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So yeah… corned beef hash. For the uninitiated, it’s chipped corn beef fried with potatoes, onions and whatever herbs you want to stick in there. It’s one of those classic dishes designed to use up left over meat, potatoes and veggies. Usually served with a soft fried or poached egg on top, it’s salty and starchy and generally great breakfast food.
If someone other than me makes it.
I don’t know what it is with me trying to cook hashbrowns or generally any kind of shredded potatoes in a frying pan, but it never turns out. Is the pan too hot? Am I stirring them too often? Why are they sticking so much? These are all unanswerable conundrums to me. I need a potato tutorial. I come from german potato pancake people… shouldn’t this be second nature?
Mine corned beef hash looked like this… it went from very white to starting to singe. No lovely golden brown color. *sigh*
If you want to make corned beef hash, I would recommend any of the three fork or better recipes on epicurious. I wouldn’t presume to give you directions at this point!
~Dea
ps: OMG!! THIS IS MY SECOND LAST BLOG POST!!! Where did the year go??
Here we are, at National Hamburger Day. Again. If you’re a loyal 365food reader you may recall that this day is a repeat–Eva blogged about the gods own BBQ sauce and her lovely halibut burger back in December, for … National Hamburger Day (clearly the makers of this list were not too Type A!).
I’m going to pick up where that post left off, in two respects. Eva posited:
I know it’s not a hamburger (why do they call them hamburgers when they’re made with beef?)
Lets break this down: Why *do* they call it a hamburger? Hamburgers really are an American gift to cuisines of the world, but the etymology is all German, dear Eva. Via Wikipedia:
The term hamburger originally derives from the German city of Hamburg,Germany’s second largest city, from where many emigrated to America. In high German, “Burg” means “castle”, or king’s abode; earlier also city/town, and is a widespread component of city names. Hamburger can be a descriptive noun in German, referring to someone from Hamburg (compare London -> Londoner) or an adjective describing something from Hamburg. Similarly, frankfurter and wiener, names for other meat-based foods, are also used in German as descriptive nouns for people and as adjectives for things from the cities of Frankfurt and Wien (Vienna), respectively. The term “burger” is associated with many different types of sandwiches similar to a hamburger.
That’s the long winded answer. The short one is that the Germans love their ground critter, and brought said ground critter with them when they emigrated.
Now, on to the second part of Eva’s post:
I’m sharing my recipe for halibut burgers with you (because not all of us eat red meat!)
I do respect that Eva’s not a meat eater. But I think if we’re really talking a classic burger, something with hooves had to go into it. It’s just the way it is. Avert your eyes, dear Eva.
For my burger, I thought I would try my hand at Epicurious’s Portobello Buffalo [Bison] Burgers with Celery Apple Slaw. These burgers compensate for bison being leaner (and thus prone to drying out) by mixing in a whole lot of portabello and onions into the meat before cooking. The recipe then calls for a slaw made only of Granny Smith apples and celery. I made a double batch of the recipe, and my only addition was to add a 1/2 cup of balsamic pickled baby onions into the mushroom mix for extra punch. I also topped it with sheep’s milk herb gouda.
My guests and I give the bison burgers two thumbs up- the meat was moist, and the mushrooms and onions added some nice complexity. I thought the apple slaw was a little timid on the burger, but makes a nice side salad. Give this recipe a try, if you have a source of ground bison.
Finally, may I offer to you a spectacular resource on burgers: the New York Times keeps an online index of all things burger related. There are recipes, trend reports, and restaurant reviews. Burger lovers, converge here, it is your mecca!
Happy BBQing!
~Dea
Well this was a first for me. I’ve never cooked corned beef – in fact I don’t think I’ve even purchased the already cooked version in the deli. But I didn’t shy away from corned beef, and in fact, made it two ways! It’s all in the name of science!
So lets start at the beginning- as I’m sure you noticed by the gaudy green-on-green bejewelled sweater that someone was wearing on the bus, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. And for reasons lost in the mists of time, or at least in the mass exodus of irishmen from potato blight, economic hardship and political upheaval, corned beef boiled with root vegetables has become *the* dish that irish americans make to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. All sources seem to say that this is not a popular dish in Ireland. One commentator suggests that corned beef and cabbage became the designated dish of St. Patrick’s Day because “any idiot can make it when their deep in their cups”… which seemed like good logic to me.
Corned beef and cabbage is a very simple dish. A brisket cut of beef is salt and spice cured (i.e. the “corns” are the grains of salt) and then slow simmered with cabbage, onions, carrots and sometime potatoes in a big pot. Chuck in all the ingredients, cook for 3+ hours. It’s a classic winter-root vegetable-no fresh meat kind of meal.
I decided from the beginning of this project to go for authenticity–which in this case meant restraining myself from trying to “improve” the recipe with whatever techniques or ingredients I thought would bring out the *yum* in the food. Thus I did not add garlic or other seasonings to the meat. I didn’t rub the meat in 5 secret spices, I didn’t slip a bayleaf into the pot. This was very very hard for me. As I have said before, I don’t follow directions well!
As my guide to the authentic irish corned beef and cabbage, I selected this menu from Epicurious – and I made the whole thing, just as described: Corned beef and cabbage, more sautéed buttered cabbage, Champ (i.e milky mashed potatoes with scallions), and a lovely rhubarb bread pudding for desert. If the irish chef said this was the way it should be, that’s how it was going down in my kitchen tonight.
There was a bump in the road to authenticity however! The only raw corned beef I could find in Victoria on short notice was sold in plastic bags, about 1kg to the bag (I had originally intended to by one 2kg brisket). When I got the bags home, I read the fine print and it said “For best results, cook *in* the bag”. Erm… cook, food, in plastic? This whole idea didn’t seem right to me. How was the meat supposed to absorb the taste of the veggies? Isn’t it bad to eat out of hot plastic? In the end, I decided to indulge my inner scientist an conduct and experiment –cook one brisket in the plastic bag, and cook the other the old fashioned way. Both were put in my two biggest pots, covered with cold water, and slow cooked for 3 hours.
… and the winner is?
Well, it depends on how you like your corned beef. Both were good, in fact yummy, but not quite excellent. The bagged beef was more tender – in fact almost spongy in texture. I wouldn’t be surprised if I could have shredded it with a fork. The free-range brisket had picked up more flavours, swimming around in the pot with the (now very very cooked!) root veggies, bouquet garnie, and hot mustard. It was noticeably smaller and the beef fibres were tighter, leading to a less tender result – though by no means was it tough. The root veg were also surprisingly delicious – the cabbage was soft but not mushy, huge chunks of carrots were flavourful, and most surprising to me the whole onions had become very sweet.
I’m happy to report that the rest of the irish feast also was delicious. I found an organic savoy cabbage [the size of my head(!!)] and sautéed it in a little butter, salt and pepper to rave reviews. I didn’t have any shallots, but infused the milk for the champ with chives straight from my garden. Both dishes could likely be accurately reviewed with two words: “mmmmm… butter”.
We drank some Guinness (of course!), told a few tall tales, and listened to Great Big Sea and Spirit of the West to make the evening a complete celtic celebration. Sláinte!
~Dea
