I LOVE this recipe (my English grandmother made it all the time... not so much the Irish side of the family.)

Actually, corned beef is not an Irish dish - and not a few of them seem horrified to have it attributed to their culture: for in Europe "corned beef" is a tinned product that is rather scary. Pick one up at Safeway and open it - the smell alone will send you for a loop!

Still, the history is vague:
http://www.kitchenproject.com/history/CornedBeef.htm

Thank you! My Grandmother always made New England Boil dinner for St. Patrick's day and no matter how easy it always seems to look, I inevitablely miss something. I follwed your directions to the tee and my entire family agreed....YUMMMMMMY! Thanks!

I agree with you that although the name is New England boiled dinner, I do think this is an Irish meal and there are many Irish in Boston and the greater Boston area. During the past week before St. Patrick's Day (a big celebration here in Boston), super markets had pre-packaged all of the non-meat items already cut up and displayed right next to the meat.

This is very similar to a traditional Newfoundland meal called Jiggs Dinner ... Salt Beef boiled with potatoes, carrots, turnips, and cabbage .. and of course peas pudding! If I'm not mistaken it most definitely has Irish roots (as does most of Newfoundland!)
We soak the meat overnight first and throw out the water when it's ready to cook, that removes most of the extra salt.

It was the Boston Irish immigrants who would take beef and "corn" it (preserve with salt) in the way they'd preserved the bacon joint back home, and they cooked that with cabbage and potatoes. Hence the Irish and New England connection.
I cook it the same way, but stud three thick onion slices with the cloves, and also add a couple of green pepper rings, a clove or two of garlic, and 1/2 tsp of dried rosemary. Comfort food, indeed!

In my family it was made with a cured ham (whole with bone) and always included onion and rudabaugh. Other winter friendly root vegatables such as turnip or parsnip might be added if on hand. Yum.

My Polish family has made this for generations, with the addition of barley to bulk up the broth a bit. They also substitute polish sausage for corned beef and it is awesome, as long as you use REAL polish sausage (smoked or fresh), NOT something processed into a ring by oscar meyer!

My grandma always made the boiled dinner with a ham with the bone and similiar vegetables. When everything was done she put dumplings on the top. When my girls were little I took canned bisquits and quarted them on top till they puffed up and were done. Very tasty.

Yes, we had our boiled corned beef and cabbage dinner on Saturday because it takes too long to make after work. I have no family history with this dish but have made it almost exactly this way for the past three years around St. Paddy's Day, after satisfying my curiosity by consulting various recipes online. Had no idea it had anything to do with New England. Easy, easy, and yummy - not to mention super cheap at this time of year!

This reminds me too of some polish dishes I have enjoyed as a child. Unfortunately my husband absolutely hates corned beef and cabbage. I would love to make this but for one person it's kind of a waste.

The story around the table this past weekend related to me was that the Irish usually had ham not corn beef. the cabbage was cooked over the ham to hide it from the landlords. (Who has money for ham?) The cabbage would be quite odorific and the ham was not found. The corn beef is a american thing, partly related to lack of refridgeration but also the mixing of culture: Irish, British, Polish, German, and Jewish all enjoy this recipe, so does the Ukrainian part of my family as well as my Russian friends. Ahhh America.

My parents would read us the book, "Stone Soup" and make something very similar to this, but with polish sausage. Now my husband has been converted, but he says he likes it because his roots are German. In our family, we still call it Stone Soup.

My mother always made New England Boiled Dinner with ham. I do the same as my husband and I do not like brisket. Peeled white taters, carrots and of course a large quartered cabbage made one of the best dishes this side of heaven. The broth was poured over bread slices on your plate at end of meal.....IF you could possibly hold another ounce!! SO good!

Actually, Irish people didn't come up with corned beef and cabbage. Irish cuisine does include cabbage, but the meat it is served with was more likely to be lamb or ham. Corned beef just happened to be a cheaper alternative for us here in the US back when we started celebrating the good green day.

