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Corned-Beef Hash
2 cups chopped corned beef
½ cup milk or water
2 tablespoons butter, or savory
2 cups cooked potatoes fat
Salt and pepper
Mix beef and potatoes together lightly and season. Pour the and, when this is warm, milk into a frying-pan with half the fat and, when this is warm, placing the rest of the turn in the hash, spreading it evenly and placing the rest of the pan and place it where fat, cut in pieces, on the top. Cover the pan and place it where . There should then the hash will cook slowly for half an hour. There should then Do not stir the hash. Fold be a rich, thick crust on the bottom. Do not stir the hash. Fold on a warm platter. This it as an omelet is folded and place it on a warm platter. This flavor that can not slow process of heating the hash gives it a flavor that can not be obtained by hurried cooking.
A slow-cooked skillet hash, folded like an omelet rather than stirred. The method is sound and still worth following exactly as written.
- The hinge: do not stirThe whole point is an unbroken bottom crust. Press the hash into the pan, cover, leave it alone for the full half hour over low heat, then fold it over on itself and slide it out.
- Heat level"Cook slowly" means the lowest setting that still keeps a faint sizzle — roughly medium-low on a gas burner. A heavy cast-iron or carbon-steel pan holds the temperature steadily and releases the crust better than thin nonstick.
- The fat"Savory fat" would generally have meant rendered drippings, such as beef or bacon fat, rather than butter. Either, or butter, works. Two tablespoons total, half warmed in the pan and half cut in pieces on top, as the recipe directs.
- Chopping, not grindingChopped means knife-cut into small dice, so the beef keeps some texture. Meat run through a grinder or food processor turns pasty and will not form a good crust.
- PotatoesThe recipe asks only for cooked potatoes; cold ones mix better, as warm potatoes break down toward mash. Waxy or all-purpose varieties hold their shape best.
- LiquidThe half cup of milk or water goes into the pan with the fat, not into the meat mixture, and steams up through the hash as it cooks. Milk browns slightly more readily.
- SeasoningCorned beef is already salty. Taste the mixture before adding any salt; pepper generously.
- YieldRoughly four cups of mixture, about right for a 9- or 10-inch pan; enough for three or four with eggs or toast alongside.
Corned-beef hash is a leftovers dish in the plainest sense: the boiled beef and potatoes from one dinner reappearing at the next breakfast. "Corned" refers to the coarse grains, or corns, of salt used to cure the beef, a preservation method that made brisket and similar cuts a year-round staple long before home refrigeration. What distinguishes this version from a hurried griddle hash is the insistence on slow covered cooking and a single fold over a browned crust — a technique that trades speed for the slow process of heating that the author explicitly credits with the flavor, and a reminder that in a coal- or wood-fired kitchen a pan could simply be moved to a cooler part of the range and left there.