Boiled Dinner
6 pounds corned-beef brisket
4 carrots
I cabbage
6 potatoes
3 white turnips
6 beets
Vinegar
Put the meat into the pot over a brisk fire with enough cold water to cover it. Bring it rapidly just to the boiling-point, then remove the scum, set the pot back on the fire and simmer until tender (about three hours). About three-fourths of an hour before serving, skim the liquid free from fat. Put a portion of this liquor into another kettle with the cabbage which has been cleaned and cut into sections, the turnips, carrots and parsnips prepared and cut into uniform pieces, and boil until tender.
A New England boiled dinner in its standard form: corned brisket simmered slowly, its liquor borrowed to cook the vegetables. The ingredient list and the method do not quite agree, which is worth sorting out before you start.
- The list and the method disagreeParsnips are cooked but never listed; beets and vinegar are listed but never cooked. Buy three or four parsnips as well, and treat the beets and vinegar as described below.
- Beets go in their own potBeets boiled with the rest will stain every vegetable in the kettle magenta. Cook them whole and unpeeled in plain water for 30-45 minutes, slip the skins off, and dress them with the vinegar as a side dish. That is the likeliest use for the vinegar in the list, which the method never accounts for.
- Never let it boilThe hinge of the dish. Corned brisket brought rapidly to the boil and then held there turns stringy and dry. Take it just to the boil to raise the scum, then hold it at a bare shiver, 180-190F, for the full three hours.
- Six pounds and three hoursModern brisket flats sold as corned beef run 3-5 lb and are usually done in 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Test with a fork rather than a clock: it should slide in with no resistance.
- SaltinessCommercially cured brisket today is wet-brined and can be very salty. If the packet came in liquid, rinse it and consider discarding the first water after it comes to the boil, then covering again with fresh cold water.
- Vegetable timingThree-quarters of an hour is right for the whole batch only if you stagger it. Potatoes and carrots want 20-25 minutes, turnips and parsnips 15-20, cabbage wedges 10-12. Cabbage held longer goes sulphurous.
- Skimming the fatEasier if you lift the meat out, let the pot settle for five minutes, and draw the fat off the surface with a wide spoon or a ladle held flat.
- ServingSix pounds of brisket feeds eight to ten generously and will leave cold meat over. Rest the meat 15 minutes and carve across the grain.
The boiled dinner is the plainest kind of one-pot cooking, and its association with New England has less to do with invention than with salt beef being the staple winter protein of a coastal region with long cold months and a barrel of corned brisket in the cellar. "Corned" refers to the coarse grains, or corns, of salt used in the cure; the term is in English use long before refrigeration and long before it crossed the Atlantic. The recipe reads like the household standard it was: a cut that needed long, cheap, unattended cooking, root vegetables that kept in a cellar until spring, and enough left over for the hash that traditionally followed the next morning. The pairing with Irish-American St Patrick's Day tables came later, and is generally traced to immigrants substituting cheap New World corned beef for the bacon joint they would have boiled at home.