Where did corned beef get its name?
The word "corned" means to put meat into a large crock pot while covering it with rock salt, which in turns preserves the meat. This term has been around since 888 A.D. according to the Oxford dictionary. "Corned Beef" is derived from the quote " Anatomy of Melancholy…Beef ..corned young of an ox", in a book written in 1621 by Richard Burton.
You might be wondering where corned beef got its name. After all, it doesn’t contain any corn! Beef used to be cured by packing it with corn-sized rock salt, and the name just stuck. While the Irish were the first exporters of corned beef, many Irishmen got their first real taste of it for themselves upon emigrating to America at the end of the 19th Century, where both beef and salt were much cheaper. They tended to cook this salt-cured (corned) beef much as they would pork back home: soaking it to remove some of the salt and then braising it with some cabbage. If you are lucky enough to be in Ireland for the St. Patrick’s Day celebration, you will certainly find corned beef and cabbage, but most of it is prepared for North American tourists. Oddly enough, on this decidedly Irish holiday, the Irish themselves don’t really seem to have a traditional dish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Since I live in the United States and intend to celebrate as an Irish-American, I will be serving corn
