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Corned-Beef Hash
(Spanish style.) Chop together very fine the corned beef and potatoes and a half or a whole green pepper, after having removed the seeds and veins; put two tablespoonfuls of butter into the blazer (over hot water), add the chopped ingredients, and season to suit the taste, adding a little stock or milk to moisten; mix thoroughly, then cover, and stir occasionally until heated through. Put a few bits of butter here and there over the top, and serve when melted. Use an equal quantity of meat and potato, or twice as much potato as meat. Serve with olives, pickles or a light vegetable salad.
A chafing-dish hash, meant to be assembled at table from cooked leftovers. The whole thing is reheating and seasoning, not cooking, so the quality of the corned beef and the boiled potatoes decides the dish.
- The blazer and the hot-water panThe blazer is the upper pan of a chafing dish; "over hot water" means it sits in the water bath below, making a double boiler. A heavy skillet over low heat does the same job, or set a metal bowl over simmering water if you want the original's gentleness.
- No crust this wayCooked over water the hash steams and stays soft — that is what the recipe intends. If you want the browned bottom most people now expect from corned-beef hash, cook it in the blazer directly over the flame, or in a skillet, pressing it flat and leaving it alone for several minutes at a time.
- "Spanish style" means the pepperIn American cookbooks of this period a "Spanish" label frequently amounted to little more than green pepper, sometimes with onion or tomato; here the pepper is all that distinguishes it. Use half a bell pepper for a mild version; a poblano or a little jalapeño gives more of what the name suggests.
- Corned beefThis assumes leftover boiled corned brisket, chopped by hand. Canned corned beef works and needs no chopping, but it is much saltier and already fine-textured — season at the very end. Deli-sliced corned beef, diced, is the closest substitute for the original.
- PotatoesBoiled and cooled potatoes, chopped fine. Cook and chill them ahead if you can; warm potatoes turn gluey under the knife. The recipe allows equal meat and potato or twice as much potato as meat; the latter is the thriftier of the two.
- MoisteningAdd stock or milk a tablespoon at a time — enough to bind, not enough to pool. Well-salted corned beef plus butter means you may need no salt at all; pepper and a little of the pepper's own bite is usually the whole seasoning.
- Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given. Roughly 2 cups chopped meat and 2 to 3 cups chopped potato with the 2 tablespoons butter is about as much as a blazer will hold, and serves about four as a supper dish.
- TimingThe recipe gives no times. Expect roughly fifteen to twenty minutes over hot water to heat through, stirring occasionally; over direct heat, nearer eight to ten minutes, most of it undisturbed.
Chafing-dish cookery had a genuine vogue in American cities around 1900, when a spirit lamp and a nickel-plated pan let a hostess produce hot food in the parlour without a servant or a kitchen — which is why so many chafing-dish recipes begin with something already cooked. Corned-beef hash belongs to the older, thriftier tradition of using up boiled salt beef and yesterday's potatoes; the chafing dish simply moved it out of the frying pan and onto the table. The "Spanish style" label reflects a loose late-Victorian convention in which green pepper, and occasionally tomato or paprika, was enough to earn a dish a foreign name; it tells you more about American appetite for novelty than about Spain. The suggested olives, pickles or light vegetable salad fit the same fashion.