It’s St. Patrick’s Day!  And while I have no idea whether my mixed European ancestry includes any Irish, I like to cover my bases by celebrating ALL of the holidays.

One of my favorite St. Patrick’s traditions is the corned beef and cabbage dinner.  Now corned beef is hardly Irish.  A real Irish family would likely be making this meal with some sort of pork product.  But Irish-American immigrants in New York City found themselves looking for a cheap cut of meat that would cook up nicely with very affordable cabbage and potatoes.  And so started the tradition of corned beef and cabbage.

What is it that makes this meal so magical for me?  For starters, it’s ridiculously easy.  Cut up some potatoes and a head of cabbage.  Put it in the bottom of a slow cooker.  Put a corned beef brisket on top of it.  Pour in some liquid (I use beer, but water or stock or juice would work well too).  Turn on the slow cooker and walk away for several hours.  When you come back to it, you’ve got dinner and a house that smells delicious.

But the real magic of the corned beef and cabbage dinner is how inexpensive it is.  Corned beef is cheap meat.  But if you cook it slowly all day, it becomes very tender and delicious.  The same idea can apply to other inexpensive cuts of meat.  Throw it into your slow cooker, walk away, and come home at the end of a busy day to a delicious dinner that required almost no effort.  And there’s likely enough that you’ll have leftovers for a few future meals.

If you don’t have a slow cooker, it’s likely worth the investment.  I always see several when I go to the Goodwill store, but even new ones are not very pricey.  And for the magic of turning cheap meat into a delicious meal (or three) with almost no effort….it’s a worthwhile purchase.