- Whenever you have that hankering
for delicious corned beef and cabbage,
this'll be your go-to, corned beef meatballs.
(upbeat music)
Instead of slices or whole chunks of corned beef,
we're going to take fresh ground beef, some corned beef,
put it together in the food processor and make meatballs.
Braising that, it's gonna give off this wonderful flavor
to the broth with the cabbage.
Let's get started.
(meat splatting) Okay, we're starting with beef
that's already been corned.
So it's been put in a brine,
and you'll see it in the meat department
labeled as corned beef.
Most often, it's brisket flat.
It's got a good amount of fat, usually on the top,
so I like to trim that excess off.
In this case, I just need three quarter pounds
for this recipe.
Cutting about one-inch cubes
and we'll put that into a food processor.
Now we'll put the food processor
on pulse. (food processor pulsing)
We'll just pulse this,
just until we get a course consistency.
I'm looking for it to really replicate ground beef,
maybe a little more.
Now it's course, just a little more pulse,
and just where I want it. (food processor whirling)
We'll also put ground beef in the mixture.
So we end up with three quarter pounds each,
corned beef and fresh ground beef.
Just two more ingredients,
quarter cup panko-style breadcrumbs
and just a half teaspoon of black pepper.
We'll mix these ingredients slightly.
Notice how I just lift up the meat
and gradually get the ingredients incorporated,
not smushing the meat between my fingers.
Portioning this into about 12 meatballs
is what I'm looking for.
So in this case, a quarter cup is perfect
as a measuring device.
Just press it lightly into a quarter cup,
measure them out, and then I'll form those each into balls.
So go ahead and repeat that process
until you have them all laid out
on a sheet tray with parchment on it.
We'll go ahead and refrigerate those.
Okay, so before we start cooking,
let's go ahead and get some other ingredients ready.
I need a half head of cabbage.
(cabbage banging) I like to quarter it.
Remove the core from it.
And then we're gonna slice this
(knife chopping) super thin,
get our cabbage ready to be braised.
We'll hold that aside for just a sec.
We'll take one small onion and get that sliced.
You'll see, I like to halve it,
peel it and then slice it super thin.
(knife slicing) The reason I'm doing slices
for this is so it kind of replicates
the same shape as that cabbage.
And we'll get that put aside
and get our garlic started.
In this case, just two cloves. (garlic smashing)
Get the skin smashed off
and then we'll get that minced.
Really just looking for a small chop
(knife chopping) or a mince on the garlic,
just so it incorporates its flavor nice
and evenly throughout this dish.
And one more ingredient before we get to the pan.
Let's peel two carrots,
and you'll see I peel them, but I'll also cut it
into what we call an oblique shape,
which is kind of a diagonal cut.
I like to show you this.
So first cut off the ends.
But then, on each,
you notice how I've got the knife at an angle
and then I'll rotate the carrots slightly,
just a half turn, and then cut.
Those are called obliques.
Everything tastes better on the angle, folks.
Okay, let's get a pan hot, medium high heat,
a couple teaspoons of canola oil,
and we'll start searing these meatballs
to get a crispy edge all the way around.
So set them in the oil uniformly.
We're probably gonna do this in batches, half at a time,
so that there's room for these to get a good sear.
Give it time to develop that crust
on at least a couple sides.
So if it's pulling and tugging,
it means it's not quite ready.
Make sure it releases easily before you rotate slightly
and get a little bit of a crust on another side.
Pull those out and we'll start building some flavor.
So we'll start with some onions and the garlic,
and we'll work that around a bit
so we can get those little nuggets
from the bottom of the pan worked into the dish.
Go ahead and toss the caraway seeds in.
Give those a moment to toss around the pan too.
The idea is we kind of want to toast those
and bring out the aromatic.
Perfect, now we'll put the cabbage on top of that.
Work that around with the onions, with garlic,
and the flavor just a little bit.
Go ahead and put our beef broth in.
This is really going to pull all that flavor together.
The carrots go in,
and this'll just get a little bit of salt
and a little bit of pepper.
We'll stir that around nicely.
Get those incorporated before we nestle these meatballs,
nice and uniformly, into this cabbage mixture.
Get them all in there.
You'll find room.
Then get that lid on and we'll head in the oven.
My first reaction, I just love the smell of this.
I can smell the caraway, the beef
and the corned beef together. (spoon clanking)
Let's plate one of these and taste it.
The flavors are perfect.
It hints of that corned beef, cabbage and caraway
because the broth takes on so much of that flavor.
That's where it's at.
So good.
This is gonna become your new tradition for St Patty's,
but you're gonna have the hankering for it year round.
Make sure you press like and subscribe,
and we'll see you next time in the Test Kitchen.
(upbeat music)