4 Ingredient Challenge: Corned Beef!

Today is a special “On Our Grill: 4 Ingredient Challenge.”  I couldn’t let St. Patrick’s Day pass without challenging a few of my fellow BBQ bloggers to come up with something for the holiday.  The four ingredients that had to be used were: Corned Beef, Cabbage, Potatoes and Apples.  Only a couple of our regulars took up the challenge.  Here’s what I came up with.  Braised and Grilled Corned Beef with Potato Wedges and a Cabbage and Apple Slaw.

If you take a corned beef and smoke it you end up with pastrami.  Now I’m a huge pastrami fan and have done a couple different pastrami posts on the blog before.  This time around I wanted to do something that was a little closer to traditional.  Not all the way, but closer…

One of the only rules with our “challenges” is the protein has to be cooked outdoors using some type of live fire.  Because I wanted to braise the corned beef I figured a dutch oven would be the best way to go.  However, due to it raining at what seemed like biblical proportions I needed to use the “Big Easy/Dutch Oven” combination again.  It worked like a charm.

My 14 inch dutch oven fits perfectly in the top of my Char Broil Big Easy Infrared Smoker, Roaster, and Grill. (Left)  The corned beef in the dutch oven, seasoned with Todd’s  Crabby Dirt, as the braising liquid was added.  I used beef stock, nothing special, just pre-packaged beef stock. (Right)

I braised the corned beef about three hours until it was fork tender.  Because of time constraints I needed to do this cook over two days, so I removed the brisket from the braising liquid, let it cool and then wrapped and put in the refrigerator.

Cooling the corned beef brisket turned out to be the way to go.  Because the beef was so tender it would have been difficult to cut and then grill had I tried to do it while it was fresh from the braising liquid.  Instead I was able to cut it and slice off the fat layer that was still on it.  Worked great…

I grilled up the thick slices of corned beef, both to reheat and to give it just a touch of smoke flavor.  The potatoes were quartered and seasoned and grilled right along with the corned beef.

I plated the corned beef and potatoes and topped it all with a nice cabbage and apple slaw.  The slaw was easy to do.  Just take a quarter head of green cabbage.  Cut it into large chunks and cook in boiling water for four minutes.  Remove the blanched cabbage from the boiling water and immediately shock with ice cold water, to stop the cooking.  Drain and dry the cabbage.  Add a half a julienned Granny Smith Apple, the juice from one lemon and some crushed red pepper.  SERVE IMMEDIATELY.  If you let this slaw sit for to long the red pepper will combine with the lemon juice and apple and give you a slightly bitter taste.  If you serve it immediately you won’t have this problem.

Additional participants in this month’s Ingredient Challenge include:

Paul Haight of No Excuses BBQ – ENTRY HERE

The No Excuses BBQ website was started in January of 2009 as a way to record the author’s goal of cooking outdoors at least once a week throughout the year and showing the results to the world. Somewhere along the way things got out of control…

Bob Fukushima of Bob’s Brew & Que - ENTRY HERE

Bob started Bob’s Brew and ‘Que in August of 2009 with the intent of sharing his views on food and drink. Originally focused on BBQ and Homebrew, it was inevitable that the influences of his upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area and it’s wealth of ingredients as well as his heritage as an American of Japanese ancestry would help focus his blog, as it has his approach to food and drink.

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