Corned Beef with Mustard Sauce, Sauteed Kale, and Champ

We recently got lots of beef from Dad's employer as part of his pay for working at the farm.  So today I made corned beef with a brisket.  I made corned beef before and cured it for like a week in water, pickling spices, sugar, and salt.  Then I cooked it after the week of curing.  When we make corned beef at work, we do it differently.  We put all the water, spices, salt, and sugar in a pot with the brisket and simmer it for about two and a half hours.  Each way turns out wonderful.  The way we do it at work is much faster.  So today I made it the quick way.

Now you may say corned beef is an Irish thing and meant for St. Patrick's Day.  I scoff at that.  It doesn't have to be St. Patrick's Day to enjoy a fine Irish meal.  It is so good, I had to make it today.  I looked online to see how they serve corned beef at McMahon's Irish Pub & Restaurant in Warrenton.  They serve it with cabbage, Gaelic champ, and a creamy horseradish sauce.  So I tried that.  We didn't have enough cabbage, so I used another Irish vegetable, kale.  Mom cleaned it, then I chopped it a little and sauteed it with oil, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder.  I also made champ, which is basically just regular mashed potatoes with milk, salt, pepper, butter, and chopped spring onions.

The corned beef was good.  It could have been saltier though.  Should have added more salt to the pot when cooking it.  Now I know for next time when I make it like that.  I didn't have all the right ingredients for the Irish mustard and horseradish sauce that I made, so I improvised.  It turned out pretty good, but kinda salty.  That was okay though, because the corned beef wasn't all that salty, so the salty sauce with the not-so-salty meat evened it all out and it was very good.

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