First there was Salted Beef. The practice of salting meat goes back to ancient times in cold regions when they found that meat didn't spoil if it made contact with enough salt.
The term “Corned” comes from putting meat in a large crock and covering it with large rock-salt kernels that were referred to as “corns of salt.” This preserved the meat. The term Corned has been in the Oxford English Dictionary since at least 888 AD. An early mention of “Corned Beef” goes back to an English Book by Richard Burton in 1621, Anatomy of Melancholy, “...Beef ..corned young of an ox.”
Irish were the biggest exporters of Corned Beef until 1825. The region around Cork, Ireland, was a great producer of corned beef in the 1600s until 1825. It was their chief export and sent all over the world, mostly in cans. The British army was sustained on cans of Cork’s corned beef during the Napoleonic wars.
The term corn is modified from an Old Germanic word “kurnam” that meant a small seed of anything. Since a kernel of rock salt looked like a wheat or oat kernel it became known as a corn of salt.
[In Proto-Germanic (about 500 B.C.E.) the form was kurnam: this became korn in Old High German and Old Norse and corn in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), and that is the immediate origin of the modern English word corn. In classical Latin, meanwhile, the form was granum. This became grano in Spanish and Italian and grain in French, meaning 'cereal grain', and the French word was borrowed into English. The French words graine (seed) and grange (barn) derive from the same Latin word.]
Ingredients
3 pounds corned beef brisket
10 small red potatoes
5 carrots, peeled and julienned
1 large head cabbage, cut into small wedges
Spices
Hand-mixed from mustard seeds, Moroccan coriander, Jamaican allspice, Zanzibar cloves, Turkish bay leaves, Indian dill seed, China #1 ginger, star anise, black pepper, juniper berries, mace and cayenne red pepper.
Directions
Place corned beef in large pot or Dutch oven and cover with water. Add the spices. Cover pot and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer approximately 50 minutes per pound or until tender.
Add whole potatoes and carrots, and cook until the vegetables are almost tender. Add cabbage and cook for 15 more minutes. Remove meat and let rest 15 minutes.
Place vegetables in a bowl and cover. Add as much broth (cooking liquid reserved in the Dutch oven or large pot) as you want. Slice meat across the grain.
Richard Wottrich
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