Recipe: Filipino-style Corned Beef and Cabbage

Peace family, if you’d like to try some comfort food that’s a little different, last night, my friend, Cathy, from the Philippines, and I had a wonderful time making Filipino-style corned beef and cabbage. It’s not very glamorous, but boy is it warm, tasty, and fast!

Filipino-style Corned Beef and Cabbage

You will need:

1 can of corned beef (we used Palm brand, 10.5 or 15oz)

about 1/2 to 1/4 of a cabbage, shredded (it was slightly less than 2x the amount of meat)

2 shallots, each about the size of a head of garlic, chopped or sliced into little half-moon slivers, or a small yellow onion, chopped

rice (We used normal, long grain rice, Douget’s brand. For two of us, we made 2 cups of rice.)

Pepper to taste

A little coconut oil, or other oil

Before cooking anything, prepare all the vegetables, and heat the water for the rice so that the rice can cook while you do the other work. Next, heat a dab of oil (Filipinos generally use coconut oil) in a large pan over medium-high heat. Stirring, sauté the shallot slices until a bit translucent. Next, add the shredded cabbage and continue to stir and fry, until cabbage changes color slightly, and is more tender, but is not cooked to death. Add all of the meat from the can of corned beef, sprinkle pepper all over the food, mix it up, and turn the heat down slightly to medium or medium-low, and put the lid on. Let the food cook together for several minutes, then serve over rice with a spoon and fork (in the Philippines, they use a fork and spoon together instead of a knife or chopsticks). Enjoy with your favorite drink, especially if it’s pineapple juice! (*NB: Cathy says if you don’t like cabbage, sometimes her mom will make this same recipe using diced potato instead of the cabbage. It is still served over rice.)

For dessert, we enjoyed Mikawaya brand mango mochi icecream! (Mochi is a rice-flour wrapper that envelopes the ice cream inside of a little ball, so you can eat it with your hands. Have a wonderful time! 🙂