After sampling an amazing corned beef brisket cooked in a crockpot last night at Trader Joe’s, I got all inspired and decided to slow cook my corned beef this year too. Hooray, I thought, chuck that baby in the crockpot and spend the rest of the day chilling with a frothy pint o’ Guinness!
Well, that’s not exactly how things went down. Things started off great, I got up and fed Greta, Googled some corned beef in a crockpot advice and then washed and preheated our crockpot. Yes, much to Christine’s chagrin, I preheat my crockpot. I’ve been doing it for years and have never had a problem…until today.
The minute that slab of cold corned beef and all that pink juicy goodness plopped into the overheated ceramic crockpot, I heard a horrible CRACK and knew right away what had happened. That’s right, I broke my crockpot crock in half…a nice clean crack right down the left side.
So, with pink corned beef juice slowly leaking into the metal pan of the crockpot, I hurriedly transferred everything to a regular pot on the stove. Crazy! And while that came to a boil I decided to call Rival’s Customer Service number to see how much a replacement ceramic crock would set me back and was promptly put on hold…for 43 minutes!
Now, a sane, reasonable person would have probably hung up and called back later…but not me! I held that sweaty phone to my ear like a crazy person as I rocked Greta to sleep for her nap and when an operator finally came on I told her my plight. And what happened next can only be described as a St. Patrick’s Day miracle…the lovely young woman at Rival offered to replace my ceramic crock for FREE! No shipping charge, no handling fee, no “wow-you-preheat-your-crockpot” charge, nothing.
It seems they’ve been having trouble with their phones today — which might explain my 43 minute wait on hold! — so to compensate for that, Rival was offering their customers all sorts of cool stuff. She even said, and I quote: “Well, sir, the luck of the Irish must be with you today!” Hilarious!!
So, as I blast U2, Sinead and the Cranberry’s and the aroma of boiled corned beef wafts through my house, all I can say is, thank you, Rival Customer Service…you guys seriously rock. And though I won’t be able to slow cook my corned beef brisket till next year, you can bet your shillelagh that I’ll be thanking St. Patrick for the miracle of the replaced crockpot as I do it.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, amigos!
make. see. eat. do. 
Tomas, I’ve done a few corn beefs in crock pots, and the first one came out really dry. After that one, I started putting a shallow bowl in the crockpot, on top the corned beef, to keep it under water. Seems to work.
And that’s my corned beef tip of the day!
Hmmm…that’s a great idea, Damon. I’ll have to try it when my new crockpot arrives! 🙂
I’m glad you were able to enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day feast after all.
Nice Route 66 glass…me thinks you should add that as a “tag” to this post. 🙂