Cork's most distinctive food tradition: beef cured for one to two weeks in a dry rub of allspice, juniper berries, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves and brown sugar, then slow-boiled and served cold in thin slices.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
A Cork English Market tradition since the 18th century, when spices arrived through Cork harbour from Caribbean and Asian trade routes. The Cork cure layers black pepper, allspice, juniper, cloves and brown sugar onto silverside beef across 10 to 14 days, a recipe distinct from the saltier English salt-beef. Tom Durcan, in business at the English Market since 1996, is the city benchmark and ships nationally at Christmas; Bresnan's of Cornmarket Street is the older counter, founded 1929. The dish remains on the Munster Christmas table and is increasingly featured on Cork city restaurant menus as a starter sliced thin with horseradish.
Tip from the editors. If you skip the saltpetre the meat will be grey rather than pink; the cure flavour is identical, so it is purely a colour decision.
Since 1990, the definitive source of Cork spiced beef in the English Market. Tom Durcan runs two stalls side by side - the butcher's counter and a dedicated.
Order: Hot sliced spiced beef from the dedicated counter - a fundamentally Cork experience available only here
The 1788 covered market at Cork's culinary heart, with stalls passed down through generations. Tom Durcan Meats and O'Flynn's Sausages are the anchor trades.
Order: Sliced hot spiced beef from Tom Durcan's stall by the fountain - the benchmark of Cork food culture and Cork's oldest surviving street food
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