Beloved by everyone from presidents to astronauts, we're
here to hash out some details on corned beef. While Irish-Americans are certainly gung-ho about
corned beef, this stands in stark contrast with their homeland, where corned beef is not as common
as you might think. Indeed, beef is not all that commonplace in the traditional cuisine of Ireland,
where, historically, cattle were used not for meat, but for fieldwork or dairy production. Cows
were usually only slaughtered for food once they were no longer able to do their assigned jobs.
In the time of tribal chieftains, the size of your cattle herd was a sign of your power. To
slaughter one before it was necessary would have been madness. So while European Cuisines says that
salted or cured beef is indeed an Irish tradition dating back as early as 800 AD, it was perceived
as a luxury item consumed only by the rich. This meat was far from the rustic peasant fare we
think of when we serve up a heaping plateful to soak up all that St. Paddy's Day beer.
Despite what its name may lead you to believe, the secret to delicious corned
beef isn't corn but salt. Indeed, Irish corned beef is a preserved meat product,
made according to tradition by curing the meat in a large quantity of salt. According to the
Smithsonian, the term corned beef was invented by the British in the 17th century: a reference,
not to corn, but to the corn-sized salt crystals applied to the meat. This first iteration of the
classic we all know and love today, the Smithsonian asserts, was saltier than it
was beefy. But it was certainly a predecessor to the corned beef you see on modern tables.
These days, corned beef is a bit of a misnomer — at least when it comes to the contemporary
versions of the product. While giant "corns" of salt were indeed used in the original recipe,
today, salt brines are far more common. Even though corned beef is less common in
Ireland than you may have thought, it's certainly present. That said, one thing is for sure:
the pairing of corned beef and cabbage is absolutely an Irish-American tradition.
Despite the popularity of Irish corned beef beginning in the 17th century, most locals
couldn't afford the luxury product. Indeed, European Cuisines notes that many Irish tenant
farmers were raising and producing corned beef for export without ever having had a morsel of
the sought-after meat pass between their lips. If the Irish could afford meat, it was usually pork.
Cut to the 1845 potato blight and resulting famine, which led about a million Irish people
to leave the country, with many of them settling in the U.S. It was there that they finally began
to make enough money to purchase corned beef. By cooking local corned beef with familiar cabbage,
they created the dish that has since become an Irish-American classic.
While corned beef is certainly an Irish product,
there may be one more community to thank for its popularity: the Jewish community. Indeed,
when the Irish first immigrated to the U.S. in the mid-19th century, they often found their
way to the Lower East Side of Manhattan — an area that also welcomed Jewish immigrants. Westchester
Magazine says that Irish immigrants began eating the Jewish version of corned beef at delis in New
York City. It was this iteration of corned beef — and not the expensive stuff from their native
Ireland — that found its way into the pots of the newly arrived Irish, according to the Smithsonian.
"You don't get corned beef like that anymore." Jewish influence on the corned beef of today leads
many to wonder about the differences between corned beef and another beefy Jewish deli
counter offering: pastrami. The main difference between the two is the cut: corned beef hails
from the brisket, while pastrami comes from the deckle — a cut found in beef shoulder.
Perhaps more important than the cut used to make them is that the two beef products are seasoned
and prepared differently. While Eater asserts that both begin with the same brine of salt and spices
tinged with coriander, bay, and juniper, after brining, pastrami is coated with a spice mix that
may contain black pepper, coriander, mustard seeds, fennel seeds, and occasionally fresh
garlic. Corned beef, meanwhile, is left plain. And whereas pastrami is cooked by smoking over
hardwood, corned beef is stewed or boiled, making the former the far more flavorful of the two.
"Yes, corned beef. Lots and lots of corned beef."
Within the wider category of corned beef, two types exist, differentiated by color:
red and gray. And while the latter may not sound particularly enticing,
gray might actually appeal more to modern consumers looking for less-processed offerings.
Red brisket is cured with a curing salt called Prague powder, which contains sodium nitrite. This
substance is a food additive and preservative that is used to keep cured meats fresh,
but it may be linked to blood vessel damage and heart disease, according to the Mayo Clinic.
The gray version, meanwhile, is not cured with nitrite. It doesn't have
the bright color of the red variety because nitrites are what give red
corned beef its distinctive hue. However, it's just as flavorful.
Aside from the classic pairing of corned beef and cabbage,
the dish with which this meat is most frequently associated is a Reuben. The
sandwich features corned beef piled on rye bread and smothered with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese,
and Russian dressing. It's a staple of New York's Jewish delis, and it's not hard to see why.
According to Olivia's Cuisine, a true Reuben boasts a pleasant touch of heat
thanks to the addition of horseradish and hot sauce to the Russian dressing. This
is a stark contrast to the sweeter flavor imparted by the similar Thousand Island,
to which pickled relish is added. Swap the corned beef for pastrami, and you've got
yourself a Rachel, or opt instead for turkey for a lower-calorie variation on the theme.
