Corned Beef for St. Patrick's Day (or Any Day!)

St. Patrick's Day is almost here, which means you'll be able to find corned beef easily in the stores.  I often buy several packages and freeze the extras to use when corned beef mania strikes.  Corned beef is SUPER easy to cook - one of the prerequisites for my culinary efforts!  


Corned Beef (with Potatoes, Onions, Carrots, and Cabbage. and Mustard Sauce) 

For Beef:
1 3- to 4-lb corned beef brisket, with spice packet
1/4 c brown sugar
2 bay leaves
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 1/2 lb potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 lb baby-cut carrots
1 small to medium head cabbage, quartered
1 large onion, quartered

For Sauce:
1 1/2 c reserved corned beef cooking liquid
1 T butter
2 T flour
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 c sour cream
2T coarse-ground Dijon mustard

Place brisket, contents of seasoning packet, brown sugar, garlic, and bay leaves in large dutch oven or stock pot; cover with water; bring to a boil, turn heat down and simmer 2 hours.

Add carrots and potatoes; return to a boil, then simmer 30-40 minutes until vegetables are tender.

Add cabbage to pot; return to a boil, then simmer about 15 minutes.

Add onion to pot; return to boil, simmer about 5-10 minutes.

Reserve 1 1/2 cup of cooking liquid for the mustard sauce.


Mustard Sauce

In a 1-quart saucepan over medium heat, melt butter.  Stir in flour until smooth; cook about 1 minute.  Stir in the cooking liquid and vinegar.  Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened.  Remove from heat and add the sour cream and mustard.  Serve over corned beef.

(I've made the sauce in the microwave before, and it worked out great!  It also freezes well.  I just microwave it to warm it up.)

Soup! Soup! SOUP! Yes, ANOTHER Soup Recipe!

If you've been following this blog for a while, you've surely noticed that a LOT of the recipes I post are for SOUP.  I don't know why, but I'm just not much of a sandwich-for-lunch-type person.  I'd rather have good ol' SOUP - especially in the winter!

Well, DUH.

Here's what I made the other day.  I went through all my SOUP recipes and nothing called my name, so off to the fridge to see what was in there.  I found lots of leftover roast chicken, a gallon of homemade chicken broth, the remains of a bunch of celery, some matchstick-cut carrots, and a container of leftover corn.  There were a few potatoes and a couple of onions left in the bags I bought a few weeks ago.

So here's what I came up with!


Chicken and Corn Chowder

1/2 c butter
1/2 c matchstick carrots
2 stalks celery, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 c flour
4 c chicken broth, divided (heat 2 c to almost a boil)
2 1/2 c half-and-half
4 russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1 lb frozen whole kernel sweet corn
1 1/2 pounds cooked chicken (boned and skinned), cubed
1/4 t nutmeg
1 t salt
1/2 t white pepper

In a 4-qt pan, melt the butter and saute the carrots, celery, onion, and garlic until fragrant.  Add flour and cook 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly, then add the hot broth slowly, still stirring constantly, until the flour is incorporated and there are no lumps.  

Stir in the reserved broth and half-and-half.  Heat to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the mixture thickens.  Add the remaining ingredients, bring back to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through.  Adjust the salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Potato Leek Soup with Chicken

A while back, I saw an intriguing recipe for potato leek soup, so I bought some leeks a few days ago.  Not having ever worked with them before, I searched the internet and found a video showing which parts to use for what and how to clean them and cut them up.  

Leeks are grown in sandy soil and are really dirty.  If you look between the leaves of the tops, you'll see lots of black sand and dirt packed in there!  Following the video's directions, I cut off the dark green tops, rinsed them off, and froze them to use next time I make broth.  I cut off the tiny roots and threw them away.  The remaining part, the white and pale green part, had to be sliced up and cleaned.

The video showed cutting the leek lengthwise, slicing it, putting the slices into a bowl of cold water, and swishing them around.  The slices of leeks float on top of the water, and the sand and dirt sink to the bottom of the bowl.  You scoop the leeks out and put them in a strainer/colander and rinse them.  You don't want to just pour the bowl of water and leeks through the strainer/colander because then the dirt will be reintroduced into the leeks!  There was a LOAD of black sand in the bottom of the bowl when I was done swishing the sliced leeks around.  That simple process did a great job!

Anyway, this was an easy, tasty soup, and I learned about leeks - a bonus!  You could garnish the soup with sliced scallions if you want to make it pretty, but I don't usually go to those lengths.  I did, however, make garlic bread, using french bread made with the recipe in the previous post - YUM!

Potato Leek Soup with Chicken

4 slices bacon, chopped
2 large leeks, sliced
4 large potatoes, cubed
1 t dried thyme
2 t salt
1 t pepper
48 oz chicken broth
1 1/2 lb shredded cooked chicken breast
1 c heavy cream

In a 4-quart pan, cook bacon until crisp.  Add leeks and cook until soft, but not browned.  Add potatoes, seasonings, and broth.  Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer until the potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes.  

Puree the mixture, using either a blender (do it in batches, not filling the pitcher past half full) or an immersion/stick blender directly in the pan.  With the mixture in the pan, add cream and chicken, heat to a simmer, and serve.

I Scored Potatoes and Onions This Morning!

Onions and potatoes seem like odd things to get excited about, don't they?

