Alice's Spicy Baked Corned Beef

The Recipe:

4 lb. Boneless corn beef
1 Tbsp. pickling spices
1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
1 onion, quartered

Add all ingredients to pot. Simmer 3 hours. Preheat oven to 350. Remove corned beef (but leave liquid in pot), trim off as much fat as you want. Put corned beef in a 9x9 glass baking dish.

Mix together:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. mustard (don't bother w/dijon, brown mustard works fine)

Spread on top of corned beef. Pour

1/2 cup sweet pickle juice (or fruit juice, or half dill pickle juice and half canned fruit syrup)

into the pan. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 10 minutes with the liquid in the pan.

While the corned beef is baking, scoop the spent vegetables & spices out of the pot on the stove and throw them away. Bring it up to a boil; then add as many as you want of the following at the appropriate times to get them done like you like:

potatoes, unpeeled, preferably red skinned & cut in half- 30-20 minutes cooking, depending on size
carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths- 15 minutes cooking time
cabbage, cut into quarters, 10-15 minutes cooking time

The Story:

This is my family's recipe and evokes memories of Sunday dinners of long ago. I researched it for a class in cooking school, only to find out that instead of it being a good Irish Corn Beef recipe, its origins are Jewish and it most likely came from a magazine. Oh, well.

It's about as unhealthy as food can get- candied, salted commercially-produced beef- so don't eat it often, but enjoy it when you do. It's lick-the-cutting board good.