St. Patrick's Day: Corned Beef or Smoked Pork Shoulder for dinner?

by Jonathan M. Forester, Posted Mar 13th 2008 @ 2:02PM

I got in a long phone conversation last night with a friend of mine, Chef Josh Gamage, about St. Patrick's Day. I asked about how it's celebrated here in Maine from a food and drink standpoint. Growing up in NY I am used to enormous partying, eating mediocre corned beef and cabbage, and drinking many pints of stout; while grooving to the madness of the Upper East Side and the Parade. No green beer for me, thanks. Then the next day I buy a half dozen corned beef when they go on sale and freeze them for later use.

Josh told me that here in Maine it isn't celebrated as much as I am used to, but at home there is usually a New England boiled dinner on March 17th. The question is, what meat is boiled for the dinner? It seems that according to Josh there is a 50/50 break on whether it will be boiled Corned Beef or boiled Smoked Pork Shoulder.

I immediately ran to my library and the internet to do some research. I found that boiled pork is much more likely to be an authentic Irish meal. Beef wasn't a traditional Irish food, but pork was and is. With bacon, basically any cut of pork or smoked pork the choice for St. Patrick's Day dinner. It seems that beef was exported to England but too expensive for the Irish, but pork was a plentiful food.

It wasn't until the Irish settled in America that they started eating corned beef. In fact they picked it up from the Jewish population in NYC and Boston. Irish didn't start eating corned beef in Ireland until the war, and that was very inexpensive, imported, canned, corned beef at that, probably from South America.

In addition I found that St. Patrick's Day as a celebration is also a North American thing, with the first celebration held in Boston in 1737 and the first parade in NYC in 1766. In Ireland it was a religious feast day, but until the 1970's pubs had to be closed march 17th and drinking and parades were not part of the scene. It was only in 1995 that Ireland started celebrating like the rest of the world and that was because of a national campaign to increase tourism.

So my question to all of you is, which do you eat? Corned Beef or Smoked Pork Shoulder for St. Patrick's Day dinner?

In addition I ran out and bought several corned beef and a smoked pork shoulder and during the following days I will have recipes for both to share with you.

Filed Under: Did you know?, Ingredients, Holidays, Methods
Tags: america, beef, boiling, british isles, comfort food, Corned Beef, CornedBeef, customs, did you know, pork, Smoked Pork Shoulder, st patricks day, St. Patrick's Day, St.Patrick'sDay

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-13-2008 @4:43PM DD said... My family is half Irish, and we ate "boiled dinner" fairly regularly, always with pork, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and rutabaga. Corned beef was what my mom made on St Paddy's Day, but without rutabaga and carrots--just cabbage and potatoes only. We lived in northern Wisconsin at the time.
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3-13-2008 @3:46PM Monica said... I'm thinking that the pork shoulder might also be brined in the same fashion as corned beef is brined. In this form, the Irish and English refer to it as "boiling bacon," and it is truly wonderful. They carry this brined and ready for cooking at an Irish butcher in the southwest suburbs of Chicago called "Winston's." I'd be interested to hear if anyone else ever had the pleasure of eating it.
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3-13-2008 @8:22PM Mike said... This is very interesting. We ate corned beef what I was a kid and I never cared for it. Pork would have suited me much better. I saw this press release today that had 9 interesting facts about St. Patrick and his feast day. Irish soda bread in Ireland is nothing like it is in the US, with no raisins and being much firmer.

http://prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-13-2008/0004773199&EDATE=
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3-14-2008 @10:25AM Joie said... Being 3/4 German and 1/4 Swedish, born in Newark NJ, raised on a farm in KS and now in New England, we always had corn beef and cabbage (I use Brussels sprouts now) on St Patty's Day. Smoked shoulder was cooked in a big pot with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes.
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