Home › To Hash Beef or Mutton › To Hash Beef or Mutton
To Hash Beef or Mutton
533. Do it the same as in the last receipt, except that the meat is to be in slices, and add a spoonful of walnut liquor or ketchup. Another Way.-Cut the meat into small thin slices, put two tablespoonfuls of flour into a dish, with a tea-spoonful of salt, and a saltspoonful of pepper; mix them together, and rub the slices of meat with it; place in a large and shallow stewpan a piece of butter the size of a walnut (and if liked, three small onions cut in small pieces); put it on the fire till the onion is browned, then add the meat, which warm on one side, and turn over. When warmed through, pour over it a pint of hot water, and two pickled gherkins cut in slices, and a table-spoonful of the vinegar from the pickle, also a table-spoonful of walnut ketchup; boil up and serve with sippets of toasted bread.
Another Way. Cut thin slices of mutton or beef, and put into half a pint of broth, let it simmer a quarter of an hour and skim all the fat from it; then season it with pepper, salt, and mushroom ketchup, with a squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of vinegar; after which thicken with flour and butter. The hash eats less greasy in this way, as the flour absorbs the fat when added at first.
Another Way.-Slice the mutton, lay it in the saucepan with a little water, and simmer for a quarter of an hour, then carefully skim off all the fat and add a little mushroom ketchup, pepper, and salt, and thicken with flour and butter. Give une boil up, and dish it up with sippets of toasted bread.
Four variations on the same Victorian standby: yesterday's roast reheated in a thin, sharp gravy. The whole thing hinges on not cooking the meat twice.
- Warm, do not boilThe meat is already cooked. Slice it thin, bring the liquid to a bare simmer, and give the slices only long enough to heat through — two or three minutes. Note that the third and fourth methods do direct a quarter-hour simmer with the meat in the pan; sliced roast beef left that long will turn grey and stringy, so you may prefer to make the gravy first and warm the meat in it briefly.
- Walnut liquor and walnut ketchupThe dark, salty pickling liquor from a jar of pickled walnuts, and the thin spiced sauce made from green walnuts. Pickled walnuts are still easy to find in Britain; bottled walnut ketchup is much harder to come by. Elsewhere, a dash of Worcestershire sauce or good mushroom ketchup covers the same savoury-vinegar note.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, black, salty mushroom extract, not the tomato condiment. It is still bottled commercially and is closer to a light soy or a mushroom-based sauce in strength — start with a teaspoon and taste.
- Butter the size of a walnutAbout 1 tablespoon, roughly 15 g. In the same recipe, a saltspoonful is about a quarter teaspoon.
- The flour matters more than it looksIn the second method the flour goes on the meat before it meets the butter, so it browns and thickens as the dish cooks. The third method thickens with flour and butter at the end, yet closes by remarking that the flour absorbs the fat 'when added at first' and the hash eats less greasy that way — the text pulls both ways. If you thicken at the end, use a paste of equal butter and flour and let it boil once to lose the raw taste.
- Skim properlyCold roast meat carries a good deal of set fat. Skim after the simmer, and if you have time, let the pan stand off the heat a minute so the fat gathers at the edge.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted bread, arranged round the edge of the dish. Toast them dry rather than buttering, or they collapse in the gravy.
- YieldA pound of cold roast, half a pint to a pint of liquid, serves two to three as a main course with potatoes.