Like the cheeseburger, corned beef has a long history of appealing to folks on both sides of
the tracks. While Irish immigrants were enjoying corned beef and cabbage on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan, Abraham Lincoln was tucking into the very same dish at his inaugural luncheon. Grover
Cleveland was a fan, too. In fact, according to the Cape Cod Times, Cleveland was wandering the
White House halls one afternoon when he caught the scent of corned beef and cabbage coming from
the servants' kitchen. He begged to have his meal swapped out for the one the servants were having.
Modern-day presidents enjoy corned beef, too. In fact, Barack Obama was famously
embroiled in the "Mayogate" scandal after he was accused of ordering a corned beef sandwich
with mayonnaise. The scandal ended when someone from the Obama White House emailed
enraged blogger David Sax claiming that Obama had ordered a corned beef sandwich
with mustard. The nameless informant then threw U.S. Representative Kendrick Meek under the bus,
claiming that his sandwich was the one with mayo. Every holiday has its favorite meats — except
maybe World Vegan Day and Halloween. Every other holiday, though, is a meat-fest. In
the United States, most turkeys are sold around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and most of the corned
beef is sold around St. Patrick's Day. It isn't nearly as popular at other times of the year,
and some retailers worry about ordering too much of it, since it's not as easy to sell after March
17th. According to Supermarket News, the grocery chain A&P says 85 to 90% of its corned beef sales
happen in the week prior to St. Patrick's Day. Retailers often reduce the price of
corned beef around this time in the hope that customers will also buy their cabbage and beer.
An exception was the St. Patrick's Day holiday season of 2022, when many retailers reported
they weren't planning to sell corned beef at all. Like so many other food products, the wholesale
price of those typically low-cost vacuum packs of corned beef was up by $1 a pound over the previous
year. One retailer told CBS News that his corned beef order in 2021 cost around $475, but in 2022
the price was up around 40% to roughly $800. Like other retailers, he decided not to carry
corned beef for the 2022 St. Patrick's season, leaving many locals scrambling for a substitute.
"Smells like corned beef."
If you grew up during the heyday of the American space program, you know that
astronauts eat Tang and freeze-dried ice cream, among other things. Generally speaking, though,
in zero gravity food has to be well-contained so floating crumbs aren't mucking up the equipment
and poking astronauts in the eyeballs. Evidently, astronaut John Young missed that memo because,
in 1965, he smuggled a corned beef sandwich onto Gemini III — a five-hour,
three-orbit flight that represented the first manned mission of Project
Gemini. According to NASA, Young stashed the sandwich in the pocket of his space suit and,
about two hours into the mission, offered some to fellow astronaut Gus Grissom.
NASA is notably diplomatic about the incident in its own retelling of the tale,
but according to Atlas Obscura, Young was in deep trouble when he returned to Earth.
This was in part because he was supposed to be testing the freeze-dried astronaut food NASA
had spent a fortune developing — not eating corned beef sandwiches. After the incident,
Young received the first-ever reprimand for a NASA astronaut and later came to regret
the stunt. History loved it, though — so much so that today you can view
a replica of Young's corned beef sandwich at the Grissom Memorial Museum in Indiana.
Most uncooked meats have a shelf life that ends roughly two days before you get around
to cooking them. But uncooked, vacuum-packed corn beef remains unnaturally fresh for an
unnaturally long period of time. In fact, according to Harris Ranch Beef,
corned beef keeps for 60 days from the date of manufacture, which means you could buy
your corned beef in late January and it would still be fresh enough to eat by the time St.
Patrick's Day rolls around. Do check the sell-by date, though, just in case the corned beef you
bought was sitting around on the shelf for a few weeks before you put it in your shopping cart.
Also, remember that the 60-day rule only applies to corned beef in an unopened
package with a use-by date. Anything else, including corned beef you make yourself,
should be eaten within five to seven days. If you're going to keep it longer than that,
you should drain it, wrap it, and keep it in the freezer. And cooked corned beef only lasts
three or four days in the fridge, so don't wait to eat your leftover corned beef sandwiches.
Canned corn beef is another story altogether — that stuff will survive the apocalypse.
According to Still Tasty, the canned stuff keeps its quality for three to five years,
though it will still be safe to eat long after the fall of civilization.
During World War II, people got used to making do with very little. Items that
were considered important to the war effort — like coffee, butter, canned goods, meat,
and sugar — were rationed so people couldn't just go down to the grocery store and buy up everything
on the shelf. You know, like that one time in recent memory when there was no toilet paper.
Because both meat and canned goods were rationed,
people had to make their meager allotments go a long way — hence the popularity of
"hash" and other recipes that contained very little meat and quite a lot of healthy stuff.
"How's the corned beef hash?"
"It's fine."
According to People's Collection Wales, a popular Welsh ration recipe used flour, grated onions,
eggs, and milk to stretch a six-ounce portion of corned beef into eight corned beef fritters. This
was enough to serve a large family — provided there was also some fresh produce on hand.
In an archived story preserved by the BBC, a woman who lived through
World War II remembered a 2-ounce per person ration of corned beef,
which she would turn into a full meal by making a hash. She wasn't the only one; in fact,
corned beef hash owes much of its popularity today to those enterprising cooks of the 1940s.