What part of the cow does the corned beef come from

[dianeduane]

We've had about twenty queries about this today. We always get these this time of year.

(sigh) I surrender.

Corned beef comes from the brisket and silverside (just under the topside) of the cow. Both of these are tough cuts requiring either long, slow cooking, or pickling in brine, or both -- hence their use in corned beef. See this article for lots more information.

And I don't know anyone in my part of Ireland who will be eating it tomorrow. It's usually seen as poor people's food. It's a pain to cook properly, and most people don't have the time or inclination, these days. The above article will tell you more about that, too. (Once again I checked the supermarket to see if I was possibly mistaken about this. And once again I found the usual result: three packages of corned beef, eighty packages of assorted pork and boiling bacon.)

To all those of you about to go Drown The Shamrock: Yes, yes, for tomorrow you're all Irish. Enjoy. (But be warned: when you get over here, no matter how many Irish ancestors you have, even this one, twenty years won't be anything like enough to make you really Irish. And don't think an Irish passport will matter: the neighbors won't be fooled. ..But you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.)

Enjoy anyway. And don't dye the beer green. That's one of the things really Irish people really don't need to do. The green is either in your heart, or it's not. Putting it in your liver won't matter a bit. :)

Tags: corned beef, Irish, Ireland, St. Patrick's Day, St. Paddy's Day, St. Patty's Day, who the heck is Patty, Patrick, Irish food, what do people eat on Saint Patrick's Day, what part of the cow does the corned beef come from

Comments

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Not arguing the tastiness of it at all. (Or how that tastiness can be subverted. Turns out one of our local producers started making some just now: I bought some to turn it into back-door pastrami.) And in ancient Ireland it was seen as a great delicacy (mostly due to the expensiveness of the salt, and the fact that most people didn't get beef: unless you were a chieftain or petty king, and could afford [figuratively speaking] to light your cigars with fifty-Euro notes, no one killed a cow until it was too old to give milk. The article linked to above has more on this.)

But it has nothing traditional to do with St. Patrick's day in its native land (see the article). And what really gets up my nose is that too many of my own people think that's a Really Commonly Eaten Food over here: like the hamburger in the US. SO wrong.

(sigh)