Corned Beef and Cabbage and Irish Soda Bread Recipe

My city celebrates St. Patrick's Day in a big way.  One of the biggest in the country.  And when St. Patty's Day falls on a weekend, well...look out!  It will be a 3 day celebration.  I like to bring a bit of celebration to the shelter so The Blog Tech and I made a huge pot of corned beef and cabbage and lots of soda bread.  We delivered it this morning and they are eating it as I type.

You can find the recipe here: Corned Beef

I used 6 corned beefs and 8 heads of cabbage.

I found corned beef on sale for 1.38 per pound which was a really great deal.

The cabbage was 9 cents per pound!

The Blog Tech has been a big help.  He was busy for a while with moving and classes but he has a break now and has really embraced this work.  A second pair of hands has cut my prep time dramatically.

We cut everything into uniform dice and cut the cabbage into about 2 inch squares.

This is out of order but here is the lineup.  We used turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, carrots, onions and celeriac.

And about 20 pounds of potatoes.

I simmered the beef for about 4 hours along with some vegetables.  Then I removed the meat, cut off all the fat, sliced it thinly, strained the stock and added the meat back into the pot with all the vegetables. This cooked for about an hour.

 When it was ready, the guys lugged it out to the car.  It was really heavy.

Groaning was involved.  We made over 50 quarts.

I also made lots of soda bread.  If you want a really good recipe for soda bread you can find it here:  http://octoberfarm.blogspot.com/search?q=soda+bread