Corned Beef on Rye with Sauerkraut

Corned Beef on Rye with Sauerkraut

If your wondering what to do with all that leftover corned beef you have from your St Patrick’s Day celebration I have the perfect sandwich for you. Corned Beef On Rye with Sauerkraut is how I ate corned beef when I was growing up.

The Irish aren’t the only ones who liked to eat Corned Beef. I grew up with my maternal German grandmother and a German Jewish grandfather and we ate corned beef and cabbage all of the time.

I don’t think we ever ate Corned Beef for St Patrick’s Day even though there is a tad bit of Irish in my blood. Just not on my mother’s side.  My parents divorced when I was very young and sad as it is my father never was in my life much as a child.

I didn’t even know there was Irish blood running through my veins until I started researching my family tree. As far as I knew I was close to 100% German.  But those Irish ancestors were just names on a piece of paper until it was confirmed with an AncestryDNA test.

I am a big whopping 17% Irish. That explains the red in my son beard. It was a big surprise when he grew out a beard and the hair on his chin had an obvious red tint to it.

I originally planned to share a crock pot corned beef and cabbage recipe in celebration of St Patrick’s Day. I cooked the corned beef I used for the Corned Beef on Rye with Sauerkraut sandwiches in my slow cooker.

You see those pretty colorful carrots in the photo? As pretty as they looked in this photo before they were cooked once they cooked for a good 4 hours in the crock pot they turned a really ugly color.

I was pretty disappointed so instead I decided to make this corned beef sandwich post. While I was cooking the corned beef it reminded me of my grandparents and the food my grandmother would make when I was a child.

We ate a lot of sauerkraut as you can imagine. My grandmother would make corned beef and sauerkraut, she would boil a ham with potatoes and sauerkraut. And we would eat kosher beef hot dogs with sauerkraut.

The ham and corned beef came from her German heritage and we ate the hot dogs because they were the closest we could get to the hot dogs we would eat from the hot dog stands when we lived in New York.

Most people are familiar with a Ruben sandwich made of rye bread, corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing.

I’m pretty sure we never put Thousand Island dressing on our corned beef sandwiches. Our Corned Beef On Rye with Sauerkraut sandwiches were always topped with spicy mustard.

I can’t imagine eating sauerkraut with anything but spicy mustard. Spicy mustard was a staple in our house.

How to make Corned Beef on Rye with Sauerkraut Sandwiches

Ingredients

• Cooked and sliced Corned Beef
• German Sauerkraut
• Jewish Rye Bread
• Spicy Mustard

Directions

1. Slice the corned beef thickly and cover the bottom piece of Jewish Rye bread with enough pieces of corned beef to cover the entire slice of bread.
2. Top the corned beef with a big mound of warn sauerkraut.
3. Slather spicy mustard on the sauerkraut and cover with another piece of Jewish Rye bread.
4. Cut in half on the diagonal.
5. Serve with coleslaw if desired.