by Brigid Ismail

Created on: March 12, 2009   Last Updated: March 13, 2009

Almost everyone I know, many of whom have no Irish blood, cooks corned beef and cabbage on or around St. Patrick's Day. Since I am Irish, they will often come to me and ask me how I cook it or how do the real Irish cook it. I never had corned beef and cabbage in Ireland. The only corned beef I saw when I was young was canned corned beef. I cook corned beef and cabbage as an American now and often ask my Italian or Greek friends how they cook it. It has become so synonymous with St. Patrick's Day that everyone assumes it is a real Irish dish but the Irish started eating corned beef with their Jewish friends on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The Irish immigrants who started the corned beef and cabbage tradition came during and after the Great Famine which drove many people to foreign lands and put the country into a long depression. Ireland has been mainly an agricultural country. Potatoes, cabbage and turnips were always grown on the small farms. There would be special occasions when a chicken would accompany these vegetables for dinner but dinner was often only potatoes and cabbage. On these little farms, chickens were bred for their eggs and for the occasional special dinner. There was always a farmer around who had pigs and when a pig was killed, the bounty would be shared. The bacon was often cured or corned and a slab of bacon with cabbage was another special dinner.

Many Irish people settled in New York after fleeing the famine and the dark years that followed. The Jewish immigrants had adopted corned beef as it was familiar to them and relatively inexpensive. The Irish adopted it from the Jewish and it became the fare to serve on special occasions, one of which was St. Patrick's Day. The bar and grill became the up and coming small business for the Irish and corned beef and cabbage was the St. Patrick's Day special. Other restaurants started doing the same and every Greek diner in New York now serves corned beef and cabbage on March 17th. And in New York, everyone knows that if you want a good corned beef sandwich, you will go to a Jewish deli.

So when my non-Irish friends ask me about corned beef, I'm a little ashamed that I'm not an expert at cooking it but I've gotten a lot of help from my Jewish friends. It was a meal that was affordable for many immigrants but somehow became associated with the Irish probably because it was always served on St. Patrick's Day in the Blarney Stones and other bar and grill establishments.

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