Corned Beef and Sauerkraut: It's not the meat, it's the motion

I grew up with an Italian Mother and an Irish Father.  That made St. Patrick’s Day at our house pretty sad.  Nan (my mom) didn’t really know how to cook meat and potatoes, much less corned beef.   The traditional method was (and still is) to boil the pre-made corned beef brisket in water for a few hours, and then dump in big chunks of green cabbage and potatoes to cook in the liquid.

Yucky.

Mushy.

Greasy.

Fatty.

And the rest of the dwarves.

In an effort to dress up this beige mess, she would slather on a glaze of mustard mixed with brown sugar and bake it in the oven to finish it off. But you can't make chicken salad out of chicken poop, no matter how much mayonnaise you put on it.

Mostly, we ran out of the house.  We were kids and the cold outside didn’t daunt us, but the menu for dinner did.  

Fast Forward:  I now live in Connecticut, smack in the middle of New York and Boston, New Haven and Hartford.  Prime St. Patrick's Day territory.  

And worse, it's not even over on one day, it takes up nearly two weeks.

Turns out that most of the Bag Pipe Corps that march in these parades, actually march in all of them.  If all the parades were scheduled on the same day, they would get very small, very quickly.  

You can't throw a dead cat without bumping into Corned Beef and Cabbage on any menu within a 200 mile radius.

In fact, its not actually about the corned beef.  Unless you are going to brine it yourself, buy it in the grocers and just follow the instructions, which is:  cook in water in a slow cooker for about 6 hours.

Turns out, it's really what you serve with the Corned Beef that makes it interesting.  

Paired with some Homemade Sauerkraut, and baked sweet potato fries, corned beef has become meal we look forward to come Spring.