What's Luck Got To Do With It?
What's Luck Got To Do With It?
The Friday Newsletter is giving this week the Irish Goodbye
I’m going to have to eat my words a bit.
It is the previously-stated and firmly-held editorial stance of this newsletter that holidays are, in fact, good. Controversial, I know, right? I like holidays, no matter how inconsequential, because they give the year structure and rhythm—especially here in the final stretch of winter, when we’re stir-crazy and just dying for a reason to celebrate anything.
Then mid-March rolls around, and one particular holiday tests this belief like it’s never been tested.
No, not the Ides of March; the only Brutus-involved violence I care about is delivered by the hands of the Ohio University Bobcat.
I’m speaking, of course, about St. Patrick’s Day.
Don’t get me wrong: I love surface-level Irish culture as much as any extremely-basic, one-quarter-Irish person out there; I like Guinness and Celtic music and U2 and Billy Connolly [EDIT: of course I knew he was Scottish. I was testing you. Yeah, that’s the ticket.] and pretty much anything that isn’t the Boston Celtics.
The holiday itself, though? It’s kind of a nightmare.
Perhaps I’m biased in this feeling by the decade I lived in New York City, where St. Patrick’s Day meant hordes of the tri-state area’s rowdiest young men descending on Midtown Manhattan to drink green beer, holler, and vomit on the street in broad daylight, but there’s been plenty a year where the sight of March 17th on the calendar filled me with more dread than excitement. Truly, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a heavily-inebriated 17-year-old in a New York Rangers jersey sprint across four active subway tracks because his friends were on the opposite platform, something I once witnessed on my way home from work on a Wednesday.
The holiday deserves better.
Ireland is a beautiful country with a rich culture, one that’s had a heavy influence on American culture, and I adore many of the things that should be associated with St. Patrick’s Day. So I’m going to embrace it on my own terms; take the corned beef, leave the green beer, and make the most of what we’ve got.
Friends? It’s Friday. As usual, I’ve got a loaded slate of ACBN-Certified Good Things to launch you into the weekend in style.
7) My working theory is that a normal hamburger does not have enough nitrates
One of the most unalloyed delights this time of year is that grocery stores stock up on relatively-cheap corned beef. I love corned beef. I mean, it’s saltier beef—what’s not to love? It’s a killer breakfast meat and an essential part of a Reuben.
On the one hand, I wish it were readily-available in the meat case year-round; on the other hand, I would literally die if it were.
Now, if you’re especially ambitious and in the throes of pre-vaccination cabin fever like I was a year ago, you could undertake the curing process yourself—buy sodium nitrate and curing spices, spend a week brining a whole brisket, and simmer it for hours in your largest pot. It was a fun project when I did. You could do this.
It’s a lot easier to just spend $12 on a hunk of corned beef at Kroger, though.
Of course, I can’t just be content with a normal preparation. That just wouldn’t be me. Last year, I turned a corned beef dinner into a burrito.
This year? I’m making an Irish burger.
The ACBN Irish Burger
1 lb ground chuck
1 lb corned beef
If you have a meat grinder, run both through together to create an even blend. If you don’t, dice the corned beef into small chunk and pulse a few times in a food processor, then mix with the ground beef. Form into six 1/3-pound patties.
8 ounces white mushrooms, sliced thin
2 tablespoons butter
pinch salt
Saute over low heat, stirring occasionally, until nicely browned and softened
10 ounces Irish stout beer
1/4 cup brown mustard
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Add all ingredients to a small saucepan over medium heat; whisk to combine and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10-15 minutes or until thickened to the consistency of steak sauce.
Preheat a non-stick or cast-iron pan or skillet to high heat (or, if you’re well-equipped, a baking steel on a hot gas grill). Brush the hot surface with butter, and press the patties in firmly, smashing with a spatula. Cook for 4-5 minutes, then flip, and bring to an internal temperature of 130F as measured with an instant-read thermometer.
soft hamburger bun
Place the patties on a toasted bun, top with sautéed mushrooms, and drizzle the stout sauce over top. Serve with some manner of fried potato.
Now that’s a burger. Didn’t even need cheese; plenty of big flavors on its own.
If you don’t want to complicate matters—well, first of all, I can’t relate, I love complicating matters—you could make a damn fine burger doing this with just regular ground beef. The corned beef did lend a nice salty tang to the whole affair, though, and felt especially on-theme for the holiday.
Either way, the sauce is a winner, and would go excellent with a steak as well.
6) I’m shipping up to [record scratch] Kentucky???
It’s no secret that I’m a bourbon aficionado; heck, it’s a small but crucial part of why I call Kentucky home. Bourbon’s great. But I don’t want to sleep on Irish whiskey as a category, because I’d be missing out on something unique and special in its own right. Irish whiskeys are usually a bit lighter-bodied and fruitier than their full-bodied, caramelly cousins from Kentucky, and they’ve got a nice background spice without verging into the smokiness of Scotch.
For many people, the Irish whiskey conversation starts and stops with the widely-available standby Jameson, and they’d get no quarrel from me—for many of my most bar-going years, Jameson-and-soda was my workhorse drink. There’s much more to Irish whiskey than that familiar face, though, and there’s an exciting new entrant to that canon from right here in Kentucky.