We at the Chanway household love corned beef. Lucky for us, we live next door to a family who also loves this dish. This year we decided to make two and host a large dinner with friends. 

Between our two households we bought about 16 pounds of meat. Our invited head count was 18, however only 15 were at the dinner table with 5 of those being under the age of 6.

Quince helping Richard make what will be our corned beef seasoning. Our choice recipe this year is America’s Test Kitchen Home Corned-Beef and Cabbage, New England Style.

The finished seasoning and two slabs of beef brisket, all ready to be combined.

The meat massage. It’s like Kobe beef, but dead. After this second brisket was bagged and weighted down, they were placed in the fridge and flipped once a day for a week.

After a week and now nicely rinsed off our briskets are looking good.

In order to fit both briskets we had to use one of the brewing kettles our neighbor has. Banana for scale. It’s a good thing corned beef is a one pot meal!

Since we were expecting so many people, I made 3 loaves of soda bread. Also from the America’s Test Kitchen book. I really like their recipe for it.

Our final menu: Corned Beef with cabbage, pearl onions, turnip, potato, carrots, and rutabaga. Applesauce(canned from our tree last year). Roasted potato dish, made by Sarah. Brussel sprouts, in a braised style. Irish soda bread. Our dessert was an Irish Apple cake made by Melinda.

Bon appetite!! On a side note, that photo was taken first try!