Corned beef and cab­bage is a tra­di­tion­al Irish dish that fea­tures corned beef slow­ly sim­mered with onions, pota­toes, car­rots, cab­bage, beef broth and beer. But Caribbean peo­ple know it as some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, main­ly be­cause we use canned corned beef, like this one from Tar­get.

There’s some­thing beau­ti­ful­ly nos­tal­gic about that odd-shaped tin that re­quires a key to open it.

Ger­ard Low Foon, own­er of the pop-up din­ner se­ries 6 Plates TT, gives this easy week­night meal an up­grade by tak­ing the cab­bage one step fur­ther and mak­ing sauer­kraut be­fore sautéing every­thing to­geth­er in the pan. First, he mix­es salt in­to fine­ly sliced cab­bage and mas­sages it un­til it starts to lac­to-fer­ment, a process in which bac­te­ria break down the sug­ars in foods and form lac­tic acid. It tastes in­sane­ly good.

In­gre­di­ents

For the sauer­kraut:

1 quar­ter head cab­bage, sliced in­to thin strips

1 pinch of non-iodized salt (kosher or sea salt)

For the corned beef:

1 can Tar­get corned beef

Cook­ing oil

1 pi­men­to, minced

1 medi­um-sized onion, chopped

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 2-inch knob gin­ger

2 ta­ble­spoons ketchup

Black pep­per, to taste

2 leaves. ban­da­nia/chadon beni, chif­fon­ade

Hot pep­per (op­tion­al)

Uten­sils

Kitchen scale (in an ide­al sit­u­a­tion)

Cut­ting board

Knife

Pot

Ma­son jar/air­tight con­tain­er

Di­rec­tions

For the sauer­kraut:

Clean every­thing! When deal­ing with fer­men­ta­tion, you don’t want any bac­te­ria. Wash your uten­sils and san­i­tize your work space. And as if you need­ed to hear it again, wash your damn hands. You’ll be us­ing them to mas­sage salt in­to your cab­bage.

Wash the cab­bage thor­ough­ly, save one large leaf and slice the rest of it in­to thin rib­bons.

Trans­fer the cab­bage to a big bowl and sprin­kle salt over top. Be­gin work­ing the salt in­to the cab­bage by mas­sag­ing and squeez­ing the cab­bage with your hands. At first, it may seem very dry but with­in a few min­utes, the cab­bage will soft­en and be­gin to spring wa­ter.

Place the cab­bage in­to a ma­son jar or air­tight con­tain­er, pour­ing all the liq­uid re­leased by the cab­bage in­to the jar.

Place the cab­bage leaf you re­served over the top of your sauer­kraut and press down. This works like a blan­ket, keep­ing all the cab­bage sub­merged in the wa­ter.

Cov­er the jar. This al­lows gas to build.

Leave it in a dark cup­board and let it fer­ment for 3 to 10 days. “Burp” the cab­bage by press­ing down on it every 12 hours.

Start tast­ing it af­ter 3 days — when the sauer­kraut tastes good to you, stick it in the re­frig­er­a­tor.

For the corned beef:

In a medi­um pot over medi­um-high heat, pour a ta­ble­spoon of oil.

Once the oil is hot enough, throw in pi­men­tos, onion, gar­lic and gin­ger. Cook un­til the gar­lic and onion are translu­cent.

Add the sauer­kraut to the pot.

Add the corned beef to the cab­bage and cook for 5 min­utes.