turbo and Evo, the meal came off well. My wife isn't used to western food and it turns out the reason she wanted this dish was because she heard about it on St. Patrick's Day and wanted to try it. She said that we can have it again next year on St. Patrick's Day, or sooner if I want it. That means she didn't like it all that much. Next time I will not get the packaged meat. But then where do I get the spice package?
 
Jimmy Snyder said:
Thanks to Turbo and Evo, the meal came off well. My wife isn't used to western food and it turns out the reason she wanted this dish was because she heard about it on St. Patrick's Day and wanted to try it. She said that we can have it again next year on St. Patrick's Day, or sooner if I want it. That means she didn't like it all that much. Next time I will not get the packaged meat. But then where do I get the spice package?
I always buy the prepared corned beef. I can find you a recipe if you want to corn your own, but I don't know anyone that does, but maybe it will be fun. What brand did you buy? Quality and flavor vary greatly between companies.
 
turbo said:
My wife and I don't get ground beef from supermarkets, but from a local butcher-shop. When ground beef is on sale, she'll buy a lot and we'll repackage it and put in in our chest freezers. These are very cold freezers, not self-defrosting compartments in a refrigerator/freezer combo, so that might make a difference. We don't have any problems with burger-patties falling apart during cooking.

Before the local butcher shop opened up, we did have problems with frozen or re-frozen, re-packaged beef falling apart and sometimes even had to resort to using eggs as a binder when making patties. I like my patties thick (and rare in the center) and that is very hard to achieve when your patties crack or break.

Interesting. One article said to add beef fat which grocery stores will give away, to your home ground beef so that you have a 50% mixture. Wonder if your meat market uses higher fat content? Cause fat is sticky?
 
Corned beef and cabbage need to be cooked until the beef can be pulled apart like barbequed pork. The leftovers are great for sandwiches, seasoning collard greens and making corned beef hash.

Cook the cabbage until you like the texture. I also like it quite soft. You can also devil corned beef like ham for sandwiches or salad. The fat does improve the flavor and it's easy to skim off if there's enough water. If you don't want to chill it you can drag paper towels over the surface and then trash them to remove the fat.

I had very good corned beef and cabbage last week and it also had parsnips in it. Hadn't had them in ages.

Reminds me that I had a Cornish pastie a couple of weeks ago - one made WITH turnips. I usually make them without turnips myself. i can picture a shepherd on Cornwall headed off with the flocks with a couple of pasties in his pouch. So many items originated because there was no refrigeration and working people needed something portable, that would hold up and not spoil without refrigeration. Empanadas, tamales of many different types, pasties, stromboli too, all could be stuffed in a pouch for later consumption because they are sealed and sterilized during cooking so last a long time without being cooled.