"I've never seen green beer in Ireland." says Yvonne Ivory, a lecturer at San Diego State University who grew up in Dublin. "The corned beef and cabbage thing makes me laugh" she adds.

yes, the irish dish is made with ham, and immigrants to new england often substituted corned beef.

i doubt it would ever have been made with lamb--this is a very simple rustic dish, and poor irish farmers did not have the luxury of eating lambs (their english landlords did...)

pork was most often the only meat available, since a single pig could produce a litter of piglets. the piglets could then be sold off and one kept to feed the family for the winter (vs a cow or sheep, who only produces one offspring).

Wow, this stuff was delicious. We had the beef brisket, but didn't know a really good way to prepare it. It was definitely one of our better ideas. Kudos to the chef.

I've been making this exactly this way for years and years - in fact it's the very dish that made my wife fall for me. :)

I realize that this is an older post, but my husband who is Mexican requests this dish at least once a month. I'm more than happy to oblige since most of the work can be done in a quality slow cooker. I do confess, however, that I do use the "round sausage", but my husband likes it that way and with a little coaxing from broth and a few seasonings it makes my guy happy as well as my checking account happy. Keep up the good work Elise! Thank you, Laurel Rogers

This is very similar to what we call "Boiled Dinner" here in Nova Scotia. We usually use salted pork riblets, they come in a bucket and you can find them in any grocery store around here. Or you can buy whatever cheap meat you want and salt it yourself. ie stewing beef or pork whatever. We cook it the same way,rinse the meat, boil it, test the water for saltiness after the first hour, change the water if need be, add your veggies (potatoes,carrot,cabbage,turnip and parsnip) to the pot when your meat has boiled for about 2 hours, in an hour you have a delicious supper. Usually served with loads of vinegar and mustard. Yummy.

I made my own corned beef recently and had the best boiled dinner ever with it!

We are African/American and my husband always made this dish around St. Patrick's Day. He made it just like the above receipe, only after the corned beef was finish cooking in the broth, he took it out and baked it to dry out the meat a little. A spicy mustard glaze was spread on top before baking. What a great feast we had. Later sliced thin it made super delicious Reuben Sandwiches. My husband cooked for the brigade of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy for 25 years.

Wonderful! Reminds me of arriving at my grandmother's house for holidays when I was a child: corned beef with a white sauce was always the first night's meal!

I cook my brisket in a mixture of half water, half dark beer, and throw in some pickling spices. Mmmmm mmmm good!! I usually serve it with sauerkraut cooked in beer as well.

I've always heard that in Ireland they don't eat this. But, as an Irish-American, I always feel like I need to eat corned beef and colcannon to make it officially "our" day. We Irish made our own traditions when we came here. :)

My father, an old "Connecticut Yankee" LOVED this meal. Not an irish bone in his body but this was old new england comfort food to him.

So glad to see many more are cooking corned beef with cabbage which is my favorite. Leftovers will be a reuben sandwich with saurkraut. All of this makes for a great St. Paddy's day.

I have been making this same recipe for many years; always a favorite. I never served it in a wide bowl with the broth...interesting idea; this year I will give my guests the option. Always served with various types of mustard, horseradish, and vinegar on the side.

My very Irish grandmother (we are also from the Boston area) made our boiled dinner with a pork shoulder. To us, the boiled dinner was a different meal from our corned beef and cabbage.

My family's Irish roots are too scant to claim, but we're 100% American Chop Suey (a mix of German, English, Irish, Scottish, African & Indian) and 100% Connecticut Yankee. My mother, an African American/Native American mix, learned to cook this dish from her Jewish foster mother (a German Jewish immigrant), when she first moved to Hartford, from rural Alabama in the early 60s. They weren't Irish either, but they always cooked it around St. Paddy's day. Consequently, when I was growing up in New London, my Mom cooked it every St. Paddy's day. I find that a lot of Connecticut Yankee cuisine has a heavy Boston Irish influence. I say this is 100% immigrant food. It embodies a blend of cultures, but maintains rusticity and ethnic distinction, and tastes great to a spectrum of people.

Corned Beef is not an Irish meat, nor did the dish come from Irish people. Poor Irish immigrants came to the dish because they could afford to purchase odd bits of the meat from delis, because it was cheap. It became incorporated into their diet here.

