Exemplification Essay: Irish Cuisine

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I love food! I mean, who doesn’t? Sweet food, spicy food, Mexican food, Chinese food, the list could go on forever. We all have our own preference or favorite dish. My favorite is corned beef and cabbage. Being of Irish American descent, this dish was tradition in my house on St. Patrick’s Day. Just mentioning corned beef and cabbage brings me back to my childhood, watching my mother prepare it and waiting to taste the salty meat that as a child I called the “stringy meat.”
Every year my mother would prepare the dish and everyone would sit down and enjoy it together. By everyone I mean my parents, my four brothers, four sisters and myself. As my mother was preparing the meat and peeling and cutting the vegetables, the rest of us would help …show more content…

Now don’t get me wrong, as a child I wasn’t always fond of the vegetables that came with the meal, but that delicious, tender meat would always make me wait with …show more content…

However, there is considerable debate about the association of corned beef with Ireland. (Kurlansky, 124) Some say the reason why people eat it in the U.S. is that many of the Irish who emigrated here did so during the 1840's, and were very poor. Among the poor Irish at this time, the big festive meal you ate on holidays was ham or bacon with cabbage, and when they came to this country, they either couldn't find exactly the right kind of bacon or couldn't afford it. Corned beef was the closest thing they could find, so they had that instead. Although the exact beginnings of corned beef are unknown, it’s said to have come about when people began preserving meat through salt-curing in Keighley, West Yorkshire. Ireland produced a significant amount of the corned beef in the Atlantic trade from local cattle and salt imported from southwestern France.(Mandelblatt 63) Coastal cities, such as Dublin, Belfast, and Cork, created vast beef curing and packing industries, with Cork producing half of Ireland's annual beef exports in 1668.( Gallaghery, Mac Con Iomaire, Padraic 9) In Ireland today, corned beef is mainly geared toward tourist consumption and most Irish in Ireland don’t identify the ingredient as native cuisine. (Brown,

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