St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, and it also happens to be our 12th wedding anniversary. I wanted to do something special for the occasion this year, and I let my husband pick the recipe he thought sounded best. He chose this Irish Cast Iron Skillet Corned Beef Colcannon Casserole, and it sounds like all the best parts of an Irish-American St. Patrick’s Day meal and then some. I cannot wait to get started on this!
I so hope that you enjoy it as much as we do! And keep this in mind for St. Paddy’s Day for a main dish or side dish, too! (You can make this into a side dish or vegetarian by eliminating the corned beef)! Either way, everyone’s eyes will be smiling!
The Ingredients
This recipe calls for a pound of leftover corned beef, so I started by making a corned beef dinner a day or two before I planned to serve this casserole. The three pound cut of corned beef I used cooked up to about two pounds, so I put half of it aside for this casserole and we ate the rest. The recipe does give a couple of substitutions that can be used, but I wanted the real thing.
Next up were the potatoes. I decided to use yellow potatoes since they are ideal for another dish that uses thinly sliced potatoes–scalloped potatoes. I also opted for bags of shredded Swiss cheese since they were BOGO. The sale made them the same price as a block of Swiss, and no shredding required on my part. Otherwise, I kept to the list of ingredients without any other changes.
The Process
I didn’t prep everything before I got started because the cabbage and onion had to cook a bit before the casserole could be assembled. I got them started and then began slicing the potatoes and making the cream mixture. Both were done well before the cabbage and onions finished.
A short time later I was ready to assemble the casserole. It wasn’t difficult at all. At first, I wished I had used more cabbage because there didn’t seem to be enough for each layer. but my 12-inch cast-iron skillet was quite full by the time all three layers were in, so I’m glad I followed the recipe. The blog post that accompanied this recipe mentioned using a 10-inch skillet, but I don’t see how it could hold everything.
When it was time to remove the lid after cooking for an hour, my skillet looked ready to overflow. I slid a baking pan onto the rack below it to catch any drips, but fortunately, there weren’t any. Disaster averted, and I ended up with a nicely browned corned beef colcannon casserole.
I let it sit for about half an hour before I sliced into it, and my first slices fell apart. It must have been the cream sauce and melted cheese (darn it all!). The photo with this post is after the casserole had cooled a lot more. Just something to be aware of if having perfect slices is important. However, once you try this casserole, I doubt you’ll care what the slices look like!
As far as time goes, this recipe did take a while:
- 42 minutes to prep*
- 1 hour 45 minutes to cook
- 20 minutes to cool
- 2 hours 47 minutes total
*I counted prep work as everything I did up until the skillet went into the oven. That included cooking the cabbage and onion for 20 minutes.
