Corned Beef Hash

During those vacations where I’ve made up my mind to just eat whatever I want (which, I can assure you, happens no more than eighty or ninety percent of the time) I always look forward to decadent breakfasts. I’m talkin’ pancakes, bacon, hash browns (oh the hash browns), bacon, fried eggs, bacon, and eggs fried in bacon grease.

When I’m feeling particularly naughty, I’ll make a big breakfast bagel sandwich. This is exactly the same as a regular large breakfast outlined above, except that the whole thing is stuffed between two halves of a bagel. I can pull myself around one of those like a snake swallowing a wild boar.

But the pinnacle of breakfast nastiness has to be the corned beef hash. I save this particular treat for just once a year. Twice tops. Maybe six or seven times. But no more than ten. Because of that, I figured it was high time to talk about it here. Which was a great excuse to go to the store and buy some.

That’s just what I did a couple hours ago. On my way home from work, I stopped by HEB to pick up a few needed supplies along with the coveted can o’ hash. Except I couldn’t find it. All the canned goods are basically in the same spot in the store. We’re not talking about twenty square miles of searching here. So where the hell was it?

Is it by the soup? No. Is it a kind of vegetable? It does have potatoes in it. Nope. How about by the chili? Or the canned spaghetti? I know I’ve seen cans of meat around here somewhere. After circling around the canned goods nearly long enough to draw the attention of security, I decided to ask someone. (I know! A guy actually conceding defeat and asking for help! It does happen.) “Yeah, it’s right over here on aisle three,” the man with the helpful smile told me. Aisle three? Are you kidding? I walked aisle three seventeen times. There’s no corned beef hash on — oh, wait, there it is. I quickly grabbed the goods, headed to the self check-out, and drove home.

So now, without further ado, I will show you all how make homemade corned beef hash.

The store had two kinds of hash: the wrong kind and the really wrong kind. Not knowing what to do with this lose-lose situation, I bought both:

You see, the right kind of hash is Mary Kitchen. What we have here is Libby’s and some sort of hash made by aliens who put the Mary Kitchen logo on the can to trick us earthlings into eating it. I’ve never had the Libby’s kind and I’m not sure I’d like it, like it, like it on my table, table, table. So I checked out the other can, just to see what the aliens had done to it. Water. They put water in it to reduce the fat. I don’t understand this. I don’t want to understand this.

But in the end I decided to try the alien hash and only because it had fewer calories and I’m trying to Be Good™.

Now, in order to make homemade hash, do NOT use this device:

The idea is to get the edges crispy and that will never happen in the nuker. Step one! Open the can. Do you see any extra water in here? I don’t. I don’t understand this.

Put it in a non-stick pan and cook over medium heat for minutes and minutes. It has to get hot and it has to crisp up ever so slightly. You don’t want to burn it but you definitely want to take away the dog-foodness of it as much as possible. Heat helps.

When done, put it on a plate:

Nearly every single can of corned beef hash displays the same serving suggestion. Put an egg on it. I didn’t have a fried egg handy and didn’t feel like making one, so I just grabbed the next best thing:

Mmmm… and there you have it: hot, steamy, slightly crispy hash. Breakfast of champions I tell ya. Or, the dinner of bloggers at any rate.

And how was the alien hash? Well, I can’t lie to you. It actually sucked. I kinda knew it would, but I was still hoping it wouldn’t. It tasted weird and definitely wasn’t worth the effort. (But I did save calories!)

Oh, and for the purists out there wondering why I’m calling this homemade corned beef hash? Well, I made it at home, didn’t I?