Being brought up on the coast of Maine, I had to reply to these posts. Nowhere did I see making red flannel hash from the leftovers of a new england boiled dinner. The morning after a boiled dinner, we took the leftovers, put them in a spyder (frying pan), along with a can of beets, and chopped everything up, We warmed it up, and served it. As Rachel Ray would say,"yummo".

Corned beef is most definitely associated with Cork in southern Ireland:

"She adds that corned beef has a particular regional association with Cork City. From the late 17th century until 1825, the beef-curing industry was the biggest and most important asset to the city. In this period Cork exported vast quantities of cured beef to Britain, Europe, America, Newfoundland, and the W. Indies. During the Napoleonic wars the British army was supplied principally with corned beef which was cured in and exported from the port of Cork."

Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (page 218)

Although it was produced in Ireland, it was rarely eaten in Ireland due to the cost and the poverty of the Irish.

As I child in the UK, I regularly consumed boiled beef and carrots with cabbage and mashed potatoes mostly at school but occasionally at home. The boiled beef was either cured brisket or cured silverside.

My Mom taught me how to cook this dish & her recipe is very similar. Try adding a few mustard seeds & garlic to the mix. I also make a glaze of brown sugar & mustard for the meat & bake it for the last 20-30 min. of cooking time. This was one of my Dad's favorite meals.

Sometimes Elise, I'm convinced you choose these dishes just to raise the contention levels in here! Still, that was a wonderful whirlwind of culinary origins. Here in England I'd say variations of the dish are a mainstay for a lot of families for its simplicity, efficiency and tastiness. Anything-one pot is always a winner for me and I'd be very surprised if it wasn't the same in Ireland. As for the Origins, like noodles & pasta, this is a truly timeless classic I think, and by that I mean it's one of those dishes that is created over and over by resourceful home cooks for a variety of reasons and audiences with no specific nod to the past.

Well said Coralie, well said. ~Elise

By doing it in a pressure cooker it only takes about one hour or so for the meat Let the cooker cool til the top comes off, add the veggies and 15 mins later your eating. If the cooker is too full cook the veggies by themselves for about 10 mins.

I love this meal.I also bake the meat afterwards. I slice it thin and and drizzle maple syrup over it.Delicious.

Oh, and I include onions with the vegetables.

If I can add a different hint regarding the roots of this dish, I would say it seems like a variation of portuguese «Cozido»... which means «Boiled»...It's an historical dish in Portugal using cabbage and potatoes, and sometimes white beans, and radish, with some sort of meats. Regarding the emigration of portuguese commuity to New England it may have had an influence!

Bye for now

My New England family and I have always used a smoked shoulder for our boiled dinner. Boil the meat for an hour, change the water, do this three times. On the fourth time, we add the carrots, potatoes and cabbage. Reminds me of my grandmother!

Being originally from Massachusetts, I can remember having New England Boiled Dinner all my life, at any time of the year, only instead of corn beef my mom cooked, Boston Smoked Shoulder and she didn't marinate the meat, so, maybe thats why it's called New England boiled dinner. I still make it, and love my friends and family love it.

Like Richard from the coast of Maine (I was central Maine), I too wondered that nobody mentioned "red flannel hash"! It's an important Part II to the traditional New England boiled dinner. In our parts of the state of Maine, the beets are usually cooked and served at the same time as the dinner, albeit separately as the beet broth would bleed and turn everything an unappealing color. As to the origins of the dish no matter where in the world, I believe the conditions of climate had a great deal to do with it. Generally, the area would be too cold in winter to provide fresh produce. The meat was corned to preserve it and the vegetables were all those able to be kept in the root cellar. The old-timers even knew how to keep cabbage for months at a time. Apple sauce works well as a side dish. There again, apples kept well in the cold cellar.

You're lucky you have leftovers to make hash with the next day. I added the McCormick pickling spice this year and WOW did that make the house smell wonderful - juniper berries I think. It was one of the best corned beef dinners I've made in a long time. And I used a flat cut, not a point cut. This stuff is so good that I vote to have another St. Patty's day 6-months from now just so we can all eat it again! Sept 17th work for you too? It's a great holiday to repeat - no gift giving, no decorating, no combustible materials. Just cooking corned beef and cabbage and eating it.

Great idea! ~Elise