Continuing on my experimental path being creative with some of these canned meats I've stored up on during this virus lock down I think I vaguely remember my dad using government canned corned beef as a child in some sort of stew format. He did a lot of the cooking for the family as he often would say my mom couldn't boil a pot of water. It tasted good as a child but so did Chicory Sticks and those ice cream pies with graham cracker crust both of which I've spotted and gone down memory lane with and the results weren't anywhere near as favorable. So the thought of a big glob of corned beef floating around a slow cooker full of water wasn't quite hitting it with me. I guess I could have googled what does someone do with canned corned beef but I was playing pandemic here and to play pandemic you have to make due with what you got as during the height of the not knowing exactly what this virus was going to do going to the store once stocked for an item to make your dish complete was a no no. I decided what if I turned crock pot corned beef into a casserole and once again the results were quite tasty.
For this nifty little venture I pull out the old Veg- A- Matic. Yes people I still have an original and it works just as good as the day my mom bought it when I was a teenager.
After all these decades of use the only defect it has is that it no longer closes shut when you go to store it. I've found that when using potatoes for a casserole having them all cut to a uniform thickness works best. I opted to go with a julienne cut, which is the thinnest cut the veg-o-matic makes.
For this recipe you will need:
1 8 oz can corn beef
5-6 medium size potatoes, peeled, halved then julienne
1 good size carrot or two smaller carrots sliced
1 quarter of a cabbage sliced up
1 small onion diced up
2 cubes to make 2 cups beef broth
2 cups of water
salt
2 tsp peppercorns
2 tbl coriander
1 tsp dry mustard
2 large bay leaves
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a sauce pan put in two cups water and add your cubes, let it simmer on low while the cubes dissolve and you prepare your other ingredients.
Peel, rinse, halve then julienne your potatoes. Place in your casserole dish. Peel your carrot then julienne into thin slices and add to your casserole dish. Dice up your cabbage and onion then place in the dish. Take your corn beef and chopped it up then layer it across your dish. Take your spices and layer them across the dish also then add whatever amount of salt you are accustom to using. Mix all the ingredients together in the dish then pour your beef broth into the dish. Cover with foil, place in the oven and cook for one hour or until all the liquid is absorbed.
This was tasty, the only way I think it may have been any better would have been to add some sauerkraut which I didn't have on hand...but I have a few more cans of corn beef and can experiment with that later on a cool fall evening if the virus doesn't get me by then or by kids don't drive me insane by then...whichever comes first. Luckily I am not stuck living with them but if we ever had a crisis where that happened I'd at least have a variety of experience on what to do with canned meat.
My mom really wasn't to knowledgeable on cooking, mostly because she couldn't read and she lost her mother at an early age. Cooking for six kids often came with something macaroni style after my dad and her divorced. Still it wasn't like her to say add this to that and wala. Raising my own kids it's a wonder they survived me. The first time I ever attempted banana bread you could have taken it outside and used it for a football...as long as you didn't aim for someone's head, that'd hurt. You cut it open and the inside ran out. lol. It took some time, indeed it did to perfect banana bread and to make awesome cookies...but that was way before the food network and I use to watch that show in amazement. Who knew? lol.