St Patty's Day Corned Beef

This is our traditional st. Patrick's day meal. I have served this sweet, spiced version of corned beef ever since i first tried it years ago. Not the healthiest meal, but worth it for just that one special holiday each year. I serve this with soda bread, mashed parsnips, and boiled cabbage. This serves 4-6. If you prefer, you can sub mini red skinned potatoes and baby carrots so you don't need to do any cutting, just use more of them. adapted from a killian's recipe.

Steps

Be sure to discard any brining liquid that comes with the meat- including the spice packet !.

Trim all visible fat from the meat- this may take some time.

Place meat in a large dutch oven and cover with water.

Add ale , bay leaves , cinnamon stick , cloves , a light shake of crushed red pepper flakes , peppercorns , garlic , and the onion chunks to the pot.

Bring to a boil , then lower heat just a bit and boil very gently , with lid ajar , for 4-5 hours or until meat is so tender that is breaks apart when you pull at it with a fork.

Keep checking the pot from time to time to prevent boilovers- you will need to keep lowering the heat throughout the cooking process as the liquid reduces , especially in the first hour.

Meat should be very , very fork tender when ready for the next cooking stage and will have shrunk considerably from its original size.

In the last half hour or so of cooking time , boil the carrots and potatoes in a separate pot of water to cover and cook until for.

Ingredients

briskets, water, bay leaves, red irish ale, crushed red pepper flakes, cinnamon sticks, peppercorns, garlic cloves, cloves, red onion, carrots, red potatoes, brown sugar, ground cloves, ground ginger, mustard powder, celery salt