Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with corned beef and cabbage

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day, and that means time to fire up the corned beef and cabbage.

One South Side store will sell more than 20,000 pounds of the raw meat by Thursday.

For decades, County Fair Foods in Beverly has been serving up slabs of corned beef to families from all over.

The product comes pre-spiced and in a brine in hundreds of big barrels. Customers can ask the butcher for specific sizes and cuts of meat, and then it is cut right on the spot. Customers are also given free packets of seasoning for cooking.

“They come here every year because they know that we deliver, we give them what they want,” said store owner Bill Baffes while laughing. “They like the atmosphere, they like the Irish music in the store.”

Now, we can't do a story about corned beef without talking about its compadre - cabbage. This is the one time of the year you may be able to get your kids to eat the leafy green vegetable – well for some.

“I'm not doing the cabbage, no one eats the cabbage in my family,” said customer Anne Bykowski.

Baffes says if you haven’t bought your corned beef and cabbage yet, don’t wait too much longer. They plan to run out by Thursday.