Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup

St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner!  It’s always the perfect excuse to make one of my all time favorite meals, Corned Beef and Cabbage.  Every year, I make it for dinner on St. Patty’s Day, we comment on how I really should make it more often, and then we don’t eat it again until the following year, when the holiday rolls around again.  It happens every single year!

When I ran across this recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup in Food Network Magazine recently, I thought this might be a way that I could bring that St. Patty’s flavor to the table more often.  Making a full corned beef dinner isn’t tough, but it is time-consuming, usually taking a couple of hours on the stove.  This recipe promised the entire dinner in half than less the time, in one (actually quite healthy) pot of soup…corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, it’s all there!  I figured I’d give it a try.

I started by prepping the veggies.  Carrots, celery and onions went into my food processor.

I pulsed the vegetables a few times until the pieces were evenly chopped up and pea-sized.

Once they were the right size, I melted a little bit of butter in a large pot on the stove and added the chopped veggies and a little bit of allspice.  I sautéed them for just a few minutes, until they started to soften.  While they were cooking, I chopped about 1/4 of a cabbage into small pieces, diced some potatoes, and then prepped some Roma tomatoes.  Tomatoes don’t usually hang out in a corned beef dinner, but once I’d cut them in half, they were added to the food processor and pulsed until they were finely chopped.  Once they cooked down in the soup, you hardly knew they were there.  They just added some color and flavor to the pot.

Once the veggies had softened, I added the chopped tomatoes, cabbage, some beef broth, the diced potatoes, water and some quick cooking barley.  Quick cooking barley can be found with the rices and grains in your supermarket.  Regular barley can take upwards of 40-50 minutes to cook properly.  This recipe is all about saving time, so be sure to grab the quick cooking stuff!

Once every thing was in the pot, I stirred it up, brought it to a boil and then let it simmer for 20 minutes.  This was just long enough to cook the potatoes and cabbage to perfection.

Once the potatoes and cabbage were done, I added 1/4 pound of corned beef.  I purchased a couple of slices from the deli counter and asked them to slice it about 1/4 inch thick.  Then, I sliced them into thin strips and added the beef to the pot.

Before serving the soup, I added some salt and pepper.  Do not skip this step!  How much salt and pepper you need to add will depend on how salty your corned beef and the broth you used are, so add a little and do a taste test or two to figure out your perfect amount.  I ended up adding about 2 teaspoons of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper to the pot.

The soup was delicious!  All of the flavors from one of our favorite special meals were right there and I didn’t spend most of the afternoon in the kitchen!  It may be the perfect answer to a busy St. Patty’s Day craving.

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE SOUP

Adapted from Food Network Magazine