Tom Durcan’s Spiced Beef FOOD AWARD BY AOIFE CARRIGY
chef-proprietor and fellow Cork man Ross Lewis is an enthusiastic champion of the tender, sweetsavoury delicacy. Tom Durcan has been selling his traditional spiced beef at his butcher’s stall – one of 10 in the 140-year-old covered English Market, if you include three who specialise in poultry – since he set up the stall in 1985, but the recipe he uses dates back to his teenage apprenticeship in Jim Kidney’s butcher shop in Carrigaline. Tom’s adapted recipe involves a slow cure for at least a month in a salt brine with brown sugar and saltpetre and a secret spice mix that includes pimento, cloves and cracked black pepper. It’s a lengthy and labour-intensive process requiring regular stirring of the cure to ensure absorption of all the flavours. Traditionally
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t’s quite a thing to be recognised as one of the finest purveyors of one of your county’s most beloved foods and to have successfully introduced it to new customers all around the world. ‘It used to be eaten at Christmas as a real treat for locals here in Cork,’ craft butcher Tom Durcan explains of the traditional spiced beef that he is famed for, ‘but now people love it year round and the country over.’ The Farmgate Café in the English Market uses it daily in sandwiches, reubens and cold plates and the Real Olive Company uses ‘mountains of it’ at their popular market stall. Indeed, you’ll now find Durcan’s Spiced Beef nationwide, from Centra and SuperValu, where it’s sold cooked and sliced, to Dublin’s Chapter One restaurant, where
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IT’S QUITE A THING TO BE RECOGNISED AS ONE OF THE FINEST PURVEYORS OF ONE OF YOUR COUNTY’S MOST BELOVED FOODS AND TO HAVE SUCCESSFULLY INTRODUCED IT TO NEW CUSTOMERS ALL AROUND THE WORLD.
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