Drove the sodium out of Ireland

Well, I corned my own corned beef this year. It was

1. dog-simple. You just buy a brisket (or a piece thereof), rub it with a mixture of kosher salt, cracked peppercorns, crumbled bay leaves, allspice, and paprika, put it in a zipper bag, refrigerate it with a weight on top of it, and turn it over once a day for five days.
   
2. delicious, without that underlying artificial flavor that packaged corned beef has.
   
3. regular old beefy brown. The recipes kept saying, "It won't be pink, it will be gray," which sounded unappetizing, but it was just cooked-brisket color.
   
4. but really, really salty. Next year I'll do the step that Cook's Illustrated said you could skip, which is to take it out of its bag and soak it in plain water to remove some of the salt.
   

Cook's has you cook it on the stovetop, but I used a crockpot -- just stuck it in there fat-side-up, covered it with water, and cooked it on Low for about 9 hours.

For the vegetables, I took the beef out and wrapped it in foil to keep it warm, then defatted the broth and put in quartered potatoes, a quartered onion, and a cabbage that had been quartered and cored and each quarter tied with twine -- a silly-looking step, but it kept the cabbage quarters together. The broth, which was too salty to eat, was the perfect level of salty to make delicious vegetables. (I wound up pouring the whole bunch of stuff into a stockpot and cooking it on the stovetop, because it was taking too long in the crockpot.)