CAMDEN — Bob McGowan, a longtime butcher for French & Brawn Market Place in downtown Camden, drags out a couple of 8 pound cuts of corned beef from the cooler and lays them down on butcher paper. "Real corned beef should look gray on the outside, like ours, not red inside the wrapper," he said. "A lot of people shudder when they look at our corned beef at first, because they are used to seeing it in a grocery store and it's pink--but that's from nitrates. When you cut into ours, it's pink inside, but the outside should look gray."

This brined cut of meat is going to be on a lot of people's tables this Sunday. McGowan delves into the meal's historic origins. "Originally, it was a poor man's meal--something that would last in your cellar all year long, so you'd butcher the animal in the fall and make a brine that would pickle the meat and it would store all winter long. And on St. Paddy's Day, most Irish people wouldn't have much money. What vegetables they'd have left over in the cellar from the winter would be root vegetables--cabbage, potatoes, carrots and the like. And they would all go together naturally very well."

Salt was the main pickling ingredient. "Some people use garlic or peppercorns to corn it," he said. "We use just salt and water." McGowan said F&B makes their corned beef from Western Steer. "We use briskets because that's how it's been traditionally made.""What we do is you fill a barrel  with water and add a raw egg or potato. Next we start adding canning salt until the egg or potato rises to the top. That means it's at its proper salinity for corning the beef."  "It's the way they always did — it's so simple. Pretty scientific, huh?" he said, with a laugh. At this point the brisket is left to sit in the brine mixture for a minimum of four days. "To cook the corned beef place it into the boiling pot and cook it for three or four hours until you can stick a fork all the way through the meat."  (He cautions against using a crock pot, which he says doesn't get hot enough.)    

Corned beef is one of those comfort foods steeped in memory. "People remember going to grandmother's house and eating the whole dinner," he said.

French and Brawn sells 8-9 pound cuts of corned beef, but can trim it to any size, depending on what the customer wants.

Will he be having this meal on Sunday? "Oh yeah, I always do," he said, smiling.

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com.