Home › Meats › Corned-Beef Hash
Corned-Beef Hash
One pint of chopped beef; one pint of cooked potato; one tablespoon of butter; one-half cup of milk or water; salt and pepper. Chop the potato and the meat separately and rather fine, seasoning each when chopped. If the beef is very salt, do not add salt. Mix beef and potatoes together lightly. Pour the milk in a frying-pan with half the butter, and when warm, turn in the hash, spreading it evenly, and placing the rest of the butter, cut in pieces, on the top. Cover the pan, and place it where the hash will cook slowly for half an hour. There should then be a rich, thick crust on the bottom. Do not stir the hash. Fold it the same as an omelette, and place it on a warm platter. This slow process of heating the hash gives it a flavor that cannot be obtained by hurried cooking.
A plain, well-judged hash whose whole point is the crust. Everything else in the method exists to protect it.
- Do not stirThe single instruction that matters. Once the hash is spread in the pan it must be left alone for the full half hour so the bottom can set into a browned sheet. Stirring breaks the crust into the mush and you end up with warmed meat and potato.
- A pint is a measure of volumeTwo cups of chopped corned beef and two cups of chopped cooked potato, loosely packed — roughly 10 oz of meat and 12 oz of potato. Equal volumes, not equal weights.
- "Cook slowly" means lowOn a modern burner this is low heat, and the pan should be one that spreads heat evenly — cast iron or heavy aluminium. Thin nonstick over a gas flame will scorch the centre long before the edges colour.
- "Place it where" is a range-top instructionOn a coal or wood range the cook moved the pan to a cooler part of the top. The equivalent is the lowest setting on a small burner, or a flame tamer under the pan.
- PotatoesCold leftover boiled potatoes, chopped rather than mashed or riced. Warm or freshly cooked potato releases starch and the hash can turn pasty; a potato boiled the day before is the usual choice.
- SaltSalt levels in commercial corned beef vary, so taste the meat before deciding. Season the potato in any case — the recipe has you season each separately as it is chopped.
- Folding it outLoosen the edges with a thin spatula first, fold in half like an omelette, and slide rather than lift it onto the platter. A well-set crust will hold together.
- YieldServes three or four as a main course, two if it is the whole of a breakfast.
Hash is the household economy of the meat course made visible: corned beef was often bought or brined as a large piece, boiled, and the remainder chopped for the next morning. The word comes from the French hacher, to chop, and the dish was long familiar enough in English cookery that authors of the period explained not what it was but how to do it well. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, also issued cook books aimed at the ordinary middle-class household, and this entry is characteristic: no novelty, just an argument for slow heat over a hurried pan. The corned beef itself reflects a period when brining beef was a common preservation method rather than a deli speciality, and a boiled corned brisket was among the cheaper ways to put a large joint on the table.