It’s St. Patrick Day weekend and it’s time to get your “Irish on” at a great restaurant that serves Guinness and delicious corned beef and cabbage. We have found the 5 Best Corned Beef and Cabbage Pubs and restaurants in Boston for St. Patrick Day.
Where does the tradition of eating corned beef and cabbage come from?
Why do we love our traditional corned beef and cabbage dinners so much around this time of year? According to Shane McCarrick a food scientist from Dublin, Ireland the tradition is much more of an American one than Irish. He says…
Irish Americans’ eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day- as a memory of their forebears who left Ireland all those years ago. However, it’s a false memory. When the Irish immigrated to the States, particularly in the 19th century, more often than not the Irish and the Jewish communities congregated together in the poorer boroughs of New York (and other cities). The respective communities tended to work in particular disciplines – the Irish were unskilled laborers, whereas their Jewish neighbors were skilled butchers and had experience in other disciplines. So when the ‘new’ immigrants went looking for foods to remind them of home for St. Patrick’s Day, particular foods were commonly available in the local butchers – who tended to be kosher and Jewish-run – and other foods not.
So, if you’re planning a trip to Ireland someday, don’t look for corned beef and cabbage on the menu unless they have learned to cater to American diners of course.
What is corned beef?
According to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine writer Shaylyn Esposito notes the following…
Only the wealthy few were able to eat the meat during a celebration or festival. In these early times, the beef was “salted” to be preserved. The first salted beef in Ireland was actually not made with salt but with sea ash, the product of burning seaweed. The 12th-century poem “Aislinge Meic Con Glinne” shows that salted beef was eaten by the kings.
Here’s are the top 5 Corned Beef and Cabbage Pubs and Restaurants in Boston