Well, I'm the designated forager, so I hit the stores yesterday to pick up some milk, bread, and a few other things.  They were busy, but not absolutely jammed like they were on Friday.  Friday was hit by kind of a double whammy - not only were people stocking up for the coronavirus emergency, but the forecast for Saturday was for 3-4 inches of SNOW, piling one stressor on top of another.

I'd planned a St. Patrick's Day dinner for us - corned beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and Irish soda bread, plus I wanted some rye bread and sliced Swiss cheese so I could make Reuben sandwiches with the leftovers.  Well, no potatoes, onions, cabbage, or rye bread most places.  Hardly any sliced cheese of any kind anywhere.  I did find one loaf of rye and a few onions.  I caught sight of some toilet paper, but it wasn't on my list.  Still no rice or dried beans - also not on my list.

I did get a little tickled walking down the boxed dinner aisles - no boxed macaroni and cheese, which I expected, but I also noticed that the shelves for Hamburger Helper were nearly empty!  I don't know exactly why I thought it was funny, but it just struck me that way.  Still plenty of ice cream and wine, though!

Anyway, I had a few potatoes at home, but they were starting to look poorly, so that was one thing I really wanted.  I was able to use those sad-ish potatoes with the corned beef because they would be boiled, but they wouldn't be good enough for roasting or baking or mashing.

Last evening the grocery ads arrived and looking through them, I saw POTATOES and ONIONS advertised!  So I planned to hit Kroger this morning.

I got to the store about an hour after they opened.  SCORE!

I was able to buy two five-pound bags of potatoes and a three-pound bag of onions, so we should be okay for those things for a couple of weeks.

The stores still have low stocks of many things, but the situation is improving - the supply chains are starting to catch up.  So be patient!  It's on the way!

Oven Roasted Potatoes (A No-Brainer Recipe)

In my previous post, I mentioned I've been doing the caregiver thing.  Because the body involved has been declared homebound for the immediate future, I've been doing a lot more cooking, so I've dived into my recipe card file (yes, I'm all analog there).  I'm dredging up a bunch of Ancient Recipes and recipes I've cut out of magazines and feeding them to the guinea pigs, uh, PEOPLE, I live with.

Here's an easy one.  A real no-brainer, and CHEAP, yet it gets raves whenever I make it!


Oven Roasted Potatoes

2 1/2 - 3 lb raw potatoes washed and cut up (small red potatoes halved, russet potatoes cut into wedges)
1/4 c olive oil
1 t salt
1 t pepper
1/2 t garlic powder

In a bowl, mix the oil and seasonings, then add the potatoes and toss until well coated.  Spread in a single layer, cut side down, on a large metal lipped baking sheet (like a jelly roll pan).  Bake at 450 degrees on the lowest oven rack for 30 minutes.


The first time I made this with red skinned potatoes, just as I was putting them into the oven, one of Those People I live with said, "What ARE those things?  They look WEIRD."  I guess red-skinned potatoes were not in that one's culinary experience.  However, they were a hit, nonetheless.

Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage, and My Eighth and Ninth Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Boxes - What I Got (The Late Reveal!)

The Eighth Box

I obviously received my eighth and ninth CSA boxes a while back, but I just had to complete the series and show you what my last two boxes contained!

The eighth box included tomatoes, sweet peppers, onions, carrots, and beets, and the ninth box, tomatoes, sweet peppers, potatoes, and carrots - lots of carrots!

I've chopped and frozen most of the onions and peppers, and eaten the tomatoes and potatoes, and some of the carrots (raw).

I still have some of the onions, all the beets, and a lot of the carrots.  I have plans for the beets and carrots, and you'll hear about them in time.

But today, I used one of the onions.  I never got to an Oktoberfest celebration this year - it rained and rained, and I wasn't going to wade through the mud.  I can wait until next year.

In the meantime, I decided to make German cuisine in my own kitchen.  

Today I was inspired to make red cabbage.  The recipe I use is called Rhineland Sweet-Sour Red Cabbage from the original Crockery Cookery cookbook, written by Mabel Hoffman.  YUM!  I've had a hankering for it for weeks, so I went a little crazy and made it.  I'll have a couple of other German recipes in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned!

The onion came from one of my CSA boxes, but the red cabbage, alas, did not  We never received any cabbage, red or green, so I bit the bullet and headed to the store to buy a couple of heads.  It's a simple, foolproof way to make delicious red cabbage.  

Here's the recipe (my paraphrase):

Rhineland Sweet-Sour Red Cabbage (6 to 8 servings)

6 slices bacon, cooked and chopped (reserve 3 T bacon grease in the skillet)*
1 large head red cabbage, shredded
1 medium onion, chopped
6 T brown sugar
3 T flour
2 t salt
1/4 t pepper
3/4 c water
6 T vinegar

Put the cabbage, onion, and bacon in a 3 1/2- or 4-quart slow cooker.  Mix together the bacon grease, sugar, flour, salt, and pepper.  Stir in the water and vinegar.  Pour over the cabbage, onion, and bacon in the slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low 4 hours.  If the cabbage isn't cooked to your liking, turn the heat up to high for 1/2 hour.  Stir and serve.

*If you want the preparation to go even faster, here's a shortcut - chop up 6 slices of pre-cooked bacon and put it in the slow cooker with the cabbage and onion, and use 3 T of vegetable oil instead of the bacon grease.